Roger Dean Stadium

Miami Marlins/ St. Louis Cardinals, Grapefruit League

Jupiter Hammerheads/ Palm Beach Cardinals, Florida State League

6/10

One of several entrances to the stadium

A view of the park during the rain delay. The teams have matching offices on either power alley.

Clearwater players run for the dugout after a brief respite from the downpour turned out to be exactly that. False alarm.

 Update 2016: This entry used to be copied and pasted from the old format, so I fixed the captions on the pictures and retyped the entry and rescored it as well, besides adding the boxscore.

 I pulled double duty on this day, catching the afternoon matchup in Miami, before Hitting I-95 for the hour or so drive to Jupiter for a Flordia State League game between Clearwater and Jupiter, arriving during the 2nd inning. That weekend had seen bands of heavy rain from Tropical Storm Debby swoop in. This resulted in a delay of nearly an hour that chased all but about 25 of the 350 announced fans away.

This park is perhaps the busiest in the pros in terms of number of games. It hosts the Cardinals and Marlins in March, then from April to September it's a minor league park for the baby Cardinals and Hammerheads. The layout is straightforward with a box section in front, a wide aisle, then loge seats in the back, similar to Mesa or Peoria in Arizona. It's entirely adequate for Spring Training, I'm sure, but like a lot of places in Florida, it is a big empty stadium for Single A. More on that later.

It is a strange setup to have so many minor league teams in a state where baseball is more of a spring or closed roof kind of sport. I realize it's nice to have the teams so close to a hub like the spring training facility, but I still don't get it. At any rate, the impending bad weather(which I knew nothing about) and the fact it was a Sunday evening kept attendance to around 350, with maybe 150 showing up. A strong and long shower sent everyone but the diehard fans, relatives, road warriors like me or people who had to walk home anyway; home early. It led to me moving under a small ledge at the back of the loge section, where once the game started again, I could hear everything people in the press box were saying. This included a Seinfeld reference for a batter by the name of Cartwright, a comment on how after the delay there were literally more people on the field than in the stands and encouraging the Clearwater closer to finish the save, so his promotion to AA could go ahead as scheduled(it did). The hot dog guy told me that the "seniors night" promotions draw bigger crowds. The Hammerheads and Cardinals match promtions, so any day of the week is the same thing regardless of who's playing. Attendance for both teams correlates very closely most years, with the figures being within 20 for 2015.  The atmosphere was non-existent, but at the same time, the bad weather and press box chatter led to a unique experience. So overall, atmosphere is neutral.

The only knock is the concessions. I had a simple hot dog and ended up stopping later on. The choices were beer, pop and hot dogs. Baseball minimums really. The team seemed to know there wasn't a big crowd in store and didn't waste food. Still, it would have been nice to have something else to pick.

Overall, for FSL play, I give it a 6, due to the limited food options, with atmosphere being "non-traditional" but quirky enough to be enjoyed and the park being just fine. It's in a good spot, with lots of home dates, so I could be back.

Linescore

2012-06-24

                                                  123      456    789    RHE

Clearwater Threshers(PHI)            000      100    200     354

Palm Beach Cardinals(STL)          001      000    000     111

Temp: 75F  Time: 2:22(:57 Delay)  Att: 350