Fear and Loathing at Spring Training '11, Chapter 1: Stories of the Game and Position Battles

A lot sure happens in the course of Spring Training. Teams play a lot of "meaningless" games as far as the standings are concerned, but those games certainly have meaning to the players, some of whom are playing to earn their spot on the team, or fighting for the privilege of playing another year in the majors. There are a lot of stories to keep track of, even over the course of just a handful of games. And these stories are even harder to keep track of without a computer with Internet capability and a full-powered O.S.

That was my situation when I visited Arizona for a long weekend at the Cactus League of Spring Training Baseball. My computer had died the night before departure, so I wasn't able to live-blog my adventures as I planned. My backup plan is to retroactively post-date the stories in as timely a fashion as I can muster while operating without a working computer to call my own.

These stories will focus on the Baseball matters of our trip: which games we saw, the outcome, who played in them, how they played, and what the game means for each team and each player in the context of the upcoming season. These stories will hopefully be both informative and entertaining. They'll contain a lot of information, but hopefully it's information you'll enjoy reading about. I hope that because it's information I enjoy writing about. When those two things mesh up, it leads to more viewers of the blog.

The first game occurred on the evening of Friday, 3/18. My colleague and I had just finished the drive into the sun from Los Angeles to Phoenix, and we were hurtin' for some Baseball. Apparently all the interesting afternoon games (at 1pm) were already sold out, so we headed to Camelback Ranch in Glendale (Spring home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox) to 1) buy tickets to the 4pm White Sox home game against the Oakland Athletics and 2) watch the Dodgers minor leaguers practice beforehand.

The minor league practice fields were little better equipped than a pretty basic high school or college setup. Not even a full complement of bleachers - the one set of risers were occupied by other High Class A ballers leisurely watching the current game against a Texas Rangers minor league squad. Among the sea of unrecognizability, we did happen to run into a current Dodgers major league starter (Ted Lilly) doing some side work (he allowed 6 hits, including a 2-run homer), and a past/present/immortal Dodgers great (Tommy Lasorda) watching said starter do his thing.

By the time we wandered over to the main stadium, the A's were warming up and signing autographs. I didn't want to offer up my A's cap to the cause, so I had the team members I could catch up with sign on the team's page of the 2011 Hardball Times Annual. The names of some of  the players escape me now, but I think I live-tweeted them at some point.

After the autograph sesh, that's when the game started up. And that's where this intro ends. Tune in later for the technical stuff.


NEXT TIME:


Chapter 2: OAK @ CHW: 3/18/11!!!