Baseball in Phoenix

There are two places to see spring training. One is in Florida (Grapefruit League) and the other is Arizona (Cactus League). So many of the teams in Arizona play around Phoenix we had quite a choice on who to go to see. Our first day we went to Peoria and watched the San Diego Padres batting practice and stayed for the game. It was $2 hot dog day.

This is Whitney and Dan enjoying batting practice in the shade. It cost $5 to park but we were about 15 cars from the entrance to the park and then the volunteers drove golf carts to take you wherever you needed to go.

They had this big baseball outside so of course we had to take a picture. It was 90 degrees this day so we all got pink before we put on our sunscreen.

The Padres played the Texas Rangers and the players are super nice about pictures and autographs. You can't get this close at a major league park.

Whitney has decided her favorite player is Josh Hamilton for the Rangers. So everytime he came to bat she went down close to take pictures and video.

On the second day we went to Surprise and saw the Texas Rangers batting practice.

Whitney decided that she needed to get autographs so Dan gave her his copy of Baseball Prospectus to sign. Minor league players wore gray pants and were very eager to sign the book.

Whitney waited for 30 minutes to get Josh Hamilton's autograph. Our friend Teri helped her by blocking people pushing from behind. He was very generous with his time, signing everything long after all of the other players went to lunch before their game. Since she got his autograph, we didn't have to go to the game.