In 1980 I started going to Florida to watch spring training baseball during my spring breaks from teaching. It was a way to assure myself that the long New England winter was ending, after all. The first time I flew with my bicycle to Orlando, because my car was a 1951 Chevrolet named Aunt Emma, and I didn’t want to subject her to such a long trip. From Orlando I cycled to Winter Haven, the Red Sox’s spring training center, where I found a campground and pitched my tent.
I loved spring training. Seats were cheap, and some mornings I could wander into the stadium and watch the players work out. If nothing was happening, I could read. Once I went into the nearby Clock Restaurant for brunch. In the men’s room doing my business, I became aware of a very tall gentleman in the stall beside me, doing his. I looked up, surreptitiously. By God, it was Ted Williams, a hitting coach for the Sox that year. I damn near died. Afterwards I got him to sign a postcard, which I addressed to my mother in Maine – who adored Ted – and wrote, above the signature, “Love from the Kid.”
Of course, after a quarter century the Grapefruit League changed like everywhere else in the US, as construction, traffic, and population expanded. The Red Sox left poky Winter Haven for more upscale JetBlue Park in Fort Myers on the west coast of the state. The Orioles moved from Fort Lauderdale to Sarasota. The Dodgers left Vero Beach a few years ago for Arizona. Fifteen teams now spring train in Florida, up and down each coast and two in the center, near Orlando. As a result, biking between parks created long rides, and – Aunt Emma having been replaced – I usually drove down from Massachusetts to spring training, taking two or three days. Once there, I could figure out what teams I wanted to see, and drive around the state.
From Long Beach to Orlando – according to my Google maps app – is 38 hours, driving straight through, as if anyone could. Obviously now that we’re on the west coast, a drive to Florida isn’t going to happen simply for a week of spring training. Fortunately, baseball offers a west coast spring option: the Cactus League in Arizona, six and a half hours away in Old Blue, my trusty Prius. So the second week of March, I packed up and set out for Phoenix. I’d never been there before. Fifteen teams spring train there, including the Dodgers, recently arrived. Most of the other teams weren’t particularly familiar to me, at least in terms of players, coaches, and histories. I have tended to follow east coast teams. But what the hell, baseball is baseball.
Essentially, across California and half of Arizona is a straight shot. Route I-10 is mostly flat and curveless, right into the capital, and in seven hours I was close, singing Glenn Campbell’s old tearjerker, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” But as I got there, the traffic took me off guard, growing thick as hardboiled eggs. Local radio was covering the mayoral election, and announcers kept explaining that Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States. I had no idea.
It was around six o’clock and I was in the middle of the fifth largest city with no idea where to go. I parked across the street from a burger shop. Inside, a young woman told me where I could find a cheap motel four blocks away. At the Friendship Inn in a fairly sleazy neighborhood, I promised not to have anyone up in my room and paid a $5.00 deposit for my key and TV remote. Next morning it was raining, so nobody was playing baseball. Instead I walked to a tourist information center and got a schedule and a map of all ten spring training stadia in the environs. Then it was time to get out of the Friendship Inn and find a place from which to see a couple of games.
The next day, Tuesday, rain over and me safely installed in a Tempe Motel 6 (where Tom Bodette had the light on for me), I beat my way up the 101 to Salt River Fields, the handsome spring home for the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies, who this day were playing each other. For today the Rockies were the home team. I arrived close to game time, and all the good seats were sold, so for $22 I sat out on the lawn, a sloping grassy area behind the outfield fence. In the distance the batters and infielders were small enough to make seeing their numbers difficult. With the scoreboard at my back, and the players unfamiliar, I just relaxed in the sunny, breezy air and let the game happen.
As it unfolded, all of Arizona’s offensive action happened in the first two innings: one run in the first, two in the second. The Rockies kept the runs coming: one in the second, a solo homer by Charlie Blackmon in the third, two more in the fourth, and another solo shot by Trevor Story in the sixth. Final score was 5-2 for the home team. The fans around me were relaxed and interesting; one woman – who was looking at the answer in a magazine – asked her friends to guess how many baseballs both major leagues went through in a season. The answer turned out to be approximately 157,000, which I had to admit is a lot of balls. None of her friends, nor I, came close.
Spring training games are experimenting with a clock to speed up the game. After the first pitch to a batter, a pitcher has 20 seconds from the time he receives the ball from the catcher to begin his windup. I never saw any one penalized for a slow delivery. It appeared all the players were making the speed-up rule work, and the game trotted right along. At the end the PA system announced that it had been a sellout, with 11,034 present.
