PLAY BALL!
Spring training offers bonding and beer
With a satisfying crack, the hardball explodes off Miguel Montero’s bat. The crowd pauses for a second, then erupts in applause.
The hit line drives deep into centre field where Cincinnati Red Scott Schebler deftly scoops it up and catapults it to first base.
Montero, who’s an exceptional Chicago Cubs batter, but a slow runner, only makes it to first base.
This is Cactus League spring training action for 15 Major League Baseball teams in Arizona.
This sunny Saturday afternoon the Reds are visiting the Cubs at Sloan Field in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
Sloan, with its many nods to Wrigley Field in Chicago, is the Cubs’ home away from home during spring training, which runs March 1 through April 2.
As such, the capacity crowd of 15,000, made up mostly of Cubs fans from Chicago on vacation down south, has been waiting for the first Cubs hit of the game.
And it doesn’t come until catcher and designated hitter Montero whacks one in the second inning.
Montero becomes the Cubs star of the game, also scoring the team’s first run in the fourth inning and hitting a solo homer in the sixth. Alas, it isn’t enough. This day the Cubs will fall to the Reds 4-2.
Cubs fans are disappointed, but hardly despondent.
After all, they’ve just spent the afternoon watching professional ball in the sun in March.
The stadium announcer made sure during the game to remind the crowd that while the temperature in Mesa is a balmy 81F (27C) it was a freezing 31F (-1C) in Chicago.
Being built in 2014 with a capacity of 15,000, Sloan is the newest and largest of the 10 spring training stadiums in the Phoenix area.
My dad, my son and I have timed our jaunt to Phoenix from the Canadian cold to be an epic three-generation boys spring training and desert adventure.
My dad and my son are baseball fanatics. Me, not so much. But the chance to spend time together soaking up the festival baseball atmosphere and the Arizona sun makes it once-in-alifetime special.
Part of the ritual at Sloan is eating the same hot dogs and drinking the same beer as they do at Wrigley and getting some die-hard Cubs fans to sing “Take Me Out the Ball Game{ while standing atop the home team’s dugout during the seventh inning stretch.
Speaking of the dugout, we had extraordinary seats right behind it, so we could see the smile on Montero’s face as he high-fived teammates after scoring.