Tim and I just got home from Florida on Tuesday night. We visited Tim’s brother that lives in the Ft. Myers / Naples area and attended a couple Cardinals spring training baseball games. We haven’t been back down to Florida since our mini-moon, so it was really nice go back!
Roger Dean Stadium / Jupiter
Our first full day in Florida, we drove two and a half hours to Jupiter to watch the Cardinals play on their spring training home field. We tried to get there early enough to see the players on the practice fields, but we just missed them. We read that we’d be able to watch them up until 30 minutes before the game, but they were done close to 90 minutes before. That was pretty disappointing. So instead, we stopped by Jumby Bay across the street for a bite to eat before the game.
The stadium holds roughly 7,600 people and is shared with Miami Marlins. There’s next to no shade cover at the stadium, which would have been nice because the temps were hovering right around 90 degrees with little wind. However, we won with a walk off hit in the 9th inning.
Jet Blue Park / Ft. Myers
We didn’t go down to FL with tickets to this game, but Tim was determined to go to a second game. So even with rain in the forecast, we went ahead and bought some last minute cheap tickets on StubHub to watch the Cardinals play the Boston Red Sox. I’m pretty glad we did because it was such a difference experience!
The Jet Blue Park stadium is a kind of like a miniature Fenway, complete with it’s own Green Monster. The street outside of the stadium gets shut down and there were tents set up for food and drink vendors and a live band. Our tickets were for standing room on top of the Green Monster, which had a great view of the whole stadium. Unfortunately, a downpour rain did happen halfway through the fifth inning and the game was called. Thanks to StubHub’s event cancellation policy, we were refunded our money. The Cardinals were up 2-0 when the game was called so we’re just saying that we got to see two winning games ;).
The Jet Blue stadium opened in 2012, so the practically brand new stadium was really nice compared to the Cardinal’s stadium in Jupiter. We both liked the atmosphere outside of the Jet Blue stadium, too. I heard that the Cardinals plan on doing renovations to their stadium after this spring training season, so that should be nice! It was pretty fantastic to go to these smaller games with a much more relaxed environment—no metal detectors and being able to get so close to the players. As someone who’s had to learn to be a Cardinals fan, I thought it was a lot fun and would definitely do again. It was great to see so many Cardinal’s fans at both games!
—m.