One evening in Baltimore I turned on the TV and caught the local news. The sports person was in Sarasota, reporting from the Orioles' new spring training home, and everyone interviewed - players, coaches, fans - talked about what an improvement the new facility was over the old one in Fort Lauderdale. There seemed to be an unspoken feeling that, if only the team had moved a few years earlier, they could have won a few World Series.
It was odd being on the road and hearing my hometown dissed. But I couldn't really come to its defense.
A few years ago I visited Sarasota, and saw some similarities to Fort Lauderdale. Both are wealthy cities built on retirees. What differentiates them is what the money has wrought. In Fort Lauderdale it's hedonism (as befits a town made famous by Spring Break); in Sarasota it's culture. Fort Lauderdale sometimes claims to be the yachting capital of the world; Sarasota has its share of impressive boats, but it also has an opera house. (Fort Lauderdale long ago lost its orchestra.)
Every Saturday in downtown Sarasota there is a farmers' market, a subtropical no-brainer that Fort Lauderdale has never been able to pull off. Sarasota's main street has two bookstores - an excellent antiquarian shop and a popular bookstore cafe. (Las Olas has none.) The street also has a couple inexpensive Thai and Vietnamese restaurants, the kinds of places that here you have to have a car to find.
And, in addition to all that, the city now has baseball in spring.
