By Ed Piper
"We're down here (at Spring Training) for a week," said a young father named Dylan, who was holding his adorable three-and-a-half-month-old baby daughter in a chest pouch as he watched the game, standing on a walkway. Baby was wearing a pink floppy hat to protect her head from the Arizona sun, which wasn't intense (yet). At one point Dad adjusted the green plastic sunglasses she was wearing as eye protection. She cried, as apparently she didn't prefer the eye accoutrement. Everyone else was enjoying the game in progress.
"You're blowing my mind," I told the young dad. Dylan and his wife were down from Manitoba. "I didn't know Canadians are that into baseball."
He smiled. He said he and his brother were both baseball nuts, and I believe he said they both grew up playing youth ball. Was his wife as into the sport as they were? "She's coming around," he said with a grin.
I mentioned Steve Nash, a well-known Canadian who was two-time NBA MVP for the un-Canadian Phoenix Suns. "He was really good at soccer." Dylan: "What? No, basketball." I told him Steve Nash had been a stellar soccer player when he was younger, and may have been better at that sport than the one he will end up in the Hall of Fame for. He didn't know that.
But, as he put baby's sunglasses back in place, and his tiny daughter cried, he shared lots of details about baseball teams and individual players that evinced a wide knowledge of the game.
It was fun talking with him. One of the best things about Spring Training each year, besides being able to get closer to the major league players in the smaller (but picturesque) stadiums in the Cactus League in the Phoenix/Tempe area, is the ability to rub elbows with fans from Manitoba, like Dylan, Saskatchewan, Milwaukee, and a million other places. A 30-something young man at Padres practice Sat., Feb. 24, had flown in from Arkansas, where he now lives and works. He grew up in Victorville, right up the highway from San Diego.
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