For years, I have had the good fortune to spend time in Florida for Grapefruit League games as well as in Arizona for Cactus League competition. Florida’s geographic proximity makes it easy to get to most any spring training site in a day’s drive or less.
The fun of sitting in the sun, having a beer or two and a hotdog, and seeing the big-name stars ply their trade—even in the spring when the games don’t count—is a fulfilling experience.
There are so many ancillary or adjunct opportunities that are well worth exploiting. You can play golf or fish in the mornings and then make it to the ballpark in time for an afternoon game. Then find a first-class restaurant for dinner.
For the record, one of the most rewarding experiences came when I was invited to shoot an Oceola turkey early one morning in Palmdale, Florida, in the middle of the state.
The daily presence at the ballpark of the athletic stars of yesteryear who have settled in the Sunshine State provides interview opportunities galore. Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Charlie Manuel, Haywood Sullivan, and Don Zimmer, among others, were generous with their time. Of course, my cup “runneth over” when I wound up where the Braves were anchored this time of the year.
There were dinners with Williams and his biographer, John Underwood of Sports Illustrated, and John McKay, who left Southern California to become the coach of the Tampa Bay Bucs.
One day, I sat with Bob Feller in Winter Haven before the Indians moved to Arizona and talked to him for an entire game while he signed autographs and accommodated photo-op requests for $5, which he passed on to the museum in his name in Van Meter, Iowa, his hometown.
Then there was Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost, who had settled in Indian Lake Estates in 1959, a little more than 40 miles east of Tampa and just a few more miles south of Orlando. He and his wife, Muggs, were delightful hosts. He was always eager to talk about Charley Trippi, who he said was the greatest football player he ever saw.
In a six-year period, I stopped by to see the Granges several times, the first couple of stops to interview him. One afternoon, I had him join me in a conversation with an Atlanta disc jockey on WSB, who was a big fan of the Illinois legend.
His biggest asset as an athlete, he said, was his speed. We talked about the rift he had with his coach, Bob Zuppke, over leaving college to play professionally. Grange took the position that if his coach got paid to coach, why then should he not get paid to play? In Grange’s case, his head was turned when he got paid $100,000 to play in the NFL while his coach was making something like $2,750 for the season to serve as head coach at Illinois.
I recorded him for most of an hour with him talking about everything from how he came to wear No. 77 (‘the guy in front of me got No. 76”), how difficult it is for the unwashed to appreciate that football is a team game, and when one misses his assignment, the play collapses and 75,000 people think the play caller is an idiot. Fans don’t see the mistake that brought about failure.
Grange grew up at a time when everybody worked, giving the highest regard for the work ethic. This is the way it was for him when in his 7th– and 8th-grade years, when he was assigned to work on his uncle’s farm.
“I got up at 5:00 a.m., went directly to the horse barn and fed the eight horses their hay and oats. Then I would (cross) over three fences and the pasture to the cow barn and milk four cows. Then have breakfast. Next, I would hitch up a horse, take six three-foot-high milk cans down to the dairy which was five miles away, and bring the empty cans home, unhitch the horse, and put him in the barn. Then I would take a shower and change my clothes and ride my bicycle five miles and be at the schoolhouse by 9:00 a.m. After school, I would clean the barns, feed the cows and horses, and milk the four cows again.”
After that, football was a breeze. He never complained about long practices.
Getting back on my spring training routine is a must. I need to catch another 25-pound snook, kill an Oceola turkey, and find an ole timer with whom to reminisce about yesteryear.