Shuffle #53 (April 4, 2015)

Wooden Ships – Jefferson Airplane

Concierto De Aranjuez – Jim Hall

The Road To Hell – Chris Rea

River’s Gonna Rise – David & David

March 24, 2015 – Phillies 5, Braves 3 – Lake Buena Vista FL

Phils blow early lead, rally for win

 

Weather: 70, cloudy

Time: 3:10

Attendance: 7,304

Section 213, Row J, Seat 3 – upper level, a few rows below the press box, just to the right of home plate, on the aisle (not sure why there were no seats 1 or 2). Very comfortable weather for a game, the lights were on at the start but the sun came out around 2:30.

 

Champion Stadium certainly doesn’t have any small-town charm, but if you can tolerate ESPN / Disney corporate overload – Mickey supervised the ceremonial first pitch – it’s not a bad place to see a ball game. While the main concession stands mostly featured “baskets” (sandwich or other entrée with chips or fries) that ran over ten bucks, I found a decent pork BBQ sandwich for $8.50, along with a bottle of Coke that was a relative bargain at $3.25.

 

The Braves gave three-inning auditions to two of their young starting rotation candidates. Mike Foltynewicz didn’t particularly help himself, giving up a run in the second prior to walking two (including the Phillies pitcher), then yielding back-to-back homers to Ryan Howard in the third. Manny Banuelos, on the other hand, kept the Phils off the scoreboard for the next three innings.

 

Severino Gonzalez got the start for the Phils and made a good impression, working quickly and shutting out Atlanta in his three innings of work. Colton Murray and Paul Clemens extended the shutout through the sixth, but Andrelton Simmons hit a two-run homer off Clemens in the seventh and tied the game later in the inning with a run off Phillippe Aumont. The Phils, however, came back against Luis Vizcaino for two in the top of the eighth, which featured the odd sight of Aumont being allowed to bat with two outs and the bases loaded. (He struck out.)

March 23, 2015 – Nats 7, Yankees 6 – Viera FL

Given the ominous weather forecast, and the over-two-hour round-trip to Viera, I decided to skip this one, figuring there was no more than a 25% chance of getting much baseball in. Naturally, things cleared up some, and they got the game in without interruption (I listened to the radio broadcast), although I believe there was some rain here and there.