Team Bonding

Monday evenings are set up for the team to take their coaches out to dinner.  We have many veteran campers on our team so early Monday morning the dinner plans were set.  We took Frank Viola and Tim Laudner to Islamorada - a seafood restaurant - which are located inside the Bass Pro Shops.  We had a great evening of fun and relaxation.  I was able to sit in the middle of the table and one of the more interesting aspects of the week is the ability to hear some stories from these major leaguers -- random topics they talked about:  how they deal with the media (Viola was a schmoozer and Laudner didn't give a sh!t), the changing ways of the clubhouse today vs. in the 80's (have heard this from a couple different Pro's out here -- the younger group is more into putting ear buds in, texting, watching DVD/Video -- where the older guys play cards and hang with each other), and even talking fantasy sports.  The part that all people need to remember -- these guys put their pants on every morning like we do, they just were blessed with a few freakish abilities, in this case, to play baseball at the MLB level -- at the end of the day they are more alike to us than not (at least the good guys, not named Danny Valencia).  My highlight was when Frank Viola asked if he could use Laudner's Iphone.  Viola needed to update his fantasy baskeball team lineup online.  I ended up setting Viola's lineup because one advantage of being 5'7" is my hands and fingers are small enough to maneuver the touch screen, as Frank was telling me, "My damn fingers are stubby and fat".   So we got Frank squared away on his fantasy basketball team -- I had to insert DeMar DeRozan in his lineup and bench Richard Jefferson.

2012 Team "Horse Racers" - Suzie, Nancy, Terry, Tim Laudner, Van, Joe, Ted, Phil, Dan, Ralph, Paul S., Paul B. (me), Frank Viola, and Rick -- Missing:  Randy & Curt

I had the blackened grouper -- very good and we had to roll ourselves out of the restaurant because I think we all ate way too much!

We play two games on Tuesday and this is a big day -- if we can win 2 games today we would be 3-1 and in good position for the upper bracket --- going 1-1 would be fine as well, but going 0-2 would suggest we are not a top division team and we would be playing for the lower division championship (hopefully) at the end of the week.  We will just play one game Weds and two more on Thursday before the playoffs start on Friday.

Forecast is lower 80's today here in Fort Myers -- I read Minneapolis is having April weather in January......

-PB

~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~