The story behind the suite

As noted in the previous posts today, we ended up in a suite at today's game. Here's how that happened.

We went to this restaurant/diner that it open for breakfast and lunch). The name of the place is Lenny's. It is just off US 19 in Clearwater. It was recommended by a friend of mine who lives in Tampa. So we get to Lenny's around 10 am. There are people waiting, but as we walk up to get our name on the wait list and say there are 2 of us, the host said we could sit at the bar right away. So that is what we did.

Lenny's is a neat place with lots of Phillies memorabilia. It is about a mile from the ballpark. As we are finishing out food, an elderly woman sits in the last seat at the bar next to Jamie. All the staff know her and Jamie says to me that he has to find out who this woman is. So he asks. She replies that she owns the restaurant. Her name is Ms. Judy.

A conversation ensues with us telling her we are going to see the game. She asks where we are from and we tell her Baton Rouge and Jacksonville. Jamie then mentions that he grew up in Biloxi and I reply the same. She then says she loves us guys since Biloxi is her place. She goes to the casinos every 3 months and will be going in another month. Lenny was her husband and he started the restaurant. Her son, Dan, now runs it. They moved to Clearwater 27 years ago and Lenny passed away 16 years ago. Ms. Judy is originally from New York City. The restaurant also caters breakfast, lunch and dinner for the Phillies and Blue Jays during spring training.

Jamie then went to pay his bill and during that time, Ms. Judy says they have a suite at the stadium and invites us to it. She says she will give us her son's number and we will need to call him when we are ready to come up. So after getting our picture taken with Ms. Judy, we get her son's number and then Hank's who is the person who handles things at the suite. We also saw one of 4 or 5 clocks on the wall which is set to Biloxi time. They also put "interesting" signs on the marquee (as you will see).

The last neat thing was that Lenny's girls (wait staff) have breakfast platters named after them. Jamie had the Lorraine and we found out later that she was our waitress. And she is the one who took the picture of us with Ms. Judy.

So that is the story about how we ended up in the suite.