{"id":1086,"date":"2011-03-22T10:30:22","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T14:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/?p=1086"},"modified":"2011-03-21T22:37:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T02:37:46","slug":"spring-training-voyage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2011\/03\/22\/spring-training-voyage\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Training Voyage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">I\u2019m back from Spring Training, and it\u2019s all too soon. I was having a lot of fun poking around Port St. Lucie and Digital Domain Park. \u00a0I took 500 pictures over three days, and captured images of many of our favorite, and less favorite, Mets players. \u00a0I watched road, home, and minor league games and saw players from the low minors to the cream of the crop doing all different kinds of baseball drills. \u00a0I met <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/a_amberc\">Amber Coyle<\/a>, and Matthew Rose of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nleastchatter.com\/\">NL East Chatter<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realdirtymets.com\/\">The Real Dirty Mets Blog<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYV8Avt3Y5I\/AAAAAAAAAj4\/FcsLNHpJHrs\/s912\/IMG_5133.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"digitaldomain\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYV8Avt3Y5I\/AAAAAAAAAj4\/FcsLNHpJHrs\/s912\/IMG_5133.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"547\" height=\"410\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nFirst, check out these two posts I put up last week involving Mets eating <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2011\/03\/19\/mets-players-and-owners-eat-at-duffys\/\">dinner<\/a> and pictures from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2011\/03\/18\/pictures-from-mets-red-sox-31711\/\">St. Patrick\u2019s Day<\/a> game against the Red Sox and then click below to view more pictures.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><!--more-->&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I saw the starters (and Carrasco..hmm, long man favorite?) working on bunting, and then also pitchers working on wild pitches. They&#8217;d fake throw home, and then dash towards the plate yelling &#8220;One One One!!&#8221; field a throw from the catcher and swipe at the plate.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYV6W0RpPzI\/AAAAAAAAAeU\/JZ6tgNh_eZM\/s912\/IMG_5054.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"carrascobunts\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYV6W0RpPzI\/AAAAAAAAAeU\/JZ6tgNh_eZM\/s912\/IMG_5054.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"547\" height=\"410\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI saw minor leaguers rotating doing turns at second, and pitchers practicing backing up home or backing up third.<\/p>\n<p>Minor leaguers practicing baserunning instincts: Teufel hits a ball, and they have to judge whether to advance or not from second base.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYPQDr09qVI\/AAAAAAAAAU0\/nIFIUBodvyg\/s912\/IMG_4920.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"teufel\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYPQDr09qVI\/AAAAAAAAAU0\/nIFIUBodvyg\/s912\/IMG_4920.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"547\" height=\"410\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nValdespin acting as the guy that has to lug the basket of baseballs around and hand them to coaches to hit. Meija acting as the ball boy in a minor league game (literally going out to the umpire to hand him balls and picking up the balls that got by the catcher)<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 547px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYV7CzRl3AI\/AAAAAAAAAfk\/rQ0ZUvIpL68\/s912\/IMG_5071.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" \" title=\"meija\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYV7CzRl3AI\/AAAAAAAAAfk\/rQ0ZUvIpL68\/s912\/IMG_5071.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"547\" height=\"410\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Meija acting as ballboy in a minor league game<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">I saw Mets all over Port. St Lucie too, at Duffy&#8217;s, and Vine and Barley. Kai Gronauer, Scott Hairston, Justin Turner, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and unnamed players with him (Duda, Russ Adams?) not to mention the ones that I didn&#8217;t notice\/recognize. \u00a0I saw tweets by Cory Vaughn that he was there with others, and we did spend some time speculating where the bigger starts like Wright and Reyes go to hang out.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYPRHKM79kI\/AAAAAAAAAZo\/WrN0_h5Nj1w\/s912\/IMG_4991.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"pagan\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/_KGc5WkTnjzo\/TYPRHKM79kI\/AAAAAAAAAZo\/WrN0_h5Nj1w\/s912\/IMG_4991.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"547\" height=\"410\" \/><\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The things I took away from the experience is that getting there at 9:30 to see the workouts on the back fields is a lot fun. \u00a0Vine and Barley is a great bar to get drinks at, as it has an extensive beer menu and 100 bottles of self-serve wine in which you can have a 1oz, 2oz, or 4oz glass of.<\/p>\n<p>For the rest of the pictures from my trip, go <a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/115206422599450453015\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I also posted some pictures to Twitter as I was wandering around. \u00a0If you\u2019d like to follow me on Twitter, go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/ceetar\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I\u2019m back from Spring Training, and it\u2019s all too soon. I was having a lot of fun poking around Port St. Lucie and Digital Domain Park. \u00a0I took 500 pictures over three days, and captured images of many of our favorite, and less favorite, Mets players. \u00a0I watched road, home, and minor league games &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2011\/03\/22\/spring-training-voyage\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Spring Training Voyage&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1133,19,166,528,259,3,261,6],"tags":[2988,1296,360,1602,2968,1601,1619,1618,1617,1606,4,1226,1610,1600,1616,1000,1611,5,1362,1615,1341,2964,1603,1605,1609,1608,1356,1598,1277,1576,14,637,1613,1363,1584,1599,1620,1607,1132,1612,1604,1614],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}