Here are all–well, the best–of the photos I took last weekend when we visited the Cincinnati Reds’ Spring Training home, Goodyear Ballpark. (I posted a panorama of the park earlier.)

Each thumbnail links to a larger image.

Sitting at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick–spring training home of the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks–you hear something that I have never heard at another ballpark: the mournful wail of the wandering concession worker offering to sell you cheesecake on a stick.

OK, it’s not really all that mournful, but it is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

We didn’t try the cheesecake; our purchased kabob contained strawberries and pieces of banana, with chocolate drizzled over them. It tasted pretty good and was a relatively healthy snack, but with the strawberry leaves left on, it was less than convenient to eat, and at $6 the margins were huge. Plus the stand had a sign asking you not to take pictures because there is a “patent pending.”

I’m not sure what’s patentable about fruit on a stick, or how they think taking a picture will give you more info than shelling out $6 to just buy one, but I took a picture anyway. Hopefully if someone launches a competing product, they’ll hull the darn berries.