SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.

THE REVEREND CHIMES IN

Rev. Joe Kendall, star of the show "Pastor Cop," 1996's Crimefighting Clergyman of the Year and an avid baseball fan who covered 2004 Spring Training for the Salad Bowl, sent me a missive from a Tampa Devil Rays fourth game of the season the other night.
Seems the right reverend was a little cranky after his most recent outing:

As a goof, I bring my old college ID thinking I'll pay three bucks to hit a Rays game. It's college night and admission is three dollars. I show up around the second inning and this 20-something working the ticket window near the big round orange plaza is only too happy to accept my three singles.
"It's college student night, right?"
"Yes -- here's your ticket."
Once in, I visit with my pal Mary-Ellen, the Pasco County lady who works the credit card table outside section 108. She still has that shrill voice that draws new credit card meat. People are real suckers for a free towel. They sign up for the plastic, and walk away with a towel with a Rays logo on it.
Mary-Ellen tells me they're expecting 6,000 fans. The image is going through my head -- what does 6,000 fans look like in the place? I walk through the vomitory and there it is -- rows and rows and rows of empty seats, with a smattering of fans fanning out from behind home plate down the lines.
Gawd, it was depressing. Fourth home game of the season. Oakland A's, playoff team. And a crowd that easily could fit into the spring training stadium by the water. It was a beautiful night and it would have been wonderful to watch the game with the sun setting beyond the outfield walls.
With my $3 Beach section ticket, I stroll down to row J, eighth row from the field, just beyond the infield dirt down the left-field line. I'm happily watching inning after inning, with a slow doze setting in, though. Then, in the top of the eighth inning, Vince strikes midnight -- some usher tells me to get out of my seat and leave the section.
I tell him the game is so boring and the atmosphere so downright depressing that I was about to nod off anyway.
I head home and as I'm crossing the bay, some new guy named Green hits a broken bat single to drive in the winning run in extras for the Rays, according to the new guy on the radio from Chicago who keeps on using the word, "here," in his broadcast. It's annoying. Rays win, 3-2, and I get home 10:30 p.m.

Still, he was nowhere near as cranky as Rays owner Vince Naimoli, who had a New York Mets scout booted from the Trop for unauthorized use of the potty in his owner's box and then screamed back at a fan that mocked him for his tight-spending ways.
As Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune writes in his lights-out, on-target column about Good Vince vs. Bad Vince:

We have come to understand that if we'll just wait long enough, Vincent J. Naimoli will play the part of the clown. He never lets us down, and it is always entertaining.

Posted by Jeff at April 12, 2005 06:23 AM