Pirate City - All Around The World

While down at Pirate City observing the minor leaguers over the 4 fields, it seems as if I gravitated towards the international players. The Latin American players can be like shrouded mysteries to many fans, as there is very little reliable information on them before they come stateside.

And even when they get here, their first year is spent at Rookie level Gulf Coast League, on these Pirate City fields where few people attend the games and report on them.

I met the gentle giant known as Luis Heredia. He is every bit of 6 foot 7 inches tall. The day I watched him pitch, he was sitting 92-94 mph on his fastball, but there have been reports he touched 97 at one point this spring.

Dilson Herrera is an impressive specimen of a shortstop. During a relay drill, he was taking cutoff throws from the outfield and throwing no-hop on the target throws to home plate.

There are tons of other Latin American players that I watched, such as Gavi Nivar's raw power, Willy Garcia's 5 potential-yet-undeveloped tools, Alen Hansen's smooth defensive actions, Edwin Espinal's large caboose, and Yhonathan Barrios's strong lower half.

I got to see the Australian trio of LHP Jackson Lodge, RHP Wilson Lee, and C Dylan Child. They all hung around each other and were joking around with each other, indicating to me that they are pretty good friends.

I saw the two Eastern Euros -- Donaydas Neverauskas and Alex Lukashevich, both pitchers -- and they also hung out closely with each other. I also glimpsed Gift Ngeope during a part of an intra-squad game.

It was interesting to get a look at these guys, who will be at different points in the organizational ladder this year from Rookie League to High A Bradenton. It's very encouraging to see that the international pipeline is bringing in talent from a wide variety of countries.

Gettin' Gritty at Pirate City - Pompey's Seafood Shack

On my last day at Spring Training this past Tuesday, my other two travel partners had become a little saturated with minor league prospects. They didn't say it, but I sensed it (even though both said that didn't mind going back to Pirate City) so I just grabbed the rental car and drove the 10 minutes to Pirate City myself.

It was a camp day, just the intrasquad games and workouts, and it was done for the day at 12 noon. At the end of the camp, Tim from Pirates Prospects and I headed out for lunch. Tim has been covering the Pirates' minor leaguers at Spring Training for the past 5 weeks or so. Right down from Pirate City is a great little place called Mixon's Fruit Farm, sort of like a Soergel's but with oranges instead of apples. They have a little dining area with all sorts of pressed sandwiches, but the highlight is the orange and vanilla swirled ice cream -- sort of like a Creamsicle. Tim liked the food and the convenience of it so much that he ate there 45 times since coming to Florida.

I decided to give him a break from number 46 by taking him to Pompey's Seafood Shack down E 26 Avenue, about 5 minutes from Pirate City. It features a bright yellow painted block building with hand-painted descriptions of the food on the exterior walls. There was also a smoker going out in the parking lot with spray-painted advertisments on the side, so you know it has to be good.

We walked inside and were taken aback by the sprawling menu on the wall. There were variations of shrimp specials (6 shrimp with fries, 8 shrimp with 1 side, 12 shrimp with garlic sauce, 4 fried shrimp/4 steamed shrimp) that caused both of our eyes to glaze over for a second.

I saw that conch fritters were on the menu and I was eager to try them. I've been trying to sample the sweet meat of conch for some time now. When I ordered from the man at the register, he said that they were out of conch. Waa Waa. He also said they were out of amberjack and dungeness crabs. No problem on the last two. I was trying to parse through all the shrimp combinations I could get when I settled on the #7 combo -- 12 shrimp in garlic butter sauce with potatoes and corn. I also ordered a side of fried okra to split with Tim.

Tim went with the pulled pork sandwich and fries combo, under the auspice that he had been making a lot of seafood for dinner at his condo. Who am I to chastise someone for getting delicious roadside meats?

While our food was being prepared, the older man in the back came out to collect our money. I could tell from his dialect that he wasn't American, so I asked where he was from originally. I expected him to say Jamaica or Trinidad/Tobago, but he said Haiti.

His name was Shiller and he left Haiti "to escape the government" a while ago. He left family behind in Haiti, namely him mother and sister. He opened up this restaurant "3 or 4 years ago". He was very friendly and quite easy to talk to. He was the kind of guy I could I wanted to ask a million questions to about life in Haiti and how he had adjusted to America, but our food was ready.

My shrimp were steamed and dropped into a bath of garlic butter sauce with little potato life rafts popping up here and there. My island of corn was sitting in the upper left hand corner. I'm not usually wild about shrimp that have not been peeled, but I decided to just pop the garlicy morsels in my mouth and chomp through the shells. The potato slices absorbed just enough butter for the flavor, but were not soggy at all. I was so full from the dozen shrimp and potatoes that I barely touched my corn. It was plenty to eat for lunch.



The okra was from a frozen bag and dropped into a fryer, but the bite-size chunks were still very tasty and something different than what you get back home.

Tim seemed to enjoy his pulled pork and fries, but the majority of our discussion was about prospects and players in the Pirate system. Shiller came out to check on us and tell us stories about his version of split-pea soup that he makes for his family, but he had to go back inside to take care of a sudden influx of customers to the little roadside building.



If you are in the Bradenton area, whether living or visiting, check this little hidden gem out near the intersection of E 26 Avenue and E 9th Street. (I have no idea how or why they number their roads down in Bradenton).

Back From Bradenton

I got back late last night from a trip to Bradenton, Florida with 2 friends of mine. It was weird not taking DB~ along on the trip, but this was a ton of baseball and golf packed into 5 days. She would have soldiered through all the baseball, but I'm afraid she would have been really bored.

We got down there on Friday 3/16 at 10 am and were already raring to go to McKechnie Field for the 1 p.m. major-league level Spring Training game against the Phillies. It was great to see one of my favorite prospects, Starling Marte, homer off of Cliff Lee to start the bottom of the 1st for the Pirates in the eventual 3-2 win.

The 3 of us went back the next day to see another game at McKechnie, this time a 2-1 loss to the Rays. McKechnie is an older park, but they've kept up on it with some renovations. The seats are tight and don't fold up, which led to many a time of 1/2 a row exiting the row to allow someone to go to the bathroom or concessions.

McKechnie itself is in an area of Bradenton that is, to be polite, socio-economically challenged. I've never seen so many used car dealers, auto body shops, detailing businesses, and car parts sales units in a concentrated area. Bradenton is a microcosm of the woes of Florida. There are nice areas that are coming back around, but albeit at much lower property values. These nice areas may be right next to an abandoned condominium complex or an office park with tumbleweeds rolling through it. But there are still plenty of boats in the marina, even if some of them have For Sale signs on them.

Downtown Bradenton has a 2 block area known as Old Main Street that has some fun bars and decent restaurants. The area skews older, as does most of Florida I presume, but there are still enough younger people floating around to keep the town somewhat lively.

I'll be posting some more posts talking about Pirate City (the minor league complex for the Pirates), plus our adventures in Tampa one night, and a great hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the side of the road I went to my last day.