MAJOR BLOGS - 03.16.08 - www.majorblogs.net - Fort Myers, FLA - It is Sunday. They start filing into the pews at about 9:00 am for the other Sunday religion in March: Spring Training.  This is Hammond Stadium at the Lee County Sports Complex. It is Twins territory, where expat Minnesotans of Fort Myers, and the frozen faithful, from Minneapolis to St. Paul, come to do baseball old school.

The EZ-up tents rise in the parking lot. Plumes of brat-filled smoke snake upward into the foggy, humid morning pushing 85 degrees by 9:30 am.

Fans pour into the stadium, and queue up for food and beverages until the second floor concessions area is so full that you can barely walk.  Game time is just moments away.  I make my way through the crowd and come to a halt as the public address announcer brings the sell-out crowd to its feet, and the security people bring the traffic coming through the tunnel to a halt.

Hats come off and a kid with a trumpet,who has beautiful tone, knocks out both O Canada! and the Star Spangled Banner. I can hear everyone in the stadium singing both national anthems, loudly, and enthusiastically. It is a far cry from my trips to most other parks, where the O-Say-Can-You-Seers get as much respect as a cabin attendant doing the pre-flight safety demonstration.

In Twins territory, you roll back the clock on the game.  These are Minnesotans, who believe in God, baseball, and Garrison Keilor. When the kid with the trumpet muffs the last bar of the stars and bars, there is a quiet wince on the face of the woman next to me , who is juggling a beer, three brats, and two bags of peanuts, but there is not a snicker or a jeer. Just polite applause, and the sound of thundering feet.

The call to PLAY BALL drives the faithful to their seats like firing a gun at a stock yard. The stampede from the concession area turns the bustling second floor into a ghost town.

The brat grillers kick back. The beer gal tallies her winnings. Unlike every other stadium in the Grapefruit League, they are largely done for the day by the top of the first. Minnesota fans actually watch the game.

If you got 'em, smoke 'em before the first, during the seventh, or on the way home. Bathroom and beer are the only two things that get people up. Wait. Make that the bathroom. They bring out the beer to you at the seats.

Whatever you are drinking, you will need  plenty of it. Hammond Stadium was designed by the Marquis de Sade. With the needle pushing 89 by the end of the first inning, there is more shade in the middle of the Sahara in July.

Now I know why Marv Goldklang, the owner of the Florida State League team that plays here, settled on the name Fort Myers Miracle for the Twins' High-A farm club.

There is a nice breeze out in the food area, but it has been surgically removed from the stands. The only place possibly a degree or two cooler than your dark green seat might be the sweat boxes at Devil's Island.

Yet every seat is full. People who are used to bundling up, and remaining very pale, are slathering on the suntan lotion and having themselves just a fine time, thank you.

One tall, older gentleman in shorts, who is sporting a large Twins logo tattoo on his left leg tells me that the Twins were his first love at eight, and that he has never shaken it. 

"I hope that they never disappoint you," I replied, noting that the changing of the tattoo for his new club might be quite painful.

"I can run faster than you!" shouts Larry, who is from Estero when it is snowing, Minneapolis when it is warm, "and I'm 72!"  A pretty wiry guy with solid gams for a guy his age, Mauer better hope that old Larry here does not have a rocket arm.

Like most Spring Training games, This is an older crowd. Baseball's apassionati are aging, and while we have a few spring breakers who came to get drunk and yell, it is very clear that the post-strike X-Box generation is not hip on spending a Sunday having their brains toasted as they watch a baseball game, particularly when the Twins are facing the faceless Toronto Blue Jays, a club whose roster is best read by owls: Who? Who? Who?

Yet it does not matter. The Twins are here. Al Molitor was sighted by many on the practice fields earlier, good for a few memories of seasons-past.  Fans mull over their prospects, weighing in with the opinions on who is good and who has to go.  While that's pretty much any game across the system at this time of year, there is a difference. You don't hear much about ESPN, contracts, money, steroids, or recent arrests.  When Eileen, a sixtyish librarian originally from St. Paul can rattle off OBPs and discuss Liriano's mechanics, this is a big B baseball crowd.

That is of the reasons that I sit down here:  Forget Kruk and Patrick, Kornheiser and Wilbon.  Scouts, the clipboards and radar guns can only tell you so much.  You want to know who the next superstar is?  The fans are the final  judge and jury. So it was, while I was praying for the next cloud to provide a bit of shade, that I was rewarded for eschewing the press box, as a new prospect was called to the plate.

The Twins' crowd went positively neon over Carlos Gómez, the 22-year-old Dominican for whom phenom may be too pale of a word. On a no-hope grounder, he exploded from home so fast that even Superman might have had trouble catching up with him. His head first slide into the bag was launched with such force that he grabbed on to the base to brake and it whipped him around the other way, ripping his hands from the bag and continuing his slide for another three feet. He arose, clay stained from head to toe covered as much in the cheers of crowd gone wild.

I will have more to say on Gómez in the spring report on SZ coming up April 1. Needless to say, when he is major league ready,  the cash register in the club store should need replacing a time or two before all of the Gómez-gear is gone.

By the eighth people are starting to wane or drop from the heat, and begin making a hasty exit.  Did they leave? Some. Just as many went back to finish off their tailgate parties before heading home.

When you look at the Twins, a character club that respects the great talent that it develops, it is the character of the community in Minnesota, and these solid forthright fans, that shapes the whole organization.  If there is hope for MLB, beyond the dark days of strikes, steroids, and scandal, it will come from places like Twins territory.