Payne Park Not Quite the Bigs

SARASOTA, Fla.--It seemed like real baseball.

The parking lot was full 90 minutes before the first pitch. Thousands of fans swarmed the stands, proudly wearing their Red Sox caps. Jim Rice held forth in left field. Roger Clemens blasted his 90 mile-an-hour fastball past hopelessly overmatched White Sox hitters.

But on closer inspection, it clearly wasn't the real McCoy.

"The Wall" was just a 10-ft. high chicken-wire fence. A Sarasota Sports Committee ad decorated the right field fence. And players ran wind sprints across right field during the game.

It was, in two words, spring training.

Sarasota's Payne Park, winter home of the Chicago White Sox, seats just over 5000 baseball-starved fans. The overflow crowds drink beer and watch the contest from the roofs of their mobile homes beyond the outfield wall.

They've been doing so for 50 years.

Spring baseball is a tradition in Sarasota, a retirement community of 51,000 people. Before the Red Sox moved to Winter Haven over two decades ago, the team used to train at Payne. At least one long-time Payne usher--who served as a batboy for Ted Williams--remains loyal, however. "I've always been a [Red] Sox fan, and I always will be," he says with a sense of finality.

Some players sign autographs for youngsters, while others play practical jokes on their teammates. It takes one pitcher several innings to realize that someone has stuck a wad of used bubble gum on the top of his shoe.

Baseball has always been a gentleman's sport.

The two managers lounge on the grass behind home plate, talkin' baseball. "Go away, can't you see we're busy?" snaps one in response to a reporter's query. There's talent to be evaluated, rookies to be cut.

A pop foul drifts down the third base line. The question isn't whether the ball will be caught, but whether it will hit any of the cars parked 30 feet away from the field.

With a resounding thud, it dents the roof of a white Chevrolet Celebrity.

The crowd giggles.

The food is standard ballpark fare: hotdogs, popcorn, Coca-Cola and, especially, beer. The beer in Sarasota may be no better than beer anywhere else, but it is served in a unique fashion--by an operatic vendor. "Be the first to quench your thirst!" sings the salesman. "C'mon, you can strike out," he serenades the Red Sox. No one can recall the last singing vendor at Fenway.

A pre-teenager hawks balls he has retrived from the trailor park for $2.50 each. "Hey you, wanna buy a baseball?" he asks passers-by. "I have seven of them," he continues, "I've got a secret place where the balls go, but I'm not telling nobody where it is." The kid has never been to a "real" game before, but imagines that they would be "much bigger" He's right.

One elderly man from Boston comes to Florida just to see the Red Sox, but never goes to Fenway. "The crowds are disgraceful there," he moans. "All the cussing and rowdyism. You wouldn't want to take your wife or girlfriend there."

A couple of spectators are continuing the eternal debate: Who was better, Joe DiMaggio, or Ted Williams? Nobody wins. Nobody loses.

Out on the field, the score is something ridiculous like 25-3 or 26-10. The sloppy play on the diamond serve as the final reminder that the setting is Payne, not Fenway.

It's not the real McCoy. But it's darn close.