Spring Training!!!

Friday night we loaded up the car and headed to Phoenix, AZ for opening weekend of Spring Training for baseball.  We love baseball, and going to a spring training game was on both our bucket lists.  The supposed 6.5 hour drive actually took 9 hours after potty stops, dinner, and of course, LA traffic.  What a mess!  But we made it all in one piece and Saturday morning we headed out to Goodyear Ballpark to watch the Reds and Indians.

 

Goodyear was such a nice facility.  Small, so there wasn't a bad seat in the entire park.  We could see the players up close and personal, and felt a little star struck. 

The girls even got an autograph from Corky Miller!  Taylor loves his braces and 'stache.

 

The park was beautiful...I loved the palm trees!  I never get tired of seeing palm trees everywhere.

 

The view from our seats was perfect.  We have always wanted to sit behind home plate and finally got our chance!

 

The girls enjoyed the free balloon animals.  Monkeys, in case it's hard to tell :-)

 

 

Eating corn dogs and cotton candy may have been the highlight of the ball game for them.  They don't quite get all the rules yet, and get confused about when to cheer but they are really good at eating baseball snacks!

 

It was very cool when they opened the festivities with skydivers, who landed on the field right before the start.

 

We put on our super serious game-watching faces, and watched the Reds lose 13-10. 

 

 

But we still had a really good day, which finished with the girls getting a chance to run the bases at Goodyear Ballpark.  I was a little jealous!

 

 

And to finish a great day, we headed out to Cracker Barrel.  We were so excited to actually see a Cracker Barrel, because we don't have any within driving range in California.  It was so good!

 

Day 2 we headed East to Hohokam Park in Mesa, AZ, winter home of the Chicago Cubs.  This is the last year that the Cubs are playing in Hohokam before their new stadium opens next spring. 

 

 

 

We felt pretty strongly that they needed to upgrade to a new ballpark.  We didn't enjoy Hohokam nearly as much as we enjoyed Goodyear.  It probably didn't help that it was freezing cold and super windy on Sunday.  The vendors weren't set up to accept credit cards, it was cash only.  We never carry cash!  Plus, half the seats were bleachers.  Cold, hard, uncomfortable.  There were no mascots, no balloon animals, no running the bases.  And the PA system barely worked.  The music selection was terrible.  Basically, it just didn't seem like they put any effort into spring training games at all.  Whereas, at Goodyear it felt just like being at a regular season game.

 

We still enjoyed the small stadium feeling, and getting to see the players up close.  Watching batting practice from the front row was very cool.

 

They definitely had more colorful beer vendors at the Cubs game.  Taylor couldn't understand why anyone would want to buy "ice cold beer" when it was so cold outside.  Sadly, there were no piping hot chocolate vendors.

 

We only made it to the end of the 7th inning before we were way too cold and decided to get out of there.  Turns out the last 2 innings were uneventful and we didn't really miss anything.  Cubs beat the Giants, 4-3.  The lovely thing about coming home late Sunday was that Sunday night in LA was traffic free.  Not sure if that's normal, or if everyone was just at/watching the Oscars, but we enjoyed a lovely 6.5 hour drive home from Arizona.

I don't know if Spring Training is something we'll need to do again, now that we've experienced it but we are so glad to have gone and experienced it at least once.  We had so much fun, and it was probably one of the best weekends we've had in quite a while!