If you are a baseball fan, you'll have to spend a week in Arizona or Florida at least once in order to experience Spring Training. There's no better way to melt away the winter blues and get back to the quiet, languid pace that makes baseball a special sport in our hyper-fast society.

For Spring Training games, you wander up to the gate, pay $5-10, and take a seat in a park that seats maybe 5,000 people. It's half-full. People are having beers at 1 p.m. You sit back, unbutton your shirt, and let the sun shine on you.

The players on the field are a mix of established major leaguers, promising minor leaguers, and guys hoping for a lucky break. And while the games are taken seriously by the guys who are on the field, everyone else has other tasks that are of greater concern. You'll see guys running wind sprints in the outfield between innings, and pitchers working on curveballs off to the side, and bullpen pitchers who are happy to sign autographs during a game. When a guy you've never heard of comes up and pops a homer or makes a diving stop at 3rd base, you can make a mental note to tell you friends at home that you saw him before they did.

Ever hoped to catch a ball at a game? You'll never have better odds than at spring training.

One of my favorite activities at Spring Training is to arrive during practice, or even to go to an open practice on a day when the team is playing elsewhere. Then I stand as close as possible behind the catcher as he works with a young pitcher. Usually there's a guy on the main mound, and a backstop behind the mound, so I'm allowed to stand right at the backstop. And I pretend that I'm trying to hit those pitches as the fastballs pop into the glove, or the curveball sweeps down and away. It's awe-inspiring to think about how anyone can hit against these guys.

So what are you waiting for? Get a cheap flight today, and check out the schedules on the Internet (www.mlb.com). You can be in the bleachers for tomorrow's doubleheader.

(One note of caution: A few very popular teams, like the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox, will occasionally have spring training sellouts. So plan ahead if you want to see those teams. You won't have a problem with anyone else.)

Learn more about this author, B. B. James.
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