E-Mail This Article to a Friend Training days In Fort Myers with the World Champions, lazin’ on Elysian fields BY MIKE MILIARD

Since arriving here on March 6 the weather has been perfect. It has been warm enough for the boys to feel like extending themselves without having sore muscles, and it has been just cold enough for the boys to put ginger into their work. It has not rained a single drop except during the night, and the rain was only heavy enough to keep the dust down and not make the ballpark muddy. Nothing has been too good for the world beaters since their arrival here. Their practice each day is watched by admiring hundreds, and their games ... have been liberally attended.

Frederic P. O’Connell

WITH BOSTON’S WORLD’S CHAMPION BALL PLAYERS — WAY DOWN SOUTH

Boston Post, March 27, 1904

IT WAS 101 years ago, in Macon, Georgia, and it was springtime. The previous autumn, the Boston Americans had won the first-ever World Series, besting the Pittsburgh Pirates five games to three. In those halcyon days, Boston’s starting nine had every reason in the world to be "enjoying themselves ... the life of the hotel with their everlasting ‘kidding.’ " They were at the top of the baseball world, and they had known no other way. And they were blissfully ignorant of the torturous travails their fans would endure over the coming century.

Now it’s 2005, and the Boston Red Sox are further south, in Fort Myers, Florida. And — finally — they are "world beaters" once again. Having vanquished pretenders to the throne in a most dramatic fashion, having celebrated the feat with gusto, and having rested their aching bodies during a brief winter respite, the teammates reported three weeks ago to their first post-championship spring training since 1919.

This time last year, things were very different. The team had been knocked out of World Series contention in the most agonizing way imaginable. The superstar shortstop they’d so coveted in the off-season had been snatched up instead by their bitter rivals (a development that would prove later to be a blessing in disguise). They had a new big-ticket, big-game pitcher. And they were hungry to exact revenge. So when the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees met for the first time that spring in Fort Myers, the atmosphere was electric. It was a meaningless exhibition scrimmage, but "game eight" was watched by millions. Media hordes descended from all corners of the globe. A pair of tickets fetched $500 on eBay. Commemorative pins were hawked in the parking lot. It was, in a word, ridiculous.

The season that followed, of course, was transcendent. But now what? How would this strange new state of affairs — us looking down on them — affect the atmosphere at camp? Would the champions’ Champagne hangover last through the winter? Or would the team reunite in sunny Florida champing at the bit and hungry to repeat? And what about the fans? A sinister insinuation making the rounds last fall held that Sox die-hards, having finally won it all, had somehow lost their identity as lovable losers. That’s bull, of course. But how would fans react to their first contact with their conquering heroes since that rain-damp rolling rally last fall? Would there be enough Bic ballpoints to accommodate their autograph requests? I had to know. So I flew south.

ON THE LOGAN runway, it’s pitch-black and frigid. Hazy Fenway evenings seem far, far away. But thumbing through the in-flight magazine, I immediately come across an excerpt from Robert Sullivan’s forthcoming Our Red Sox: A Story of Family, Friends and Fenway. The Olde Towne Team is omnipresent. They never go away, and one cannot escape their reach.

Waiting for a connecting flight in Philadelphia, I see ex-Phillies manager Larry Bowa (he was canned last summer) sitting alone a few rows away, looking dejected. Some high-school ball players hit him up for autographs, but not many. In four hours, the Phillies will be playing the Red Sox in an interleague spring-training game, and it looks like Bowa knows it. I feel bad for him. But not too bad. It’s good to be champions.

On landing at Southwest Florida International Airport, I look around for fellow pilgrims. The New Englanders are easy to spot: they’re the ones with pasty skin and winter-deadened expressions, squinting into alien sunlight. The weather here — 73 degrees and resplendently bright — is gorgeous. Fort Myers itself? Not so much. It’s a sprawling, low-built city, laced in every direction with four-lane blacktop. Beneath slender palm trees sit strip malls and Spanish-style stucco motels, Chevrons and 7-Elevens.

