Baseball, continued

I went to my second baseball game in as may days and doubled the size of my new hat collection when I went to a Twins game.  The game was less fun mainly because of the stadium.  The design, or rather the placement of the park meant that on a sunny day (remember, 92.4779 percent of our days are sunny!) everyone at the game is in fairly direct sun.  And it was hot (our average temperature is 84.314 degrees, all year around!).  I lasted into the 5th inning and I left.  It wasn't that good of a game, but really the park seemed like some great big grill where thousands of pasty white Minnesotans who were seasoned with months of  hot dishes and beer sizzled on a spit.  The fact that I resembled so many in this pack didn't make it any prettier of an image.

Plus, while in theory I had a good seat for photos, I was way too hot and fighting the sun for good shots.  That I fled the field because I was uncomfortable just further shows my appalling lack of commitment to the genre.  What it did convince me again of was when I DO like baseball.  I learned this in the early 1990s when I was in grad school.  It was fall, and finally cool in central Indiana and  midterms were rolling in and I actually had to grade and do the stuff teachers did.  I found this combination of grading midterm essays and baseball, either on the radio and especially on TV to be perfect.  Maybe because by then most baseball games actually mean something as they head down the home stretch.  I would watch a period of baseball, wait until they kicked a goal on the course or out of bounds and made a first point and assist, and while they were changing the net near the blue line on the pitch for half-time , I would placidly grade on with the perfect background noise droning on in the background.  Now that is when I like baseball!

Florida has been interesting, and I really have been trying to get a handle on it.  In some ways, it is the least hospitable hospitality state I have ever been in.  Tourists of whatever ilk are often treated with sometimes snide indifference.  I have to think that this is partially caused by the transient nature of so many of the patrons.  Short change someone?  No biggie.  They won't be back and there will, as one person said, one horde or another of tourists coming in right behind them.  Hotel room not quite clean or markedly expensive for what you get?  Hey, what choice do these sheep have?  They have to stay someplace.  I think that this even explains the general state of the food--tourists are grist for the mill of commerce, not gourmands, so it doesn't really matter if the fish is overcooked or the fish taco is less than authentic or perhaps even safe to eat.

Don't get me wrong.  I admire the machine.  One source says that there are 405,915 hotel rooms in the state--Orlando alone has 140,000.  Imagine having probably more than 300,000 guests in your home every night of the year.  If you rounded up 100 people in Orlando, 15-20 of them would be a tourist, more on certain events and holidays.   That it all works as well it does is a testament to how hospitable people probably are.

Oh well.  Tomorrow it is some culture, I guess, as I am going the Dali museum and then on to Tarpon Springs for some Greek food tomorrow night.  My visit to Xanadu/nirvana/paradise ends on Tuesday when I head back to a probable snowstorm and below zero temperatures.  Maybe this place isn't so bad after all...