As I have mentioned, I went to spring training in Florida rather than Arizona in 2003 and 2004. I never posted any photos from those trips, reasoning that Florida is outside the scope of a web site called BaseballArizona. I'm feeling ecumenical now so I dug up some of those images.

Yogi '04.

Kevin Millar '03.

In 2004 the only game I saw was between the Red Sox and the Yankees. I reside in the heart of Red Sox Nation and I prefer that the Bosox win the game (and the bench-clearing brawl) whenever they meet the Yankees, but the only baseball-related photo pinned to my bulletin board at work is of Yogi Berra taken before that spring game. Yogi transcends petty team loyalties.

It was a quick weekend trip and I didn't want to carry a lot of camera equipment. I took my Canon 1v film camera (on its last fling before it was sold) and the Tamron 28-300 lens. Because I hate scanning, I resolved to limit myself to one 36-shot roll of Fuji Superia 400 film, and I stuck by that limit. After visiting the "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge, I only had 12 shots left for baseball. The last shot on the roll was Yogi standing next to the batting cage. The photo pinned to my bulletin board is the one that came back from the Eckerd photo lab.

Say what you will about the relative advantages of film versus digital, what finally drove me away from film was the drudgery of scanning. Color slides can be difficult, but color negatives are worse. It's just difficult to get the colors right. That's why I limited myself to one roll, and why I eventually sold the camera. My initial attempts to scan the negative resulted in a blueish Yogi. I set the image aside for two years before making another attempt this weekend. The full-sized version has been posted to a new Florida Baseball gallery along with some other photos I processed this weekend.

Also posted from that roll is Alex Rodriguez taking grounders at third base. Remember that the big story of spring 2004 was A-Rod joining the Yankees and switching to third base. Of course that's Derek Jeter lurking in the background at short.

I took my digital SLR to Red Sox spring training in 2003, so I actually have a lot more photos from that trip than the one in 2004. Pedro the Punk, D-Lo, Nomah and Grady are all gone now, but there's also a couple shots of guys who are actually still employed by the Red Sox two years later.