Reach for the Sky at Skyway Park
Since we were fortunate enough to start a day early on our ride out of Houston, we were fortunate enough to arrive in Tampa a day early. This meant we would be able to catch a couple of Rays games during our stay in the area. It also meant a bit more time that we would be able to spend with our hosts, Adam’s cousin and family, while in Tampa. All great things.
We arrived in Tampa Wednesday afternoon and hung with our hosts for the night, eating tasty food at Surf Shack while we watched Dickey dominate the Rays to the tune of a 1-hitter. However, his performance was overshadowed as Matt Cain threw a perfect game. As we sat in Tampa that night we thought, “No way the Mets sweep the Rays in Tampa.” Well we’d find out!
Thursday morning we enjoyed our wonderful company in Tampa; going for a swim, hanging with Ryan and Megan, playing some catch and talking Rays baseball. After having our fun, we prepared to head out for a completely full second half of the day.
We wanted to catch the Rays game for a several reasons.
1. We love baseball. We were in Tampa, the Rays were playing, and we had a “free” afternoon. We’re going.
2. We wanted to get a good view of Tropicana Field on our own before catching it with kids and volunteers Friday night.
3. We wanted to meet Mark Simon of ESPN, who is a Mets fan, and was in attendance for the game.
We bought the cheapest seats possible, which were upper deck behind the plate. But once we got to our seats we realized that there is not a bad seat in the Trop. We watched the Rays get pummeled by the Mets and lose 6-9. Not the best game for the Rays.
But there was a silver lining for Biking for Baseball, because we were allowed the luxury of meeting Mark Simon! Mark Simon is a stats and research specialist with ESPN. Basically he’s a stat-head extraordinaire. The guy lives and breathes the nuances of the game in tabular form.
He was jazzed about our trip and the organization and wanted to do an interview with Biking for Baseball. We answered some questions as he wanted to gather some information and but at the same time, we wanted to know the behind-the-scenes of a data crunch at ESPN!
What a “perfect” day to meet him because there was a perfect game the previous night! He showed us an email sent out to ESPN employees, that had pages and pages of information, all related to anything and everything about a perfect game in the history of baseball. ESPN sends out these texts to Baseball Tonight, writers and reporters and they can all choose which statistic they want to use for their own twist on the story of the night. It’s pretty cool. Mark is the lead stat guy to put this giant stat sheet together. The project manager of the baseball statistics of ESPN, if you will.
After finishing up with Mark, it was time to head to our youth baseball clinic with BBBS of Tampa Bay at Skyway Park!
Jennifer of BBBS had worked with Firehouse Subs on providing sandwiches to attendees of the clinic. While the kids and volunteers munched on some tasty subs and the Biking for Baseball team set-up the field for a go-go, ominous clouds loomed overhead. We thought that we might have a fit of showers as we started play for the evening, but the groundskeeper of the park assured us that the storm would miss us. He was right!
We were left with great weather for the entire game. With 16 (~40 kids and adults) matches out there on the diamond we had a great amount of kids and volunteers for the event.
Jennifer and BBBS specially made shirts JUST for this event! Also, Rays tickets to the Friday night game and sports encouragement books were provided to each kid and volunteer in attendance for the B4B clinic! What a play!
Adam managed the They Got Nothings while Rex was team manager of The Bandits. The game was fast-paced with a lot of solid defense in the field for the first 4 innings, but then the pitcher of the They Got Nothings, Adam, lost control and the wheels fell off. In the last inning, 8 Bandits crossed the plate. The Bandits ended up with a lopsided score 10-2 when it was time to call the game.
We had several All-Stars at the event:
- Kai was his team’s SS and pitcher and made several highlight reel catches at the ESPN station.
- Casey knocked one down, with his forehead!, and stayed in the game.
- Seth hit 10 home runs OVER THE FENCE and won a B4B bandana!
- Jordan exuded effort with each dive and swing of the bat. We could see it on his face!
- Daniel, playing his first game, came up and whacked hit after hit at the plate!
- Da’Quarius was our most energetic and most confident, even though it was his first game too. Baseball for life!
- Ryan, decked out in Rays gear, made play after play at second base like he was the next SeanRod being groomed by the MLB team.
This group was great. Each BBBS program, each group that comes to a Biking for Baseball clinic, each relationship we interact with, is different. This group, was fantastic! Each relationship was a close bond between Big and Little. Matches had multi-year relationships, which showed through their time spent together at the clinic. We were lucky enough to have a professional photographer, Laura, who wrote a great blog post about the event as well, come to our event. At one point, she walked up to Adam and said, “You can see the emotional attachment in these pictures. Makes my job easy.” And she was right! High-five to all the kids, volunteers and employees of BBBS-Tampa! Keep being AWESOME!
Go out there and be a positive influence in a kid’s life today, Tampa!