But the Red Sox’ winter home, City of Palms Park, is a beaut. Flowering bushes strew their magenta petals on swept walkways. Instead of a right-field grandstand, there’s a gently sloping grassy hill. Flags for every American League team flutter in the breeze. It feels like Fenway South, an oasis of New Englanders amid these palm trees and tumbledown bungalows. The overheard accents are from Southie and the North Shore, and fans stop to drop quarters in Boston-paper news boxes sitting squat on the sidewalk. After this long, snowy winter, it’s great to see the crowd spilling out after the game, tipsy and victory-sated, just like on a late afternoon on Lansdowne Street.

I’d arranged beforehand to meet up with Michael Farrell, a 64-year-old Vermont retiree and spring-training die-hard who’s been coming to Fort Myers, January through March, for a decade. He’s known by the screen name "Mike F." on Sons of Sam Horn, the ne plus ultra of Red Sox fan message boards, where he posts daily spring-training updates that allow us poor bastards stuck in the snowy Northeast to live vicariously through him. Steering his sleek black convertible (vanity plates: THE SOX) over a bridge spanning azure waters, he talks excitedly about the triple play he’s just witnessed, the prospects for the coming season, and his impending trip back north. "We’ll kinda lollygag a little getting home, take three, maybe four days," he says. "Then we’ll get back in time to unload the car, throw my clothes in the washing machine, and head back down for opening day at Fenway." This is what Red Sox fans are made of.

I ask him if he’s noticed any differences so far at this, the team’s first post-championship spring training since 1919. "From last year? Or from 1919?" he laughs. "Well, y’know, last year they were saying, ‘We were five outs away! We were five outs away!’ This year, the Yankees were one pitch away." That’s the difference. Even though spring training is a mere prelude, they’re the ones with something to prove, not us.

The only complication Farrell foresees at the Sox-Yanks game the following night is his plan to give one of his tickets to a friend of the family. A Yankees fan. "She’d better not be wearing any Yankee paraphernalia. Not even Yankee underwear. I don’t want to even hear about her wearing Yankee underwear."

I HADN’T EXPECTED to get into the game. It had long since sold out, and there was no way I was going to pay more than $100 for a ticket, as many reportedly had. But when two of Farrell’s friends offer to unload a $10 standing-room ticket for which they’d paid $40, I bite. It’s the best deal I’m going to get, I reason, and I don’t want to miss this game for anything.

Still, it’s amusing to see the lengths to which others are going. Sunday evening, I head back to the ballpark, where I meet sisters Rebecca and Deborah Kellogg-Van Orden, from Malden, and buddies Robert Fennell, Adam Fonrouge, and Brad Kearns, who’ve driven here — more than 1700 miles, in about 30 straight hours — from Bangor, Maine. The five of them have been camped out beneath the box-office windows since 10 last night. By the time extra tickets are released at 9 a.m. Monday, they’ll have been here for almost 36 hours. "We’ve been first and last in line the whole time so far," says Deborah enthusiastically. Indeed, almost 24 hours into it, they’re still the only ones in line.

"Having fun?" one dude asks sarcastically as he walks past.

"We’re having a fantastic time!" says Rebecca. "We were interviewed by the Boston Globe and RedSox.com and the Fort Myers paper. And we’re going to be on NBC 2 tonight! At 11. Right after the dead manatees."

"I’m just hoping Theo comes out and gives us free stuff for staying out here so long," says Deborah, clutching a photo of the Sox GM sitting with his Yankees counterpart, Brian Cashman, who’s grinning good-naturedly as he holds her license plate: RDSX FAN.

I have to ask: why invest so much time and energy for a ticket to a meaningless spring-training game?

"It’s not that much energy," says Fennell, slumped lazily against the wall as his pals toss a frisbee. "It’s actually a lack of investing energy."

In fact, I’m told later, the group was offered tickets — at inflated prices — more than once during the evening. They chose to continue their vigil; the were having too much fun.

After wishing the dogged quintet good luck, I cab to a bar across town that I’ve heard is a Sox-player hangout. I envision buying Johnny Damon shots of Jack Daniel’s, maybe enticing Kevin Millar to belt out "Born in the USA," or splitting a pitcher of PBR with Trot Nixon. ("It’s on me, man," he’d say. "We won it ’cos of you. The fans.") No such luck. The bar has plenty of college jocks and middle-aged men with golf shirts tucked tight over bulging bellies, but no players. Must be resting up for the big showdown.