The Grady's Ladies Sisterhood! - View topic - The Grady's Ladies at Spring Training 2008 - Chat, Discuss, Laugh, Twirl, Fall Down, Chat More! - Free Message Board Hosting by FreePowerBoards.com

Ok, so most of you know that 4 of us Ladies were down in Spring Training for a week. Well, we pretty much had the best time EVER and we want to share some pictures with you. I know some of you are probably on either Myspace or Facebook, so you may have seen some pics. But for those who aren't, we wanted you to get a taste of the fun. So, I'm gonna post some pictures from each day on here. Michele, Amanda and Sandy...if you wanna add more pictures, feel free!

Sunday, March 16, 2008
So this was the day I picked up all the girls from the airport. First, I picked up Amanda and Michele. It was off to the Indians/Yankees Spring Training game in Tampa after that. Here are some pics from the game:

The view from our original seats

This is us with the Yankees fan sitting behind us who bought us ice cream

Here's us disgusted that we're in Yankees territory surrounded by a bunch of Yankees fans

Us in our new seats that Michele's friend gave us. They were the first row on the third baseline!

After the game, we went to the beach for a couple of hours before dinner and picking up Sandy at the airport. Here's a pic of us at the beach:

Monday, March 17, 2008 (St. Patty's Day!)
So, on this day we headed down to Clearwater to catch the Indians play against the Phillies. Here are some pics from that:

Us saying, "What the heck?!?!" to all the errors that day

After the game it was off to Winter Haven. Here we are in the car on the way, totally excited to be on our way!

Once we made it to the hotel, we immediately saw the baseball player presence (we were staying at the hotel that the Minor league guys stay in along with some of the guys on the Major League squad). We saw baseball players all around. We were in heaven. So, we proceeded to get into our hotel room to get all ready to head out for some St. Patty's Day fun! Our first stop was Beef O Brady's for dinner. We were delighted to see that they were having some St. Patty's Day festivities.

Its a little dark, but here we are outside of Beef 'O Brady's

We even got our dance on!

During dinner, we quickly noticed a large table with a bunch of hot guys. Yes folks, it was baseball players. Mostly guys from the minors. Sandy then quickly noticed that she recognized one of them. His name was JD Martin. She met him in Myrtle Beach 4 years ago. So, once they reconnected, we hung with JD and his posse for the rest of the night. That same night we met two of JD's friends who we ended up spending a lot of our time with in Winter Haven. Their names were Bubbie Buzachero and Nick Pesco. All three of the guys (JD, Bubbie and Nick are all pitchers in the Tribe's minor league system). Here's a pic of me, Amanda and Michele with Bubbie (and JD is in the background being goofy)

Bubbie stole this balloon and proceeded to tie it to my purse. This is the night we knew these guys were gonna be a lot of fun.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Today was pretty much spent at the pool alllll day long. And we loved it! What a great way to relax! At one point, we went to the store and got some drinks. So, we were feeling pretty good. Nothing like being drunk by 4pm! haha. Michele was smart enough to bring her IPOD with a little boom box. So we played tunes at the pool and pretty much had a dance party. We had an audience like everytime we did this...the audience pretty much consisted of lots of Latino Minor League players. They loved us. Here's some pics from the pool:

After the all day dance party at the pool, we came back to our hotel room to find our first voicemail of many. A small group of the Latino minor league guys got a kick out of us I suppose. So they enjoyed calling our room...a LOT! Later that night, we ended up at someone's apartment. For his privacy, he shall remain nameless. But, I will say that it was quite awkward. Very difficult to start and carry conversations with guys who don't speak much English. At any rate, the entire night Sandy had wanted ice cream. When we were at this guys apartment, Sandy kept talking about ice cream. Next thing we know, the guy walks out of his kitchen with a whole quart of ice cream and a spoon for Sandy. haha! She had to explain to him that she would need a bowl cuz she didn't wanna eat the whole quart. Anyways, here is Sandy with her ice cream:

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
So, we decided to go watch practice this day. We knew the guys had a night game away this night so we had heard they'd practice during the day. We were right. Here are some pics from practice:

So, pretty much one of the highlights of the whole trip was having this picture taken (even though poor Amanda got cut out of the pic). For the past couple of seasons, we've kinda built a thing with Rafael Betancourt. He knows who we are and always waves and plays along with us. So, when we saw him, Michele asked if we could all get a pic with him. He said yes. While we were all standing there, he kept telling the guy taking the picture, "Take as long as you want. Take your time." hehe...so cute. He just wanted to stand around with us all day long. We wouldn't have minded. We love Raffie! Funny thing was, after getting that picture taken, some guys asked Raffie for his autograph and he told them no, that he had to get to the field, even though he had just been telling the guy taking the picture to take his time. haha. He loves us!

