The stands at Ed Smith Stadium on a Tuesday afternoon in March were filled to the brim with bright orange Baltimore Orioles shirts — an impressive feat considering it was Tampa Bay country, and that happened to be the team the Os were facing.
The stadium in Sarasota, Florida is the Orioles‘ home away from home for spring training. Although Tampa Bay fans made a showing, they were vastly outnumbered by the Orioles’ faithful.
Some of these Os fans are making a pilgrimage of sorts: they’re superfans who live in Baltimore and came to Sarasota for the sole purpose of seeing the Orioles play a spring training game.
Clarence and Vernatt Briscoe are two such superfans. Married for 40 years, with two sons and four grandchildren, the Pikesville residents flew to Sarasota to see two Orioles spring training games. Clarence told Baltimore Fishbowl that he is approaching 70 years old and retired from being an IT manager. For the last 17 years, he has worked as either a contractor or employee with AARP.
The pair already visit Florida a couple times a year, as they have timeshares. However, this is their first time on the west side of Florida and they are seeing the Orioles in spring training for the first time.
“Coming to Orioles spring training has been a dream of mine since I was a kid,” Briscoe said. “We couldn’t afford it as a child you know, and when I got older, I had aspirations of getting down here with my dad, who was as big an Orioles fan as myself. In fact, the Orioles came to Baltimore [in] ’54, the year I was born, so we’re permanently glued together from that perspective.”
Sadly, they were never able to make the trip. Briscoe’s father passed away in 1987. At that time, Briscoe’s children were still very young, and he wasn’t in the position of taking a trip to spring training at that stage of his life.
“My sons were still very young, and everything was a focus of putting them through their athletic or my athletic dreams,” Briscoe laughed. “Between baseball and soccer and a little bit of basketball, we never got down here for spring training.”
Briscoe said he was hoping to see Jackson Holliday in particular, who hadn’t made an appearance in that Tuesday afternoon game. He was happy he got to see Errol Robinson make a few plays at shortstop when he replaced Gunnar Henderson late in the game. They did get to see Holliday play on Wednesday evening, though.
Briscoe plans to make this trip again next year, having enjoyed it so much this year, and he gives full credit to his wife for making it happen.
“I just want to say that I got the best partner in the world, my wife,” Briscoe said of Vernatt. “My wife is just spectacular.
“She’s not the baseball fan that I am. As a matter of fact, I will tell you that if the Orioles are winning by six runs at the end of the fourth, she’s ready to go. And the same thing if they’re losing, she’s ready to go,” he laughed. Yet, she booked this whole trip for Clarence, her husband of 40 years.
Nicholas Pell, on the other hand, is from Catonsville, but did not travel from Maryland to see Tuesday’s game. A senior at University of Tennessee, Knoxville on spring break, he’s in Florida visiting his grandparents with his girlfriend. The pair decided to come to Sarasota to see an Orioles game.
Pell grew up loving both the Os and the Nationals and cannot bring himself to pick one over the other.
“I’ve always liked watching baseball,” Pell said. “My grandfather grew up watching baseball and he lived with me, and I always watched with him, and I always still watch with him. So, I like to get out to games, even if it’s down here in Sarasota.” He hopes to do these spring training trips after he graduates, eventually, if finances permit.
“It’s a great time,” Pell said. “To like go and see [them on] a trip. I think it’s fun. When I have money, I’m gonna want to follow my teams like the Capitals and the Wizards and Commanders and all of them.”
Jennifer Grondahl, Senior Vice President of Communications and Community Development for the Orioles, sees a lot of die-hard Os fans coming to Sarasota to see spring training games. There are 17 Os spring training games played at Ed Smith Stadium, which is very easy for people to access if they’re staying in downtown Sarasota. She says it helps that the stadium is near four other MLB spring training facilities: the Atlanta Braves in Northport, the New York Yankees in Tampa Bay, and both the Minnesota Twins and Boston Red Sox play spring training games in Ft. Myers.
The stadium isn’t only used for the major league spring training games. The Orioles’ entire minor league operation is housed there permanently.
“When the major league team moves to Baltimore in a couple of weeks here, the minor league team will move here,” Grondahl said. “So, we have as you can see the main field and then we have a number of fields in the back where our minor league players will continue to play until they either go to their affiliate or they may stay here for extended spring.”
It’s also where the major league players do rehab when they have an extended rehab assignment. Felix Bautista is doing his rehab there to recover from Tommy John surgery.
“He’s here every day,” Grondahl said. “He’s doing rehab with our athletic training staff and when our major league staff goes up to Baltimore, there are still athletic trainers who work with players that have rehab assignments right here in Sarasota.”
Grondahl attributes the large numbers of fans who make the trip from Baltimore to Sarasota for a spring training game in part to a deal MASN gives to VisitSarasota.com. MASN is an Orioles entity, and it runs over $1 million worth of commercials for Visit Sarasota’s website. She describes Sarasota as having a lot in common with Baltimore.
“It’s an incredible place for culture. There’s a huge arts community here. I think it actually has a lot in common with Baltimore in that way. Food scene, art scene,” Grohdahl said. Since 2015, the team has generated nearly $584.5 million for the local Sarasota County economy, and more than $686 million for the state of Florida. They have also created more than 1,000 jobs there.
Of course, the Orioles’ performance on the field and the depth of their farm system is a big motivator, too. Anyone can look up their favorite players’ baseball stats. Grondahl, however, had some fun facts Os fans may not know about their players.
Ryan McKenna is an incredible golfer. Jordan Westburg is a big reader — he’s often reading in the clubhouse before games. Felix Bautista is recognized as one of the top players in MLB The Show. Colton Cowser and Gunnar Henderson are huge Star Wars Lego fans. Tyler Wells, apparently, is a coffee connoisseur.
“If you ever have the opportunity to talk to him, talk to him about coffee. He’ll never stop talking,” Grondahl laughed.
James McCann and Austin Hays each do a lot with the community. Hays and his wife work a lot with mental health awareness. McCann and his wife do a lot for children who had to be in the NICU when they were born.
Tuesday’s spring training game was Baltimorean John Wilson’s first, as well. He works for Amazon in Baltimore City, and two years ago he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make this trip.
In 2022, the 40-year-old was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.
“It came out of nowhere,” Wilson said. “I started making a list of things I wanted to do. You know, if it didn’t go well, because I wasn’t sure which way I was gonna go. It was a super rare form of cancer.”
On that list was an Orioles spring training game.
Wilson had sino-nasal cancer, and his medical team had no idea how it came on. He was treated at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Wilson said it was only the fourth case in the last 10 years Hopkins had seen. His medical team, Dr. Nicholas Rowan (Otolaryngology), Dr. Ana Kiess (Radiation Oncology), and Dr. Tanguy Lim-Seiwert (Director, Head and Neck Cancer Oncology Disease Group), figured out the right combination of chemo and radiation, and Wilson was able to beat the cancer.
“But I decided that I was going to do some of these things that I really wanted to do, you know, now that I was able to,” Wilson said. “One of them was to come to spring training and watch the game down here and I decided to come with my parents and just enjoy it. That was the main reason why we came down.”
That, and like every other Orioles fan, he was hoping to see Jackson Holliday hit one out of the park.
Wilson says now that he’s seen how much fun it is, he’s hoping to plan a vacation down here for the whole family, enjoying the town and taking in a couple of spring training games. He’s got a wife and three children, and one of them plays travel baseball and loves the Orioles.
