In February 2015, we finally returned to Fenway South … and as much as our inaugural 2013 experience had surpassed our expectations, our sophomore visit blew them out of the water.
Of course, it’s worth noting that those expectations were significantly lowered when, much to our dismay, we discovered shortly before departing on our 2015 vacation that the Red Sox had pushed back the start date of their public workouts until after the scheduled end of our trip. Thankfully, through a series of fortunate events (read: a stalker-ish email I sent to a redsox.com address that I wasn’t even sure was valid), I connected with the Custom Service Manager at JetBlue Park, who graciously agreed to let us stop by while we were in the area.
And so, on the morning of our visit, I loaded my family into the car and prepared the kids with my usual Daddy Downer talk:
“You guys, I have no idea what’s going to happen when we get there, OK? They might just let us in for a couple of minutes to see the field, so I don’t want you to get your hopes up for much more than that.”
(Like any good parent, I know it’s best to kill their dreams while they’re still young.)
As it turned out, setting the bar so low made it all the more awesome when, instead of just getting a brief glimpse of the field, we got a private, hour-long, guided tour of JetBlue Park, during which all of this awesomeness happened:
We even hit the broadcast booth …
… and visited Red Sox owner John Henry’s private suite …
… from which we took in a great view of the ballpark.
Now, if the tour had ended right then, we would have been more than satisfied … but it was at that point that our guide — who previously had warned us that we might not see any players during our visit — led us out to the practice area, where we watched Red Sox catchers Christian Vasquez and Blake Swihart take batting practice …
… as well as some defensive work by Mookie Betts, Hanley Ramirez …
… and Brock Holt.
We also spotted General Manager Ben Cherrington and Manager John Farrell …
… and saw Xander Bogaerts make an awesome play during infield drills:
Finally, we had another up-close moment with Jackie Bradley Jr. …
… who, when practice ended, came over to the fence and tossed each of the kids a baseball.
Looking back on it now, it’s hard to believe how lucky we were — especially considering that, for a while there, it looked like we might not even get into the park that year.
After the great time we had watching the team practice in 2013 and 2015, our next spring-training objective was clear: To catch a game at JetBlue Park. We made that wish come true in 2016 … and, once again, the experience was even more amazing than we had hoped it would be.
To be continued…
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