Everything You Never Knew You Wanted to Know About Going to Astros Spring Training

So you've finally decided to go to Astros Spring Training - despite my Spring Training Heaven post! Now you have to figure out all of the logistics: How to get there? Where to stay? Rental car? What else is there to do in Kissimmee? The first year I went to Spring Training (2005), I was overwhelmed with all the details, but now, on my fifth trip it's about as scary as planning a trip to visit my parents. Maybe less scary.

My young-but-wise rabbi says that some sermons are informational and some are inspirational, and it's important to know the difference. Blogs are similar - if Spring Training Heaven was supposed to be inspirational, this one is all information. Boring and dry perhaps - but hopefully useful!

How to Get There on a Budget

I'm really talking here about how fly there on a budget, since I'm coming down from the Washington DC area. One consideration is that there are multiple choices for airports. While the Orlando Airport (MCO) is closest - not far at all from the ballpark, Tampa (TPA) is just an hour or so away. Another thing to remember: There's generally no discount for buying round trip tickets, so you can get one-way flights into one airport and out through another, depending on the prices and schedules that best fit your needs. The past couple of years, I've flown into Tampa, picked up my rental car, driven to Kissimmee where I stayed, and then flew out from Orlando, turning in my rental car at the airport there. (More on rental cars below.) I've got cousins in Tampa, so it's a good excuse to visit family. But mainly, it just turned out to be better flight options for me.

Another consideration, when looking for good deals on flights: Tuesday and Wednesday are generally cheaper days to fly than Sundays. In a previous blog entry I wrote about how to pick what dates you want to go to Spring Training - mainly based on finding clumps of home games. If you can arrange for mid-week travel, staying over the weekend, you'll find much better deals on flights.

I generally take an evening flight home, following an afternoon game. If the game is over around 4 PM or so, you can be at the airport - about 13 miles away - in less than half an hour. You can even grab some dinner first and still return your rental car, get through security, and make an 8 PM flight without hassle.

Where to Stay on a Budget

There are a gazillion hotels, motels, resorts, "resorts," townhouses, condos, etc. in Kissimmee! Not in the town itself, which is pretty small, but in the greater area referred to as Kissimmee. There are more hotels/motels per square acre there than just about anywhere in the country! Why? I'll give you a hint: Search for Kissimmee hotels on your favorite travel site, and you'll see many of the usual hotels with titles like "Maingate" or "Maingate East." What gate? The gate to Disney. Kissimmee is where the people who go to Disney stay!

There's a nonstop row of places to stay, of all types and price ranges, from scuzzy to swank. Most of them are on or adjacent to US Hwy 192, AKA Irlo W. Bronson Memorial Highway. This is a long stretch of road, with a ton of traffic, and (despite the "highway" moniker) traffic lights at every intersection. Hwy 192 runs from just past Disney on the West, past the turn to the Stadium about 20 miles east, and then on to Melbourne (Florida, not Australia) on the Atlantic Coast. The higher the numbers get on Irlo Bronson, the closer you are to Disney - and the farther you are from Osceola County Stadium. Big numbers are great if you're there for Disney World, but me, I'm there for baseball. The prices kind of go along that line too - as you get closer to the Holy Disney Empire the hotels get fancier and more expensive.

The trick - if you're watching your budget - is to find someplace nice and comfortable that's reasonably priced. "Comfortable" is kind of a relative term - reflecting your age, lifestyle, tolerance for noise, interest in partying, etc. I'm a married female who goes to Spring Training with my husband or adult sons or (this year) my sister who's celebrating a round-number birthday. I like cleanliness, availability of fridge and microwave, and highspeed Internet access - so I can update my blog and post my photos. I don't like rooms (and guests) who rent by the hour and loud music after 2 AM. I also don't care about fancy soap or entertainment facilities at the hotel, although an exercise room is nice. I also want to spend under $100 a night, so that leaves out the luxury hotels. That's just me (boring and frugal) - you might have other ideas about what's comfortable or nice.

The first year I went to Spring Training, I found an article in the Washington Post travel section that purported to list the 25 best cheap places to stay in Orlando. I was looking for someplace inexpensive where I could have a separate space for my slightly grouchy adult son. I picked a bright pink Howard Johnson's in the 4800 block of Irlo Bronson (Rt 192), where I got a 2 BR/2 bath + kitchen "suite" for about $75 a night. It was serviceable, not too scuzzy, not too nice either. I looked elsewhere the next year, and found the Baymont Hotel (5100 block), where I got a room with a fridge and microwave, free Internet, plus a hot breakfast, for about the same price. People there were friendly and helpful, room was clean. I liked it so much that I went back to the same place the following year. It had been bought by Best Western, but was pretty much the same. Both of these places are about 7-8 miles from the stadium.

