The Cats have returned from a very difficult but successful road trip to Pensacola, Florida.   It is a grueling 12 hour bus ride each way.  The team pulled out from LaGrave Field in our “luxury motor coach” (I like that better than “bus”) at 2 AM on Tuesday morning and arrived in Pensacola around 12 hours later only to experience some problems upon check-in at the hotel.  I will not go into detail other than to say that the hotel was not up to the standards we have set as a league.  I won’t name the hotel, but you can probably figure it out by looking at our league media directory or maybe the Pensacola website.Â
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At any rate, we moved to the nearby Quality Inn and it was an improvement which obviously agreed with our team since we went on to score 29 runs while allowing only 9 for the opposition in the three game sweep of the Pelicans at their own ballpark!Â
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The Cats were certainly firing on all cylinders, both offensively and defensively in Pensacola.  The pitching was nothing short of sensational, highlighted by Joel Kirsten’s near no-hitter in the first game.  Joel, winner of the dramatic, series winning, game 5 in last year’s playoffs, has continued to pitch in spectacular fashion again this season.  Dan Grybash and Pedro Flores were also outstanding in the series as was the bullpen, when needed.
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But even more encouraging was the offensive output.  Twenty nine runs in three games is pretty impressive.  Everyone in the lineup contributed to the offense and that is, of course, what it takes to produce runs in great volume.  As I’ve mentioned before, we had two or three guys who we expected would be pretty productive hitters and had not yet produced this season.  All of that changed in Pensacola, and we’re hoping that it will carry through for the remainder of the season.Â
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Of course, we were worried that the guys would be extremely tired when they arrived home on Friday, and they were….  but that did not stop them from posting a very nice 4-1 win on Friday night behind a strong pitching performance from Lee Gwaltney and Nelson Teilon’s 4-4 hitting including a mammoth home run off the LaGrave Field scoreboard.Â
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What was even more impressive about Friday night was the crowd and atmosphere at the ballpark.  It was a special night as we honored our newest Fort Worth Cats’ alumni to be elected to the baseball Hall-of-Fame in Cooperstown, NY, Dick Williams.Â
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A very nice crowd turned out for the game despite extremely muggy and windy conditions and the  fact that Danica Patrick, Mario Andretti, and company were at the TMS and the improved Rangers were playing the first place Tampa Bay Rays!Â
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Our fans were, as usual, totally into the game!  Dick Williams commented several times on how enthusiastic our fans seem to be.  He also was very complimentary about the politeness of folks who waited in line to get autographs.  I hope everyone can appreciate that Mr. Williams is almost 80 years old and it is asking a lot of him to sit and sign for a long line of people like that.  But most of all…. he RAVED about our beautiful little ballpark.  He was totally impressed by the fact that we had rebuilt the ballpark on the very same spot where it stood when he played for the Cats in the late ’40’s and early ’50’s.  He thought we had preserved a tremendous piece of Fort Worth and baseball history and had done so by creating a “traditional” baseball environment.
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I could’t agree with him more.  LaGrave Field isn’t as fancy as the new ballparks in Frisco or Grand Prairie or other places.  It doesn’t have a lot of the “bells and whistles” as they say.  It is just a beautiful little “patch of heaven” for a baseball fan like me.Â
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After the game last night… and the fireworks…. the kids were running the bases… and there were a lot of kids at the ballpark last night.  I was sitting in the back row listening to the music, watching the kids run the bases, watching the smiles on their faces and the faces of their parents and older siblings.  My boss (he likes to call me his “partner”, because he is a class act and treats me as an equal), Carl Bell, was doing the same thing as he stood on the concourse and spoke to fans while watching the kids on the field.Â
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All I could think about at that sweet moment was how great it was to be a part of all of this and how nice it has been to have spent our lives and raised our three kids in ballparks.  (They are all grown up now and live a thousand miles away.)  How sweet it was to savor a 4-1 win and to see so many happy people sharing our own little heaven on earth called LaGrave Field.  How wonderful the downtown skyline looked over the right field grandstand…. and how lucky I was because…… it was my birthday!
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All of the kids called more than once yesterday…. (they pretty much call every day… thanks to cell phones!) and I continue to be ever grateful to our Creator who has given me a great wife, Lois, and family, a great mentor in Bobby Bragan, a great boss or “partner” in Carl Bell, and has allowed me to spend just about every single day of my life for the last 35 years in a ballpark.
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I can think of no better birthday gift than that! 

JPD

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under From the Desk of the President. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.