Spring Training Trip 2012 Recap-PART TWO

If you missed part one of my Spring Training Trip 2012 recap, go here to see yesterday's post. I think my recap is probably going to go to three posts, possibly four. It was a long trip!! :) I don't want to leave anything out!

So, on Day 2 of our trip (we count the travel day on Wednesday as Day 0), we went to the team practice. We meant to get there by 10am, which is when the gates opened, but we were delayed. It was another beautiful day in Surprise, so of course, we enjoyed the convertible ride to the stadium.

I.Am.A.Nerd. :)

God blessed us with the best weather while we were there!

It was closer to 10:30 before we got to the practice fields, and it was already packed (obviously everyone except the three of us knew about getting there early). They had different "stations" set up. There was a field where they took shifts taking batting practice and fielding ground balls (and catching fly balls). There was an area that was mainly for the pitchers to practice at, and there were individual batting cages. There were also a few fields that were mainly for the minor league players. First, we checked out the field where a lot of the guys were taking turns at batting practice.

The 3 amigas ready for Day 2 of baseball!

Not sure why Craig Gentry looks so sad here. Guess he hadn't seen me yet! ;) (kidding!)

Michael Young waiting his turn to take some swings

Elvis Andrus. It was fun being so close because we could hear them joking around with each other.

Waiting to take some practice swings

Pitcher Derek Holland- we really hope that he cuts the mullet before the season starts!

While walking around the practice area, we ran into Emily Jones from Fox Sports Southwest. She knows us from Twitter, but we had never met her before in person (at least I hadn't). When she saw us, she came over and gave us a hug, and was sweet enough to take pictures with us.

Emily Jones from Emily's Outtakes and Fox Sports Southwest

Some of the players would stop and sign a few autographs as they were walking to different stations. Like I mentioned before my trip, my goal was to get pictures instead of autographs. I saw Mike Napoli signing for a group of people and worked my way over in hopes of getting a picture with him. I noticed these little kids were trying so hard to hand him something to sign, but their arms were too short to reach up where he could see them. I asked them if they wanted me to pass stuff over to him and they said yes, so I handed Napoli a baseball to sign. When I handed him something else for another kid, he looked at me as if to say, "one autograph per person", and I pointed to the kids saying they were for them, I was just the tall person they handed their stuff to. He laughed and said, "Oh, okay, that's fine." He was so nice. He probably signed autographs for about 40 minutes. I was trying to get close enough so Tonya could snap a picture of me standing near him. She kept waiting for him to look up and finally he realized what she was trying to do, so he was nice enough to look up for a picture!

NAP-O-LI

About noon we decided to head to the stadium (which was about a block from the practice field). We noticed the day before some players would stop and sign autographs while they were walking to the dugout, and we wanted to see if we could get some more pictures. You notice in the above pictures I'm wearing the Ben and Skin shirt that I made (courtesy of PlayerTees). If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know Ben and Skin are two of my favorite sports talk radio hosts (their show is on ESPN Dallas radio). We had just walked in and I heard someone yell out to me. I looked over and noticed Randy Galloway from ESPN Dallas radio (he is also Ben and Skin's boss). He was like, where did you get that shirt? I told him I made it. He said he wanted a picture of me and him so he could send it to Ben. I told him I was friends with Ben and Skin and could send it to them on Twitter. He thought it was the greatest thing ever!

With the great Randy Galloway from ESPN Dallas radio!

Ben sent out a tweet about the picture.

Before the game, I was able to get a picture with outfielder David Murphy- he was so nice. A few other players were close by signing, but never got down as far as I was, so I couldn't get a picture.

Just a couple of Baptist college graduates (Murphy went to Baylor)

Our seats were one section over than we were the day before (which meant we got in the shade a little bit sooner). Even though it was only in the 70s, it felt so much warmer (I guess it's that dry desert heat). The game was fun, until some jerk yelled something at Josh Hamilton (which I won't repeat). He yelled it when Josh was walking off the field on his way out, so I'm hoping he didn't hear the guy. I had to restrain from using the wrath of Rachel against the man. But besides that, it was a good day at the stadium!

Some pictures from the game

Nelson Cruz, Elvis Andrus and Michael Young leaving the game (the starters were pulled out in the 5th inning).

After the game, we decided to go rest at the hotel then head out to dinner. We went to a local place called Marley's. They had this awesome corn bread (I think it had peach flavor in it). I know it sounds weird, but it was good (and this is coming from a very picky eater). My chicken sandwich was really good, but Tonya and Ashley said the ribs were not that good. :/ 

Tonya did my eye make up for the evening!

After that we drove around for a while, just to see the rest of Surprise. It's really a nice little town. Pretty much everything is off this one road, Bell Road. Oh, yeah, we may or may not have driven around for about 5 minutes without headlights on after leaving Marley's. We were too busy looking cool in a convertible that we failed to realize they weren't on (to our  defense, the street lights were very bright so it was kinda hard to tell). I won't say who was driving, but it wasn't me. ;) We decided to rent another movie, so we went by Walgreen's again to the Red Box (sadly, there were no more encounters with any more baseball players there).

Okay, I've overwhelmed you enough for today. I'll post more tomorrow! Thanks for reading!! For more pictures of Day 2, please click here!

XOXO!