March 5...We spent the day at Surprise Stadium, about 30 miles south of Wickenburg, watching a spring training baseball game. The Phoenix metro area is the home of the Cactus League, which consists of 15, mostly western, Major League Baseball teams. Most of the stadiums house two teams, so there is a game in each stadium almost every day. The team that shares Surprise Stadium with the Rangers, is the Kansas City Royals. I have always wanted to attend spring training, probably because it is something I could never do while I was working, but I always thought it would be in Florida, where all the other teams form the Grapefruit League. Last year, when we were in Florida, we had already rolled west before games started. I even rode right by the Pittsburgh Pirates park in Bradenton, and the stadium was just getting ready to host games. The stadiums out here are all new, and the ones in Florida....not so much. One of the reasons I thought spring training would be cool, was that it was pretty cheap, because baseball is not worth paying a lot to watch for me. That's not necessarily true anymore however. All the stadiums have an eight dollar ticket for those who want to bask in the sunlight, on the grass beyond the outfields, and that's what we did. If you want to pay for a seat, they cost from $17 to $44. For a spring training game!!! No way. The outfield was just fine because there was hardly anyone in the park, and we had right center field to (almost) ourselves. If someone would have hit a home run, a probably would have gotten it. They had a big scoreboard with all the bells and whistles, and a radar gun, but batting averages and other statistics were not posted. The food was also a rip off with their $7 hot dogs, and you couldn't bring your own food in. Spring training is now big business, even though the star players don't play much, and sometimes the squads are even split, so the same team is playing in two different places.
It was a cool experience though, and while we are in Phoenix, we will probably catch another game or two at different stadiums. The Rockies won, 8-2, there was only one home run (to left field), and the biggest name I saw was Prince Fielder. The Rockies squad was split, and I recognized no one on their team.
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| Looking towards the outfield |
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| Looking from the outfield towards the stands |
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| People sitting on the grass in the outfield |
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| Texas Ranger flag, Arizona flag, US flag and the Colorado Rockies flag |
If you are looking for an awesome baseball game, look for Texas Rangers Tickets!
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