It has often been observed that the size of a man's penis is inversely proportional to the flashiness of his car. A guy who has a fast, expensive car is presumed not to have a lot going on downstairs. On the other hand, a fella who feels secure in his falic presence probably doesn't have such a showy vehicle.

On a seemingly unrelated topic, Sean Casey made $6.8 million playing for the Reds in 2004. Yet, according to ESPN The Magazine's article “Mighty Nice Casey,” published in 2004, Casey still drives around his 1995 Honda Accord.

A 1995 Honda Accord.

I'm just sayin'.

On Saturday, April 2, we took our Florida-acclimated tushies to the relatively freezing cold Louisville, Kentucky to see the last Reds spring training game of the spring.

It felt weird to be back in the midwest after so long in Florida. At the beginning of our trip, we never would have thought that we'd grow accustomed to, even miss just a little bit, the constant need to apply sunblock, the bizarre restaurant hours, and the mysterious odor of wet dog that had, in our minds, come to mean vacation. Friday night spent at the Marriott in downtown Louisville was lovely, with its comfortable beds utterly free of unidentifiable stains and its fuctioning drawers with nonbroken handles, but it just wasn't the same knowing that there weren't 300,000,000 giant cockroaches scurrying around just outside our door.

Nevertheless, we were able to push through our nostalgia on Saturday morning to make it over to the Louisville Slugger stadium to watch the Reds play the Blue Jays. As usual, we went in as soon as the gates opened, almost two hours before game time. We staggered around the stadium, trying to find places to keep warm while we waited for the game to begin. The gift shop was one such place, and was doing a bustling business selling tons of miniature bats, presumably for fans to burn for warmth.

Finally the game was starting and we huddled together under a blanket in our seats right there beside right field. Seated right behind us where a gaggle of teenaged girls who were hooting and giggling at all the players they thought were cute. The Blue Jays' right fielder wasn't anyone they seemed to know, but they thought he was cute anyway and tried to get him to look their way.

The giggling girls redoubled their attention-getting efforts when the bottom of the inning rolled around and the real object of their affections, Austin Kearns, took his place in right field. I rolled my eyes and grinned as the girls tried to get up the courage to shout to Kearns about what a hottie he was, but getting embarassed at the last minute and turning their shouts into barely more than what we could hear in the row in front of them.

That was probably why I was so surprised when Kearns turned over out direction and waved.

Two of the girls caught the wave and swooned. The third had missed it and, emboldened by what they thought was encouragement from Kearns, started calling to him to wave again. I rolled my eyes again. He's got a game to concentrate on, I thought. There's no way he's waving again.

That was probably why I was so surprised when, a couple pitches later, Kearns turned our direction and waved again.

The same two girls swooned. The third had missed it again, apparently not finding Kearns actually hot enough to check out for more than a pitch or two, or possibly just having the attention span of a gnat, as teenage girls are known to have. Since the girl had missed the wave yet again, the group again started yelling out for him to wave again, this time assisted the adult woman who had accompanied the teens to the game.

It was the sort of display that makes you suddenly understand why so many of the players suddenly take a serious interest in their shoes as they walk onto the field. So many of the fans don't just see these people as entertainers; they start to see them as puppets, as trained monkeys on whose strings they can tug and expect to see a trick. Oh the arrogance!

I, of course, am not so arrogant as to think that I have the right to just demand that any entertainer, any person at all, hop around for my personal amusement. I am, however, arrogant enough to think that Kearns was actually waving at me. Well, us. We had, after all, just spent the last two solid weeks going to all of the Reds games in tiny little stadiums where the players absolutely could have seen and even come to recognize us, and we *did* usually sit on the right field side.

Stupid, maybe. But even if it's a total hallucination, it's a hallucination that makes me feel that much more connected to the game and the players. It was a fantasty that gave me a fuzzy warm feeling, warm enough to stick out the rest of the nine innings, long after the ashes of my souvenir bat had smoldered and gone out.

