Still hungry at spring training

One more note about my trip to Tampa was still finding very little to eat at spring training ballparks in Florida.

It shouldn't be a surprise, since these ballparks seat 10,000 people or less, but I was hoping to see more gluten-free offerings this year, for some reason.

I was particularly disappointed by the Yankees ballpark in Tampa. They have a Boar's Head booth that used to have a chef salad. Since basically everything produced by Boar's Head is gluten free, that used to be an option. But they don't offer it anymore.

Bright House Field in Clearwater

In fact, it's hard to find a salad at all at these ballparks. It occurred to me that vegans would also have a hard time finding something to eat.

I accidentally met a fellow celiac at the Yankees game when her friend spilled beer on me (no big deal) and offered to buy me a beer, and I told her I couldn't drink it anyway. The other celiac and I laughed as we discovered we both ate a bag of peanuts for lunch.

The Phillies ballpark in Clearwater does have Redbridge and Omission beer available at their Beers of the World booth. It would have been hard not to have gluten-free beer there, since it listed about 50 beers available. But that booth didn't have gluten-free beer during my last visit there a couple of years ago.

On the downside, the Phillies used to have gluten-free hot dog buns available, but apparently not any more.

As a general rule, when you ask a concession stand worker about gluten-free buns and they have no idea what you're asking about, it's probably better to not go any further because you never know what you're going to get even if somebody eventually tells you they have gluten-free buns. That's how I was glutened by the Jaguars a couple of years ago.

I made my first visit to the Red Sox ballpark in Fort Myers and did see Redbridge for sale. The pizza booths have a "gluten-friendly slice" available, which I didn't try (I wasn't very optimistic that it would be any good). And all of the concession booths have signs about food allergies, so I was hopeful I could find a gluten-free hot dog bun there. But no such luck.

So, if you're going to a spring training game, here's my advice: eat before you go.