It’s just mid-morning, but the air is already so choked with heat that the stadium bathes in a sticky sheen. While there’s plenty of space in the stands, no one moves to take the good seats behind home plate. Instead, the small crowd seeks refuge in a tiny pocket of shade up the third-base line as the turf below bakes and edges toward a triple-digit temperature.
This is the Washington Nationals’ old spring training complex in Viera, Fla. It is, in other words, a brutal place for a vacation in late August.
Kelly Oder doesn’t mind. She has traveled from her home in Wichita, Kan.