We hadn't been able to get tickets to the Boston Red Sox game at all, but we had managed bleacher seats to see the Reds play the Yankees. I'm not so much impressed with the Yankees, but I have to admit: this was exciting.

The day before, we'd gotten the first two autographs of our trip, and that was pretty cool, but they were not either of the autographs that we had actually had in mind coming into the trip: Ken Griffey Jr.'s on the baseball card that Jon had treasured since he was 13 or Ryan Freel's on the sweaty t-shirt I'd been wearing all over the state of Florida. We knew that the liklihood on the former was low, but I was feeling confident that I could get Freel to sign the shirt, assuming the armpit fumes didn't knock him down before he had the chance.

We entered the park as soon as it opened and camped out in the front row next to the dugout, even though our seats were in the bleachers, on the off-chance that one or more players would actually make an appearance.

Like always, we primarily stared at the grounds crew for the better part of two hours. Winter and I revisited our game of identifying the letter S on all the billboards and pointing at all the planes that flew overhead. The park was already pretty full for the sold-out game when Jon noticed Freel over by the bleacher wall, signing autographs.

“Should we go over there, or do you think he will he make it down here?” Jon asked. I took a look around. If we left our spot, we definitely would not get it back, but Freel was a good 100 yards away and the knot of people that had formed down next to him made it look like he wasn't moving any time soon.

“We'd better go,” I said. I took up my shirt and pen and let Jon follow me with our bag and child. The wall in front of the bleachers is wedge-shaped, so it is low close to the infield and gets progressively higher toward the edge of the outfield. Plus, there is a 3 1/2 foot chain-link fence covered with a tarp atop the concrete wall. The effect is such that where the bleachers meet the regular seats, the chain link fence comes about to your waist, but by the time you work your way down to the other end, the concrete part is up to your hips and the fence part is topping six feet.

Guess at which end Freel was standing.

As you would expect, people were standing on the cement wall to peer over, pretty much right in front of the sign asking you not to stand on the wall, so the ushers were constantly telling people to get down. Despite the crush of people, it didn't take very long for me to get to the front of the group, and though it felt totally awkward to present something for signing without so much as eye-contact by way of permission, I really had no choice, so I draped my t-shirt over the fence and made my pen available. I was able to hop up long enough to confirm that I was at least getting the correct signature, but that was about all I could do.

My pen soon disappeared from my hand and reappeared a moment later. It was done.

To write it out, this does not really sound like that big a deal. So it's probably difficult to understand that I was completely and totally awe-struck. Disproportionately so. With my head spinning, I looked around for Jon and Winter, but they were nowhere to be found. I stepped away from the crowd to get a fresh perspective and collect my wits that were suddenly scattered all over.

Meanwhile, Jon and Winter were directly behind me the entire time. When I had looked around for them, I had apparently looked Jon straight in the face, but my gaze passed right through him. Jon had the foul ball that he'd caught the day before, and once I was done with the shirt, he'd anticipated me taking Winter so he could have it signed as well. He had not counted on the severe effect my hero-worship would have on me, and since I'd wandered off in a daze, he was left at the front of the line with Winter.

Jon had passed the ball over the high, high fence successfully, but Winter, having that precise timing that only small children have, chose that moment to be knocked down by a passing stranger. Jon, of course, had no choice but to bend down to pick Winter up, but in doing so made himself unavailable to receive the ball back from Freel. He hardly had a second to worry about what would become of our spring training ball, though, before it came sailing back over the fence and bounced squarely off the top of his head.

Jon collected himself, then collected Winter and the ball and came to find me, still wandering around in a stupor despite the fact that I had not actually been the one to take a blow to the head.

Having acheived our goal, we found ourselves a spot in the bleachers and camped out until the game started. It was a good game, punctuated by a homerun by the man of the day, Ryan Freel, that would provide the winning margin in the 5-4 victory.

