17 February 2026
Myakka River State Park
Sarasota, Florida
Front Gate to Jet Blue Park / Fenway South (Ft. Myers, FL) and Ted Williams statue with little boy Jimmy from the Jimmy Fund.
I ran into a guy at the front gate in a red uniform and he said he was giving tours so we signed up.
Marc- We started the day early to get our friends Fred and Emily over to the airport in Ft. Myers. We gave ourselves lots of extra time since Highway 75 is notorious for accidents that lead to long traffic delays. We saw 6 deer in a meadow on the way out of the state park. All went well. The accident causing a big delay happened on the northbound side of the road not on the southbound side where we were headed. There was a several hour difference from Emily's flight (Boston) until Fred's flight (Portland, ME) so we went out with Fred for breakfast and a visit to Fenway South to see some Boston Red Sox Spring Training. The boys did not disappoint. The tour was great with access to most parts of the park and lots of details and history.
Sue- In most respects Fenway South is a replica of Fenway but seats 9990 and they can admit 600 more for standing room only. The scoreboard came from Fenway Park. There are only 3 manual scoreboards still in operation in the US– at Fenway, Wrigley Field in Chicago and here. But in this one only, somebody has to run out from a spot in the green monster wall after each half inning to hang up new numbers! At Fenway & Wrigley Field they somehow change the numbers from inside the scoreboard.
I knew our tour guide was not from Boston. He repeatedly called the tour a "ter." He is a snowbird from Indiana who grew up a Cardinals fan. He was so well versed in Red Sox players, stats and lore throughout their history. The Sox started playing at Fenway in 1912, the years before that they played at a field somewhere on Huntington Avenue (he actually didn't know about Huntington Ave. Fred figured that out). I was really into it. The history isn't so long, so we grew up knowing of the old greats from the games on TV, and from Aunt Velma. The guide told us that Mel Parnell named the right field foul pole the Pesky Pole after Johnny Pesky. Pesky didn't hit many home runs but he was called a "pesky" utter. I guess he hit a lot of balls down the first base line into the corner in right field and eked out a lot of hits. I remember Mel Parnell from his time as an announcer on the televised games with Ken Coleman and Ned Martin. The games were always on TV at my grandparents' house.
Johnny Pesky's number is listed with the retired numbers for the Hall of Famers, but he wasn't a Hall of Famer. They put his number up there because he was associated with the Red Sox almost his entire life. He started by selling popcorn at Fenway as a kid. Until he was quite old (90?) he worked with players at Spring Training. Also, Jackie Robinson's number 42 is with those retired numbers. He was the first black player in professional baseball (1947-1956), and all the players on all the teams in the league wear his number on April 15, the day he started playing professionally.
We went into John Henry's private box and were told about a picture he has there of the Green Monster with a ladder going up the wall. When Fenway opened, there were 2 car dealerships in the Lansdowne Street area. Homerun balls to left field went over the Green Monster and landed on the cars. So the Sox put up a net to catch the balls. But they had no way to retrieve the balls. That's where the ladder came in. Now the ladder is no longer needed, but it's still there, and is called "the ladder to nowhere."
The last thing I remember is what he told us about the Curse of the Bambino. Babe Ruth, after hitting 27 home runs one year, asked the Red Sox owner for a raise. Apparently the owner put any extra money he had into the theater and arts, an interest of his. So the owner said no to Babe, that he was asking for more than the President made. Babe said he had a better year than the President! Although 27 home runs doesn't sound like much, the entire rest of the team only hit a total of 4 homers all season. This was because at that time the balls were "dead," did not move like the balls that subsequently came into use. They didn't have rubber inside and they weren't laced the way they are today, either. The owner sold Babe to the Yankees for $125,000 in 1919. Thus, the Curse! The Sox had won the World Series in 1903, 1912, (Babe started playing for the Sox in 1914), 1915, 1916, and 1918. It was not until 2004 that the Curse was broken (85 years)!
We returned to Sarasota in the afternoon to visit an Amish Quilt shop and found an Amish village.
Alma Sue's quilt shop.
I am always amazed by the colors and patterns.
This is called an attic window quilt.
Near the Quilt shop was a Pennsylvania-Dutch Bakery and restaurant. It was also a large gift shop with many beautiful items from books to quilts to clothing for sale. There was also a large hotel across the parking lot. We saw lots of Amish men and women getting around on 2 and 3 wheeler bikes.
