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Nerve.com - Baseball Groupies at Spring Training
When I landed on the Treasure Coast, as the part of east Florida where the Mets train is known, early this March, it was seventy degrees and sunny. The air was slightly sticky and salty. Cadillac Escalades peppered I-95, a major drug corridor. The palm trees were swaying. Every woman at the international airport was bursting out of her clothes. Every local radio station in the rental car seemed to be playing vapid summer songs by John Cougar Mellencamp. After dusk, there aren't many parking lots in Port St. Lucie without at least one couple making out against a row of shopping carts.
At Tradition Field, where the Mets play their Spring Training home games, there are many food-and-booze options, as well as a radar-gun booth, set up so men can humiliate themselves in front of their dates by huffing and puffing and throwing thirty-four miles an hour. In the shade of the stadium, I scanned the snack areas. "Are there any groupies here?" I asked a hot-dog vendor who looked rather like a porn director. He scanned me up and down. "The Island Girl Tiki Bar out in left field," he said. "They'll probably hire you." I asked if the groupies worked there. "Work, drink — same thing," he replied. He also told me to check out Duffy's sports bar after the game if I wanted to meet players. I told him I just wanted to meet girls who wanted to meet players. He didn't seem to believe me.
The women who work at the Island Girl Tiki Bar, a few thatched huts shielding patrons
The bartenders seemed like they weren't getting any. |
from the spring sun, terrified me. They weren't beautiful, but they were all hot, with long, blown-out, slightly frayed hair and penciled-in eyebrows. Like strippers, but as they act backstage, without the full makeup and fake enthusiasm. They wanted nothing to do with me. "The players? They'll probably go to South Beach tonight," one said when I tried to ask her about the nightlife in Port St. Lucie. Another barmaid, who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt tied under her boobs that kept falling open as she reached for plastic bottles full of Malibu rum, said — in a distinctly New York accent — that she didn't speak English. All of the bartenders seemed frustrated. They seemed — and I know this is a really cheap thing to say about someone who's rude to you, but I intuited this — like they weren't getting any.
Non-barmaid
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Sarah and Lauren, the ultimate Marlins fans. Above, groupies peer into the Mets' parking lot. (click to enlarge) |
spring-training groupies, some local and some on vacation from the north, show up to games and bars in tight jeans or jean skirts and cute, tight T-shirts. It's mostly about the hair, long and pretty. Lips are glossy. Mascara is well applied. Tasteful jewelry. College chic. They travel in packs of three, four or five. Some are older, in the model of Susan Sarandon's Annie, but most look and act like Annie's happily slutty disciple, Millie.
After the game, slightly buzzed, they clickety-clack or flippety-flop over to the gate by the players' parking lot, where they peer through holes in the black tarp covering the chain-link fence. Later that night, they make their way to the Duffy's near Tradition Field, or the Applebee's across the street from the Highway One Holiday Inn (where the players stay). No one's looking for a relationship. They're all just looking for something to get them through the night — as the classic-rock soundtrack of the local radio constantly reminds us.
But is this dutiful primping and stalking
You could almost see the thought bubble over her head: "You will be mine, terrible Marlins relief pitcher." |
getting the women anywhere with the big leaguers? Not so much. After an afternoon game, handsome future Hall of Famer Carlos Beltran pulled out of the parking lot and his car was swarmed. The woman in the driver's seat, whom several fans said was his wife, hit the gas and cut off several cars, some kids rushing up with balls, and ladies in shorts and Mets jerseys with a hungry look in their eyes. David Wright's waitress at the Outback Steakhouse reportedly fawned over him, but apparently he was just there for the meat.
Appalled by the lack of attention the hot girls standing next to me at the parking gate were getting from even the lowliest team members, I went to see a team with a lower profile: the Florida Marlins.
Roger Dean Stadium, in Jupiter, Florida (about thirty minutes south of Port St. Lucie), is shared by the 2006 World Champion Cardinals and the pitiful young Marlins. At the Sunday game, things looked promising: an olive-skinned woman in a turquoise cowgirl hat had a look of fierce determination on her face as she rounded the corner from the food court and walked briskly to the area by left field where the pitchers were warming up. She set her sights on and got a pitcher's attention. Her face lit up in a glow of flirtation. She smiled, she played with her hair, she looked down and then quickly up. It was as if she'd ripped a page out of an old Cosmo and memorized it. The player she was trying to ensnare smiled, shrugged, went back to pitching. She walked away, looking desperate but unvanquished. You could almost see the thought bubble over her head: "You will be mine, terrible Marlins relief pitcher. Oh, yes, you will be mine."
In the same part of the stadium stood two mellower and very attractive young blonde women. The sky was overcast and there was a little chill in the air; they were shivering a little in short-shorts and handmade Marlins A-shirts. They also had matching Marlins purses and hats and matching radiant smiles.
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