Today was an off day as I am in Winter Haven in the evening as the Cleveland Indians host the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Both are split squads so it won’t necessarily be the best showing for either team.  I came out to interview Josh Barfield for the newsletter, and he is just as sweet as his dad.  One of the best smiles I have ever seen.  There is a great story that Suzyn Waldman tells about his dad.  Back in the ’70’s when women were first allowed in the locker room, Waldman entered and imediately induced a rant from George Bell.   He was screaming some expletives about women in the locker room as saying something about not standing for them being in there…Suzyn, being shaken by his loud verbal assault and not wanting to give Bell the satisfaction of seeing her cry, turned to exit the clubhouse to regain her composure.  As she turned, Jesse Barfield asked someone what her name was then called out to her and said “hey Suzy, I went 3 for 4 and knocked in a couple of runs, don’t you want to talk to me?” Suzyn stopped, turned, smiled and rushed to his side to hear what he had to say. George Bell looked like the jerk that he was.  I am happy to say that it seems that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

The Indians camp in Winter Haven is a pretty poor facility.  It’s a tiny park, in the middle of nowhere and the offices for the Indians officials are tiny.  The media use a small workroom made out of cement blocks to work up their stories.  The press box itself is open air and lit by 4 8″ by 12″ halogen lights.  It was so bad that I had to ask one of the regular Indians writers why the team had left Tuscon all those years ago.  I assumed this was going to be a pretty nice facility.  The story is roughly that they left to create a small village north of Tampa, with the Red Sox, but they tried to hard to leverage their position with the town before teams were doing that and finally the town told them to get lost, that they weren’t building them anything.  The team looked around that the choices that were left were not great, and with the spring coming fast, and with Tucson having filled their stadium with the Rockies organization, they had to come to Winter Haven.  As sad as I am to see the Dodgers go out to AZ, it will be good for the Indians to return there. 

The Pirates/Indians game featured an appearance by Shawn Chacon and Paul Byrd.  Chacon looked good, but Byrd had a moderately rough outing.  Sean Burnett came into relieve Chacon and pitched into and out of some jams for about 3 innings.  Both teams brought some of their starters in the field, and though young any looke really good.  It will be fun to have Josh Barfield in the middle of the country because he is fun to watch.