More practice pics:
The minor leaguers were practicing on this day too. Here's our friend Bubbie warming up in the bullpen

Masa Kobayashi signing autographs

Charlie Nagy was there!!! We were all so excited. Here's Michele getting his autograph:

Here's Paul Byrd and his old school wind up. I love Byrdie! I "knows" me and immediately recognized me when he saw me. He threw me a ball. Smile

We were wayyyyy pooped after spending like 5 1/2 hours watching practice. So we went to the pool for a little bit. On our way, we saw Bubbie and Nick hanging out in Bubbie's room. They invited us in, but we went for a swim first. After that, we went to Bubbie's room and hung out. Bubbie plays the guitar and sings, so we made him sing for us. Then, we got some booze and played some drinking games with Nick, Bubbie and JD. Lots of fun! After that, we went back to the room and showered. Then, we went to dinner with Bubbie. Not long after that, we went to bed. It had been a long day.

Thursday, March 20, 2008
This was the day of our first actual game in Winter Haven. Here are some pics from the game:

This is our "We're relieved" face because Michele finally got to talk to someone she's been waiting to talk to for a little while

And here's Michele excited that she got to talk to this person and was gonna make plans to hang with them after the game

So, after the game, I THINK we went for a short swim by the pool and saw a couple of our buddies there. After that, we all showered and got ready for another night in Winter Haven. We ate dinner at Boston Market. After that, Michele went and hung out with her friend. Sandy, Amanda and I ran into Bubbie and Nick. We all decided to go to The Office Pub. It was this smokey little pub behind our hotel that we had to jump a fence to get to. haha. Anyways, we had a TON of fun there. After a little while, Michele joined us there as well. Here are some pics from our night at The Office Pub in Winter Haven:

The smoke was hurting Michele's eyes

Nick and I in one of our deep conversations. haha.

Sandy and I disgusted at this drunk dude that kept trying to talk to us

Me and Bubbie

Me, Nick and Michele. One of my favs of the trip cuz Nick doesn't like his picture taken and we finally got him in a pic!

I'm telling you, I'm a lot of fun. haha.

Funny story...when we left The Office Pub, we had to climb back over the fence to get back to our hotel. Nick was sweet enough to walk us back. One of us ahemAmandaahem was so drunk that she couldn't make it over the fence herself. Nick had to pick her up over it. Hilarious!

Friday, March 21, 2008
So this was our last full day at the hotel, so of course we wanted one more day spent at the pool. So that's what we did. JD, Chuck Lofgren, Reid Santos and a couple of the other guys were hanging at the pool that day too. We played catch in the pool with all of them. It was fun. Of course, we also drank some more and danced some more. haha.

After another long day at the pool, it was time to go shower and get ready for our last night our in Winter Haven. Sad

We decided to go to Tanner's Pub that night. We didn't end up catching back up with JD, Nick and Bubbie, which kinda made us sad. But at any rate, we still looked hot and had fun. Here are some pics:

Amanda and I sad that we didn't get to hang with our new friends on our last night in Winter Haven

Later that night, we did catch back up with JD, which we were thankful for cuz we atleast got to say goodbye to him. We hung out in his hotel room and laughed our butts off for quite a while. Poor Sandy, she had to catch a shuttle to the Tampa airport at 5am and we didn't get to bed until 4:15am.

Saturday, March 22, 2008
Our last day in Winter Haven. So sad. It was sprinkling off and on all morning which stunk but it kinda fit the mood of the day. We headed over to Chain of Lakes early to try and get some autographs.

I heart Aaron Laffey.

Jake Westbrook signed autographs for like an hour!

*sigh*

Grady road through the fans on a golf cart. He didn't sign autographs (boooo) but he sure did look fine. Holy dimples!

One of the other Founding Ladies, Jill, was down and joined us at the game. She's in this pic on the far left.

Me with Jill

Some of my family made it over for this game. Here's me and my older sister.

Us at the rainy game

Last but not least, here's a picture of us leaving Winter Haven. We were soooooo bummed to be leaving. We were so sad and so the crappy weather just kinda fit our mood. So we took a picture.

So holy cow...that took FOREVER to do all of that!!! Geesh. At any rate, I hope you all enjoy my little ST photo diary cuz we certainly had the time of our lives!!
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xoxo,
Tiffany