As in all of the spring training games, the starters didn't play the whole game, and once they were done with their contribution they wandered off through right field, past the home bleachers. Usually these players get a dencent ovation as they walk past, but this group in for the Yankees' game apparently didn't know what they were doing because both Griffey and Dunn walked by with no more than a smattering of applause.

So, having have pulled myself together somewhat when Freel came out of the game the inning after the homerun, I took matters into my own hands. From 3/4 of the way up the bleachers, I shouted down, “Nice hit, Ryan.” Everyone in the bleachers seemed to suddenly look up and notice who was passing by and clap their approval. I had started the single loudest ovation that any player got going off the field that day.

That right there, my friends, was the single moment that made the entire trip worthwhile.

After the game, we got a souvenir program for my Jeter-loving sister-in-law and wandered out, sore of buttocks from the bleachers, but floating on a cloud. At least I was. Jon may still have been rubbing the top of his head.

After a week and a half of spring training games, Jon and I finally felt like we knew the lay of the land well enough to try to get the two autographs that we'd had in mind when we started this trip.

The first of these was from Ken Griffey Jr. Jon had pain-stakingly brought with us the baseball card that had been the one and only birthday present that his family could afford for his 13th birthday. I was sure that if Griffey had understood the role in Jon's life that baseball in general and Griffey specifically had played, that he would have been falling over himself to sign the card, but there's just no quick way to communicate that kind of depth of knowledge as a guy is running onto the field. “HEY GRIFFEY! YOU WERE INSTRUMENTAL TO MY HUSBAND'S FORMATIVE YEARS! COME SIGN HIS CARD” just doesn't roll off the tongue, you know?

And to avoid any unintentional build-up now and unnecessary letdown later, I'll just go ahead and tell you now that we did not get said card signed. Something for us to keep working toward, I suppose.

The second autograph that we'd had in mind was Ryan Freel's on a t-shirt that I had gotten over a year before and had sported proudly, feeling like I was very much ahead of the curve. In fact, I had sported it so proudly, every single day at the gym, that it was starting to get a little worn out. To make matters worse, I continued to proudly sport this shirt to many of the games, which didn't exactly leave it in the best shape for signing.

Actually, wearing the shirt had prompted several conversations over the course of our trip. People would ask me how I thought Freel was going to do this year (well, awesome, if he can get any playing time, yadda yadda yadda), whether I'd seen him lately (you mean, other than on the field?), and whether I knew him personally. That last one cracked me up. If I did know him personally, I certainly wouldn't wear his number. I'd probably wear 3 just to get on his nerves. I can be like that sometimes.

But I digress. What I've been trying to get at over the last four paragraphs is that, except for a dirty t-shirt and a 15-year old baseball card, we didn't actually have anything for anyone to sign. So, on the day that we set aside to try to get some autographs, I sat alone in the front row of our section, wondering what I would do if anyone other than the two previously mentioned people showed up.

It wasn't an issue for quite a while because no one did show up and instead Winter and I spent quality time identifying circles, flags, the letter S, and whatever other shapes he could point out on the billboards around the field. As we were passing the time, something for the other players to sign fell out of the clear blue sky when Jon caught a foul ball from Twins batting practice.

If we didn't know it was meant to be already, we were sure then.

The front couple rows began to fill up with autograph seekers like us. A woman in her 30s sat next to me with her two sons, probably about 7 and 9. The kids were as cute and enthusiastic as could be and were doing their best to flip through the program to identify the players and sound out the words in their descriptions. The didn't have to wait long until a couple people came by to sign that program for them.

The first person by was Jason Romano, whom the woman said she thought was very good-looking. I couldn't disagree more, though; Romano is, in fact, breath-taking. The photos definitely do not do him justice. I'm just lucky I didn't actually have to come up with a coherent sentence while he was signing my ball, because I would have opened by mouth and all that would have come out would have been “homina, homina,” which might have been a little embarassing for everyone involved. (Though, apparently admitting it later is just fine.)

