My father took me to my first big league baseball game when I was six years old. He said we had to see “this Negro baseball player.” It was 1951 and that phrase was politically correct and the player was Jackie Robinson and the game was the Dodgers versus the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. Seeing Robinson then was no big deal to me because I did not know there was prejudice and I think I just assumed that all of the best ballplayers had always made it to the big leagues.

What I do remember about that first game is the green grass and the smell of popcorn, peanuts and freshly steamed hot dogs. No smell of beer however because even to its last day in 1971 beer was never sold at Forbes Field. The green grass was really cool because the only Major League games I had ever seen where all on a black and white television.

I bring all of this up because I think the last vestige of innocence in professional sports comes in the form of baseball spring training games. I just came back from my annual five day jaunt to spring training games in Florida. Most people probably think I am nuts (I can’t really argue the point, next week I see Springsteen three times in three cities in six days) but I don’t care. I think people who go to those amusement parks and wait in line for hours to get on a ride are nuts. I never waited for more than a minute for a cold beer at any of the parks I visited.

This year I kept it simple; five games in four days at two parks, Bradenton (Pirates) and Sarasota (Reds). Yep, I went to Sarasota (86 degrees by the third inning) in the afternoon and then to Bradenton for a night game that eventually was wiped out by something just short of a hurricane.

Everything about spring training is simple. The parks are smaller, the players are friendly and the local citizenry could not be nicer. Nearly everyone who works at these parks are volunteers and, as you might assume, most are retirees. Clearly March is their special time of year. Those of us who make the annual trek are treated like family down for the yearly visit. Sitting in Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium last Friday with a beer in one hand, a Skyline chili dog in the other and my legs over the empty seat in front of me I thought to myself I don’t think it is humanly possible to feel more relaxed.

As a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates (now that is nuts!) I go to most of my games in Bradenton and McKechnie Field, the neatest little ballpark anywhere. You know it is going to be a good time when the first person you see racing directly from the airport to the game is the guy waving you into your usual parking lot and he remembers you from years past. Walking in the gate you can smell the popcorn and the grilled dogs and the first thing you see is a guy handwriting the starting lineups on an easel board behind home plate.

And in five games in four days here is the best thing I saw. Within a span of no more than three minutes first a husband and then his wife got foul balls on one bounce each behind the first base stands. And you know what they did? They went back into the stands and found two kids they had never met before and gave them the baseballs. That is why I like spring training, the really nice people and no one really cares about winning and losing, especially the two kids who got those baseballs and the nice people who gave them away.