With the Red Sox’ spring training facility closed to media until noon this morning as pitchers and catchers take their physicals, it seemed as fine a time as any to offer the following rainy day story to pass the time:

It did not take Red Sox catcher Dusty Brown long to realize that the culture of winter ball in the Dominican was different than anything he’d seen before.

What can Brown do for the Red Sox?

Brown, who hit .290/.377/.471 last year in Triple-A Pawtucket, joined the Azucareros del Este for the Dominican Winter League season. His team was greeted by a deluge prior to its Opening Day contest, one that seemed all but certain to lead to a cancellation on a field with poor drainage and threadbare tarps.

That didn’t happen. Once the rain stopped, an armada of locals raced to the field with what Brown described as sponges, pushing piles of rainwater onto the infield. After roughly a one-hour delay, the infield dirt was deemed sufficiently clear – at least by game officials – to proceed with the pomp and circumstance befitting a season opener, including pre-game introductions of the two teams.

But this was no ordinary set of introductions. After the players lined up along both foul lines, Brown was caught off guard when a little person raced from the home dugout and sprinted around the bases, wildly waving a flag as he made his circuit. The sight was unexpected enough (though, perhaps had Brown ever made the acquaintance of the late Nelson de la Rosa in the Red Sox clubhouse, it would not have been), but events truly took a turn for the surreal when the vertically challenged individual round third to head for the plate.

As he did so, a pair of Azucareros players lifted the individual several feet off the ground and then dropped him to the dirt, bonking the poor fellow on his head. Yet the man bounced right back up, as if one were to expect such a plummet, and continued his tour to home plate. After he crossed, 20 minutes of fireworks ensued, much to the chagrin of the pitchers, who had already warmed up. (One recalls the All-Star game at Fenway, when both Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling ended up with injuries after getting warm prior to the stirring but lengthy pre-game ceremony.)

Finally, the game got underway, and Brown’s Dominican season got off to a rousing start. In his first at-bat, he went deep for what would turn out to be his only longball of the Winter League season. As he crossed home plate, he looked up into the crowd, where he saw at least three brawls taking place. Clearly, the ballparks of the Dominican would bear little resemblance to McCoy Stadium.

Brown ended up being the everyday catcher and cleanup hitter for the Azucareros, hitting .220/.369/.283. After starting out like gangbusters, he acknowledged hitting a wall in a season that stretched from last February in Fort Myers through December in the Dominican. (The 26-year-old Brown left the winter league in mid-December in order to fly to Vegas in time for his wedding.)

All the same, he described the experience as a valuable one as he prepares to compete with Josh Bard and George Kottaras for the role of Red Sox backup catcher. Certainly, it would be difficult for Brown to be more surprised by anything that takes place in Fort Myers this year than he was by his first taste of baseball in the Dominican.

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