A boy nearby, probably about 15, had Romano sign his hat, then immediately turned to his father and said “maybe I can get someone else I don't care about to sign this hat, too.” For crying out loud, he could at least wait till the poor guy was out of earshot to start being an unappreciative little ingrate. But rather than smack him, which is what I wanted the father to do, he laughed, so I guess we can figure out where he picked up that kind of behavior.

A little later, Danny Graves came by. The woman also thought he was very good-looking and went on to some length about his smile. When he made his way down to us, she actually stammered a bit, but managed to get up the pluck to ask him to sign her arm, which made him smile even more, which made her stammer even more. She was very disappointed to find out from the program that he was married.

The woman and the kids yelled at some other players to come over (I managed to correct their pronunciation before they started shouting to “FEE-lipe”) but that was all the excitement that we were going to get that day. Soon it was time for the game to start, and we filed back to our seats to watch the Reds lose, 12-11.

We hadn't gotten the two autographs we'd set out for, but we did get an awesome foul ball and some bonus autographs. And there was always tomorrow.

Sunday's game was early and at the stadium of the Philadelphia Phillies, but, after a couple trips to the beach, my flip flops reeked of dead fish. I couldn't represent in away stadiums smelling like low tide, so we headed to Splash to find some cheap sandals.

Splash is a chintzy souvenir shop where I would later return to buy chintzy souvenirs for everyone back home. Today, though, we just made our way to the back of the building where they had what I expected: an enormous rack of clearance footwear. I got some $6 flip flops with big 3″ soles. Cool.

Finally, we were on our way to the game. Jon missed the turn to take regular highway 41, so we ended up on business 41. It was an interesting drive through town, and we got to go over a different bridge. We finally found the stadium, and we were surprised at how much like a regular-season stadium it was. The shops, seats, and everything felt just like the regular season, only in miniature.

As we went in, the ticket-taker gave Winter a little packet of baseball cards. We found our seats and first watched the children of the stadium workers have an Easter egg “hunt” in the outfield. They also announced that a few hundred eggs were hidden around the stadium, but we never saw them. What we did see was some relatively cheap nachos that was enjoyed in the shade before the start of the game.

Finally the game started. It was lackluster, like the players didn't really care, so when Winter asked to go on a walk, I said I would take him. I planned to find a philly cheesesteak sandwich, since this stadium even had Philly foods for sale (alternately, you cannot get Skyline chili at Ed Smith to save your life). We didn't find the sandwich, but we did find the Kids' Zone: a full-on playground, inflated trampoline house, and kid-centric snack area, plus bunches of potential playmates for Winter. Seeing the Kids' Zone was probably the single most exciting moment in the trip for Winter.

Which might be why he wasn't thinking clearly and immediately ran under the monkey bars where he promptly was kicked in the face by a much bigger boy who was innocently swinging along. But Winter was stunned for only a moment, and the big red welt he was developing wasn't bleeding, so he went back to playing.

Maybe two innings later, Winter noticed the giant inflatable SpongeBob Square Pants trampoline house. He announced that he was done playing here; he wanted to play there. We went over just in time to join a group of other 3 and 4 year olds taking off their shoes and getting ready to crawl inside the flap. I stood outside watching through the net while he hopped around, giggling gleefully with every bounce. He was so happy that he drew the attention of the woman standing beside me who said that they come down from Philly every year for spring training, and they can never get their daughter to leave the Kids' Zone. A true family vacation.

The game ended with the Phillies beating the Reds, but the kids in the Kids' Zone did not clear out. We soon learned that the family-friendly park stays open after the games. On this night there was a musical performer and you could hang around at the restaurants. We even saw a couple of the Phillies players come out to mingle with the crowds and sign autographs.

Winter played on the playground until he could no longer keep himself upright in his exhaustion, and Jon carried the tired little guy out to the car. Right in the parking lot, we saw a pizza place that advertised during the game, so we drove some 50 feet over there and had a lovely meal.

All in all, just about enough to make you a Phillies fan, if only for spring training.