For Wednesday I was at Sloan Park in Mesa, down the 101 from Salt River. This is the spring home of the Chicago Cubs, and it’s another handsome field. Once again I arrived late and for $36 bought a ticket on the centerfield rooftop, sitting in an aluminum chair overlooking the crew watering the infield. Friendly Cubs fans were all around me. While we waited, the PA announcer told us that Bill Buckner was signing autographs.
Buckner was the hapless Boston first baseman who let a ground ball hit by Mookie Wilson go through his legs in the sixth game of the 1986 Red Sox-Mets World Series, a moment of pure despair for all Sox fans. He used to live in Andover – where we also lived – and my younger son was in play school with Bobby, his son. From all accounts Buckner was a nice man and a fine player with a number of outstanding seasons, some for the Cubs; but after that grounder, the Boston area became very difficult for him. Apparently, he even got death threats. He eventually settled in the Chicago area, where the fans still remember him fondly. It’s worth noting that in 2008 he threw out the first pitch for the Red Sox home opener – and received a standing ovation. “Buckner, oh yeah,” said a Cubs fan beside me. “He’s a really good guy.”
So I watched the Cubs beat the Texas Rangers 2-1 in a pretty good game. Two players I recognized from Florida in years past were Hunter Pence, a former Astro presently a Ranger, tall and rangy, who drove in the Rangers’ lone run; and Jason Heyward, once a Brave and now a Cub, an excellent outfielder. It was fun to see them both out here. Also amusing was the Cub mascot, a bear named “Clark,” who walked around with a fishing pole, dangling a rubber tarantula over fans’ heads.
After that game, my living arrangements changed. My late father-in-law’s widow, Lucy, lives in Cave Creek, just north of Phoenix, and she returned from a trip in time to invite me to her house. “You can meet the horses,” she said, “and stay here. It’ll be cheaper than the motels.” Since Tom Bodette’s Motel 6 sat on a main road with noisy traffic shooting by, I was glad to move. The horses, “the boys,” as Lucy called them, live just behind her house in a large fenced area with a pair of roofed stalls. Open-air living. They were charming, both of them, and I didn’t have to ride them, equestrian skills not being one of my talents. Lucy and I caught each other up after a much too long absence, and I went to one more game.
The next morning, I went to Surprise Stadium, on the northwest side of the city. This is the spring home of the Texas Rangers, last seen yesterday in Mesa. This day they were dealing with the Cleveland Indians. I got there early, around ten o’clock, and for $35 – a dollar less than yesterday’s outfield tickets! – I sat in the section right behind home plate. My neighbors were a delightful couple my own age, Bud and Cathy Mason, from near Fort Worth, avid Texas fans and car aficionados. (They had been to a classic car auction the day before, rather than making the trip to Sloan Stadium.)
Surprise Stadium was as fine a field as the others had been, with a number of practice diamonds spread around it. Signs indicated that folks were welcome to watch practice sessions. I thought of the Winter Haven days. Entering the stadium as soon as it opened at 11:30, I bought a program and learned from Mayor Skip Hall that USA Todayhad named Surprise “the #1 Spring Training venue in Arizona; and the top fan experience in both the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues.” Wow, saying something, I thought. Then I met the Masons, and we began to chat. At last, the game began.
At Surprise I had a good close look at the action, sitting with neighbors who knew not only the players below, but also lots of baseball history including some old Boston lore and figures: Yaz, Jimmy Piersall, Ted. The Masons were more than pleased with the game, for the Rangers prevailed, holding a seven-inning shutout while scoring five runs. And during that seventh inning, we all stretched and sang: “Root, root, root for the home team/If they don’t win it’s a shame….” The Rangers gave up one run in each of the last two innings for a final score of 5-2. So everyone was cheerful, and I went back to Lucy’s for one more night before heading back to California.
There’s no question that the Cactus League is a Big Deal. Almost 1.8 million people visited the 15 teams’ games last season. According to Jeff Meyer, the league president, it generated $644 million for the Arizona economy, most of it right in Phoenix. That’s where all the action is, after all. Personally, I have only one reservation when I compare this experience to Florida’s Grapefruits. Phoenix is so damned crowded. (Perhaps I should be used to nasty traffic after a year in L.A. I’m not, though.) In Florida I could find quiet towns like Kissimmee and good old Winter Haven to stroll around in, but in Phoenix there didn’t seem to be similar spots. It’s all packed very closely together – which is a real advantage in getting from one field to another, true – but I missed Florida’s quiet, low-key baseball. (Florida? Low-key? Remember, I never had to go to South Beach.) Lots of low-key room out at Lucy’s place, but I don’t want to keep imposing on her and the boys. Still, it’s baseball! Maybe I’ll try again next year, give Lucy a quick visit, and go find an easy place to hang out. Could be Surprise?
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