Griff's Spring Training Odyssey 1978-2022

Part 1: The Daytona Beach years (1978-80)

The Super Bowl is done. March Madness is weeks away. The NHL is down to four countries. Luka is a Laker and MLB training camps are at hand. Life is good. After 45 springs in Florida, I can’t help it. The first day of pitchers and catchers always makes me feel warm and fuzzy. After 52 years in the MLB game, it’s Pavlovian.

On Thursday, Feb. 13, a flock of Toronto Blue Jays players, coaches and support staff will drift out to the multiple fields, batting cages and pitching mounds at the four-year-old, state-of-the-art, Player Development Complex, in Dunedin to kickstart the American League franchise’s 49^th year of spring training, all in the same small town on Florida’s west coast. Of the 30 MLB teams, only the Phillies (1947 Clearwater), the Tigers (1966 Lakeland) and the Pirates (1969 Bradenton) have called the same city their spring home for a longer period than the Jays.

It's an annual reboot of the inner soul for all baseball fans that should forever makes them smile. No wins, no losses, infinite hope. And for all those springs, in Daytona, West Palm and Dunedin, I was a full participant. Presented here,, broken down into personal eras, are some favourite memories of Florida springs, past.

It all changed for baseball in Canada, when Montreal was granted an NL expansion franchise along with San Diego, in May of 1968, expected to find a roster of players, organize spring training and get ready to play a 162-game championship schedule just about 10 months later. A daunting task.

Expos’ President John McHale lived in the south Florida, at the time, and was previously chief executive of the Braves, who were doing their training, in West Palm Beach. McHale accepted an offer to share the Braves’ spring facility, but as clear, second-class citizens. But at least they had a place to get ready for the season and host spring games. The less-than-ideal arrangement continued from 1969-72.

Then in ’73, the impatient Expos secured their own facility, also not ideal, nestled, as it was, in the northeast corner of Florida in Daytona Beach, where the weather remained cold and windy through mid-March and where the iconic Daytona Motor Speedway saw the highways jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive, for two of every spring’s seven total weeks – the Daytona 500 and Cycle Week.

I joined the horsehide fun in the sun in 1978, after working four Expos springs stuck in the office at Jarry Park, as a second P.R. Assistant. Here, now, are some personal highlights from my three Daytona springs.

*Expos’ headquarters hotel was the Inn at Indigo, a newly opened resort hotel near the intersection of Interstate 4 and highway 92 which was on the way to Orlando and the route south to Vero Beach where the Dodgers trained and the road to the other Florida-based teams. On most days the trek to work was a 15-minute drive, hotel to City Island Park, where the Expos trained, but during Bike Week or 500-week, the road past the Speedway and the airport was over an hour. But it was exciting.

*Bill Lee’s pancake recipe: The controversial Spaceman had been acquired at the Winter Meetings in ’78, so within days of reporting to Expos’ camp in February, ’79, a packed carload of Red Sox media called ahead to ask for access to their former star.

When they arrived, I pulled Lee out of the tiny home clubhouse and set up an impromptu press conference next to the media trailer in the left field corner and stood back to watch. As the group walked away, a shaken Spaceman summarized what he had told them. It had been mostly tongue in cheek, but nuance does not always come through in print. The huge news was Bill saying he sprinkled his breakfast pancakes with marijuana and much more. No suspension, but he was fined by the commissioner and paid it off in pennies to a group of nuns in Alaska.

*Joe Niekro’s unexplained balk: In Daytona, at a local club, worked a popular exotic dancer named Babette Bardot, who was friends with some of the Expos’ beat reporters, since they had the commonality of all being from Montreal.

The Expos were playing the Astros one afternoon in Cocoa Beach, close to Cape Canaveral. An Expos writer had invited Babette to visit the press box during the game. With a runner on first base and Joe Niekro on the hill, she clambered up the rickety, retro ramp that connected the back row of the stands to the overhanging press box. As she made that last giant step up, in a hot pink micro-skirt, Niekro lost his focus, stopped in mid-delivery and balked the runner to second.

*The Search for Dodgertown: In that early period, the east coast of Florida was not yet linked, north to south, by a completed I-95, unpaved from Daytona to Fort Pierce, instead it was a series of small highways and back roads for the Expos to get to all road game vs. the Dodgers, Yankees, O’s, Astros, Rangers or Braves. For me, without benefit of GPS and cellphones, rural Florida was a confusing maze of orange fields, strip malls and tire stores. Thus, since I drove myself to every road game, to arrive before the team bus, I was on my own this day and became lost in an earnest search of Dodgertown. Leaving at 8:00 a.m., arriving at 11:30, a frustrating 3-1/2 hours, with game notes and press guides distributed just prior to game-time.

The next morning, back in Daytona, was an even longer drive to play the Braves in West Palm Beach. While working in the press box, post-game, I was able to watch a Braves’ kid catcher, alone on the field with only a coach and a second baseman as the sun set. After seeing him air-mail a series of throws over second base into centre field, I thought this guy’s not a catcher, too bad. It turned out it was 22-year-old Dale Murphy. I was right, he wasn’t a catcher.

On the way back to Daytona that night on more of those pitch-black back roads, I was lost (again) but making good time. I had to relieve myself, so I pulled over and walked to a fence away from the main road. As I finished, I looked up at a sign: “Welcome to Dodgertown”. Better late than never.

*Ain’t life a beach. My first spring training I had invited my Montreal roommate, Mike Griffin, at the time a PR man with the NHL, now with the North Bay Battalion, to stay with me for a week. As many people know, the famous beach at Daytona also serves as the parking lot for cars, utilized by all the bars and restaurants, the length of the coast highway. After a night at Big Daddy’s, we settled up and headed back to the Inn at Indigo. There was an early trip for me all the way across state, to face the Blue Jays the next morning. Get some sleep.

As we walked across the sand to the car, I grabbed my keys, flipped them over my shoulder and caught them. Feeling good about my 2:00 a.m. hand-eye, the third flip resulted in a whiff as I reached behind my back. The keys settled in and were lost in the sand. In the dark, all the digging only seemed to bury them deeper. Oh well, I thought, I could come back for the car in the morning after finding backup keys.

Unfortunately, overnight, the tide had come in and when I arrived back at sunrise, the rental car had been sucked deep down into the beach, now locked with sand halfway up the doors. It, needless to say, became my first team bus trip of the year. Avis had to bring a tow truck down to pull my car out of the muck.

*Now let’s Play Ball. One more thing for the Jays. They have about a week left to meet the artificial deadline set by Vlad Guerrero Jr. for negotiating a multi-year contract extension that would make him the third-highest paid (total value) player in the game. If that happened, it would be huge for the fans and for players in the clubhouse. A show of front office good faith. If not, the winter will have been B- at best.