FanPost Friday: What do people need to know about spring training?

Every year one of the major milestones on the baseball calendar is the day when pitchers and catchers report. The Rockies battery-mates reported on Tuesday of this week, along with players participating in the World Baseball Classic. This was met with celebration in the baseball world, even though nothing of substance—at least from a observational perspective—will happen for several weeks.

Despite that fact, spring training seems to bring something out of even the casual baseball fan that NBA, NFL, NHL, or MLS cannot seem to match. Unlike those other sports, spring training offers a centralized location to soak in all that baseball has to offer partnered with warmer climes after a long cold winter. It’s a break from the winter and a harbinger of summer. All of this (and more!) makes spring training a wonderful destination trip, and many of us plan our springtime adventures around a trip to Arizona or Florida.

In order to help one another prepare for our own reporting to spring training, this week’s FanPost Friday asks:

What recommendations, advice, stories, experiences, tips, or tricks do you have to offer to help people to make the most out of their trips to spring training?

If you spend your entire trip to spring training shuttling between the ballpark and your hotel room, you’re sure to have a good time, but not the best time. For those of you who have been, tell us: where do you stay? When and where you buy tickets (and get the best deals)? What are your favorite stadiums and why? Where is the best place to sit in those stadiums? Where do you go out to consume food or imbibe beverages? What other activities do you enjoy in the Phoenix area? What are some of your favorite stories or experiences from your trips?

If you haven’t been to spring training, tell us: do you have any interest in going? If so, what do you hope for from your trip? Why haven’t you gone yet? If not, what’s holding you back (other than cost, obviously)?

Write up a FanPost and tell us all about your spring training experiences (or hoped for experiences). It could be a bulleted list, a fictional-but-emblematic folk tale, or anything in between.

As always, we’ll collect all of the posts in a recap next Friday and highlight some of the best contributions. This could be a good reference post for years to come, but only if you help!

Start your FanPost today!