Day one of Spring Training and life can’t be much better. It’s about 75 degrees here and a bit humid. The Sox could have held on to their three run lead in the top of the ninth instead of letting the Dodgers score seven, but unless I hear that Papelbon is being sent down to AAA in favor of Hunter Jones, I’m not too worried.

We arrived at the ballpark around 10:30AM and were extremely surprised to see an already sizable crowd at the stadium. I’ve never been to City of Palms Park before, so for everybody else, here’s a quick description:

• There’s a completely ridiculous statue of Ted Williams putting a cap on some little kids head. I want to see the statue where the kid says he works for the Globe.
• The stadium itself is equivalent to a very nice AAA or college park. Good seats, some grassy lawns down the 1st and 3rd base lines and the outfield fence is made up of square ads. Aside from the overwhelming number of Sox fans, don’t expect to be stepping into Fenway, there are no similarities.
• When they say “standing room only”, they’re not kidding.

Once we got into the stadium, we headed for the field. My Dad is hosting the post-game Dodger radio shows, so we made a stop in the Dodgers’ locker room. Nothing too exciting there; the Dodgers didn’t bring a full-squad to Fort Myers. And while I wish that I could say that Mattingly and Torre were complete jackasses, they were both very friendly, and happy to chat.

We made it onto the field as the Sox BP was winding down. The ESPN crew was chatting with the players near the cage. The area around the cage is apparently reserved only for ESPN. I understand that Peter Gammons should have full range of access, because, well, he’s Peter Gammons (who is, by the way, the friendliest member of the media), but Steve Phillips? Come on! He couldn’t predict something correctly if you gave him Marty McFly’s sports almanac from Back to the Future 2.

Sox players seemed to be in a pretty good mood. Nobody pouting (although we didn’t see Papelbon). Maybe the highlight of the trip so far was getting to shake Manny’s hand. He clearly didn’t want to talk, but was nice enough in his b-line from the batting cage to the clubhouse to drop his bats and shake my hand. I wish I could tell you all that he spit on his hands first or something for a true “Manny being Manny” moment, but I’ll take it. (If it was Moises Alou, he wouldn’t have spit…)

We followed the beat reporters into the clubhouse. It’s strange at Spring Training because most of the normal routines are broken. The first one being the ability to go into the clubhouse after BP. Also, a number of players are changing back into their street clothes because they’re done for the day. If a regular starter isn’t in the starting lineup, he’s probably got a 1pm tee time.

Youks and Alex Cora (who permanently lost the “Lil’” prefix when he turned out to be exactly my height) both were happy to shoot the shit for a few minutes. Youks always looks angry and very intimidating while by the batting cage, but when talking to him he was very down to earth. I recommended that he take a sleeping pill on the flight back from Japan to which he told me that the doctors “take good care of them.” Let’s just hope Brian McNamee hasn’t gotten into the team doctors’ supply of Ambien.

As for the game itself, D-Lowe looked like crap, Ellsberry made a great catch in center and got his first hit of the spring (a ground rule double) in the bottom of that inning, and the rest of the starters looked pretty solid. Pitching-wise it wasn’t as much fun. Wakefield managed to get control of his knuckler and make a couple of Dodgers look very foolish but Timlin was far from sharp along with Craig Breslow who was trying to walk the entire Dodger lineup.

Even 2000 miles south of Fenway, they still play Sweet Caroline in the middle of the 8th inning. Oh, oh, oh was replaced by the sounds of the snoring old people in the stands.

The Sox still entered the top of the ninth with a 5-2 lead. Hunter Jones, a non-roster invitee, got the first out and then gave up a hit before Argenis Diaz booted a double-play ball. Jones then followed that up with a game-tying homer to May. To top that off, the Sox pulled him to bring in Lee Gronkiewicz who hit a batter and then served up a grand-slam to Jason Repko. I would have been more pissed if a) this game meant something and b) Repko hadn’t been so courteous as to try to learn the names of both my Dad and myself rather than just giving us a Manny “hi.”

Tomorrow we head back to the City of Palms Park before taking off for Jupiter and finally Vero Beach. I promise to get pictures up tomorrow, I’ve got them on my camera but forgot a usb cable to download them to my computer.