Frog Stomp

"What the hell is that? Burn it with fire!" said Watson, when she saw this picture. Nothing against Roberto Clemente, but the hybrid-lizard look is inherently unflattering.

So we headed to Florida to nominally wrap up the Florida State League—at least for the moment. Since neither of us cares much for the state in general, our plan was to see six games in an efficient four days. The last time we were there, we faced rainout after rainout; this time it was the opposite: rainouts before we got there manifested in doubleheaders while we were. In the event, we wound up seeing a perhaps record EIGHT games in four days. Let's run it down:

One of the bitterest of our rainouts last time through was in Port Charlotte, so it was a relief to be able to cross this one off. The next morning, after a hell of a lot of pie at Yoder's in Sarasota, we joined hundreds of screaming children for a 10:30 a.m. Clearwater Threshers game that was all sunshine. We then traipsed across the street—or, more precisely, under U.S. 19—to take in the spectacle of Our Lady of Clearwater. Some time back there were claims that you could see Esther Williams the Virgin Mary in the exterior glass, but for those of us who don't depend on magical thinking to explain the world, the effect seems to be attributable to the selection of low-quality materials.

Our Lady of Clearwater and its cheapo glass. Come for the rainbows, stay for the torture-porn sculpture.

After falling for the tourist scam that is the Spongeorama Museum (no link because who wants to encourage those bastards?) in Tarpon Springs, we repaired to Jack Russell Stadium—the temporary home of the Dunedin Blue Jays—for our first doubleheader. In the minors, both games of unplanned doubleheaders are only seven innings long, but 14 innings of anything should be enough, right? We sat for a time amid the scouts and pitch trackers, to the discomfort of both us and, we intuited, them.

The doubleheaders continued the next morning at our most easterly destination: the home of the Florida Fire Frogs (on which see below). This was followed by an eventful game back in the western part of the state. Once the umpirical thumbs started a-jerkin', we may or may not have led the crowd in a chorus of "BULLLLLL-shit. BULLLLLL-shit." Despite its peculiar name, Lecom Field (named not for, uh, Leonard Communications or something like that but for a college of osteopathic medicine) was a delight—quite possibly the best and most characterful A-level stadium we've seen. The mysterious and rather large Roberto Clemente Lizard shown at the top of this post resides there—perhaps of its own volition, to hear one stadium employee tell it,

So that's seven games in three days. We hung around for one more, in Lakeland, the following night. Our intermediate touring included the underwhelming Parque Amigos de Jose Marti, some decontextualized fairyland figures in Tampa's Waterworks Park...

...as well as the corporate shillery of the Phosphate Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright's remarkable but somewhat confining Florida Southern College campus...

"He was only five-foot-three, but the girls could not resist his stare...."

...plus the smoky confines of Tucker's Southside Package & Lounge and the old school botanical charm of St. Petersburg's Sunken Gardens. There were also doughnuts and fried-chicken biscuit sandwiches, too many ribs, and some pretty good beer. Really, it was about all a person could expect from central Florida.

With all that, we are in fact done with the FSL at the moment. However, since the Dunedin Blue Jays will be moving back into their normal home stadium, by my standards I will have to return to see them there. More ominously, though, the Florida Fire Frogs have been served with a notice of eviction after a mere three years in Kissimmee. If they move on to a new facility, we'll have to come back; if they move on to an old facility, though—say, perhaps, the Brevard County stadium whence they came—we won't. But that's in the future; as of this writing, we've seen all active teams and stadiums in the league. Halle freakin lujah.

Or, if you prefer, "There!"
(Detail of a satellite view of central Florida, from an exhibit at the Mulberry Phosphate Museum.)