No sport seems to fit in Florida

For me, baseball is the cool nip of spring games flowing into the moist heat of summer. Football is leaves changing and team logo sweatshirts.

Basketball is snow on the ground outside but plenty of heat inside.

In short, sports are inextricably linked with Missouri weather.

So no sport seems to fit in Florida, except maybe jai alai or greyhound racing. I went to a Bucs exhibition game last season and got so sunburned and sweaty I begged The Other Half to leave early. And it just wasn't right to drive to a hockey game while running the air conditioning. (Of course, the NHL solved that dilemma this season.)

But the weirdest sports-related event so far was attending opening day Monday at Tropicana Field, home of the Devil Rays.

In Cape Girardeau, we all cheer for the Cardinals, and they're a good team to get behind. I can't remember their last truly abysmal season -- one where there was no hope from start to finish. And most years they have a pretty good run. Heck, last year they made the World Series.

Things are different for the Rays. I mean, once you get over that really cool team logo and Lou Piniella, there's not a whole lot to get excited about.

The reason I went to the opener Monday was simple: I was off work and a couple good friends invited me. I consider most sporting events to be cocktail hours with a $20 cover charge for the game.

The Trop, as they call it, is a domed stadium that dominates the St. Petersburg skyline. I understand a whole 12,000 people out of a metro area of well over 2.5 million managed to make it there for opening day.

There was no problem parking, buying tickets and getting to our seats.

It was a comfortable 72 degrees in there, I'd estimate. But other than the general weirdness of playing baseball indoors, there was another unusual feature about it.

If a batter hits the ball into the lowest-hanging catwalk, it's an automatic home run. Isn't that kind of like sandlot rules? Or middle school kickball? It's like saying, "That tree and Mr. Smith's mailbox are the foul lines, and anything past my kid sister's trampoline is a home run."

Another weird fact: The game was against the Toronto Blue Jays, and a fair number of Canadians winter in the Tampa Bay area, so I'd say almost a third of the crowd was cheering for the other team. I hadn't seen that since the 2000 Florida Marlins, where almost the entire crowd cheered for the other team for every game. (I guess the Marlins showed them eventually, though.)

But my friends Joe and Beth were die-hard homers, so they cheered for the Devil Rays. Joe shouted the loudest when a fan caught a Blue Jays foul ball and tossed it back onto the field.

"Take that one back to Canada, eh?" he yelled, doing his best Canadian accent. Our neighbors to the north, sitting in seats all around us, took it pretty well.

They're a peaceful people.

My favorite part was when a drunk guy slid into second base and then refused to stand up to be arrested. He was wearing flip flops and was about 50 pounds overweight, but that guy could move!

Anyway, it was a good time, even though the Rays lost 5-2.

The Cardinals will be down June 17 to 19. You should come! I'll be there, cheering the Cards, and I promise good weather inside the Trop.

Heidi Hall is a former managing editor of the Southeast Missourian. She resides in St. Petersburg, Fla.