Scott Butherus, a graduate student in multimedia journalism at USF, has embarked upon every baseball fan’s dream vacation: “an 18-day, beer-and-oversize-pretzel-fueled journey into the heart of Florida’s baseball culture,” with a stop at every spring training stadium on the Gulf Coast. But he’s not on vacation; he’s doing his graduate thesis. Titled “A View from the Cheap Seats,” his multimedia project aims, through interviews with players, coaches and fans, to uncover “what makes the game of baseball so special to Floridians.” And his thesis isn’t going to wind up languishing in a library; through an arrangement with USF we’re going to be publishing it, online and in print, in the Mar. 28 issue of Creative Loafing. Meanwhile, you can follow his regular reports from the spring training trail here on Blurbex, starting tomorrow.

This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2007.