This used to be when baseball spring training really arrived. Pitchers and catchers reported at the end of February. The rest of the team strolled in to start playing exhibition games a week or so later. Opening Day was almost a month away.
The stadiums were often glorified Class C ballparks, in an age when there was a Class C — and only Class D was lower. It was super casual, tickets were cheap, stands were frequently half-full and fans had easy access to players… if not at the park then perhaps at the grocery store or the beach, if there was one.
Replays don’t get much more distant than that!
Spring training today? The first exhibition game was February 9. Full squads reported by February 18. The regular season starts March 27. These are all the products of big money. Spring training is big money, because the teams need as many revenue streams as possible to pay players who in this era earn enough to own the grocery stores… or the beaches.
Those half-filled Class C ballparks of yesteryear are gone. Today’s major-league teams have complexes, or share complexes, and have for years. They “economized” by upgrading and sharing facilities, in Florida and Arizona, playing games against teams within an hour’s drive.
The last spring training game I attended — as a former baseball writer — was in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. My buddy and I wanted to see the San Francisco Giants play the Chicago White Sox, because he was a long-time Giants fan and I’d followed the White Sox since childhood.
Just for fun, I’m doing a virtual re-visit. The Giants and White Sox play in Glendale next Monday, St. Patrick’s Day, and you wouldn’t think this would be a particularly hot promotion. While both play in cities with 19th-century Irish connections, as do most large American cities, it’s not like they’re Boston.
And it’s not like the feature attractions are wearing World Series rings. Last year’s Giants were two games below .500, while the White Sox had the worst record of any major-league team…ever. When we saw them at Camelback Ranch nine years ago, our tickets cost about $35 each.
Next Monday, these two relatively-bad baseball teams will meet in an exhibition game that may or may not feature major-league players, because this is the time for seeing if suspects are prospects, and if the prospects are for real, like the established players who are more likely to be watching from the dugout, or not at all.
You can still get a ticket for about $35, but you’ll be watching from outside the outside, and be sitting on the grass. If you’d like to have an actual seat and be a little closer, you can be the same distance from home plate as the outfielders are, but you’ll likely pay twice that. Infield seats could be as high as $90 and you can play umpire by sitting behind home plate for $130, minimum.
Spring training games are near sellouts now.
When the players are multi-millionaires, when the average salary is nearing $5 million, they have to be. Like cars and eggs and plane tickets, baseball is a whole new ball game.