Last year, though, I decided that it was silly to be staying at hotels that are closer to Disney than to the ballpark. I found a "resort" that was walking-distance (about a mile) to the stadium, with 2 BR/2 bath full kitchen townhouses that go for under $100 a night. Note the quote marks on "resort": The Villas at Fortune Place are nowhere in the vacinity of being a "resort" so if that's what you want, pick something else. It's very boring looking from the outside - a townhouse city with palm trees - but inside the townhouses are comforable and furnished with the usual Florida casual stuff. The exercise room is minimal, and while there is highspeed Internet, it's only next to the pool. (There were always more people sitting on the porch with their laptops than in the pool.) It's next door to a Publix grocery and across the street from a Latino grocery - very convenient, since you have a kitchen. The best part for me was easy access to the stadium and to the practice fields - about a five minute drive, tops. You could even walk and save the hefty parking fee. The main "disadvantage" of this place seems to be that it's so far from Disney - which I consider to be a blessing. Anyway, overall it was a good place to stay, within my budget, and meeting my needs, and I'm planning to stay there again this year.

Rules of thumb for picking motels: Watch out for places that are pink (check the online photos), or have the word "flamingo" in their names. The online travel web sites (I like tripadvisor.com) generally have customer comments and ratings, which can be very helpful. But they are unmoderated comments, so you have to take the ratings with a grain of salt. Who knows who is really writing those glowing reports (the motel staff?) or the "roaches and mildew" complaints (the competing motel accross the street?)? If you find some fantastic place for $39 a night, let me know - I've never had the nerve to try one.

Saving Money on Your Rental Car

If there's public mass transit in Central Florida, I haven't found it. You need a car. Last year I learned a huge lesson about saving money on rental cars: If you pick up your car outside of the airport, it may be much cheaper. Last year, I saved about $100 off my weeklong rental by picking my car up at the Budget lot just outside the Tampa airport (a 5 minute taxi ride). I returned it to the Orlando airport without an additional charge. You can also Google to find discount codes, sign up for a free member card (not a credit card), or look for coupons to knock the rental cost down further. But the main cut in price came from picking up the car outside the airport. Last year I reserved a compact car, and got a black PT Cruiser that had just come in (6 miles on the odometer) - it was really easy to find in the stadium parking lot amidst all of the white Ford Focuses and silver Hyundais! It was $160 for the week.

The only gotcha: These locations, unlike the airport rental car desks, don't stay open all night long. The one in Tampa closes at 6 PM, so if you have a late flight, it's not a good option.

How to Go to Games on a Budget

Don't bother. You're going there to see baseball, right? So buy the best tickets you can, preferably the first day they go on sale in January. Better yet, find the presale password, and buy the best tickets available two days before they go on sale in January. (Mysteriously, the tickets for the Yankee games will already be almost sold out...) In the scheme of things, the difference between the cheapest seat and most expensive isn't going to make or break your budget.

If you are reading this in March, you can probably just get your tickets at the stadium and save yourself all those annoying fees that Ticketmaster adds on ($4 per ticket, plus $4 per order - and each game is a separate order!). Other than the Yankees games, I doubt they're going to be sold out.

Here's my personal favorite place to sit: Section 103 - right behind the Astros bullpen. If you get a seat up close, the relief pitchers will be sitting right in front of you. Great place to shoot photos of guys scoring or stealing second base, left-handed batters, pitchers (either hand), and the antics of the third base coach. I could write a whole blog just on taking pictures at Osceola County Stadium - maybe I will! If you look at the Spring Training photos in the Photo Album on my website, you'll see why.

Supposedly you can't bring food into the stadium, but that rule really seems to apply to bringing in food that they sell there. I always bring my own food, since I keep kosher, and I generally don't have a problem taking it in. (They do search bags.) You can bring in bottled water. I always buy a case of bottled water when I get to Kissimmee (the tap water is disgusting) and stick a few bottles in the freezer to take to the games. (If you rent a place with a kitchen or even a coffee maker, use the bottled water to make coffee!)

Splurge and buy a Spring Training cap at the stadium store. But better yet - buy a copy of the Astros Media Guide. It's about ten bucks and will provide hours of pleasurable bedtime reading, if you are really really nerdy and sabermetricious. (Yes, you can get the Press Pass for every game free online, but it's hard to cuddle up with the computer.)

And by the way, you can go to the practice fields (on days there are no games) for free. It's fantastic - lots of players, and a lot fewer fans.

Time for bed - tomorrow's a work day. Next time I'll write about what else - besides baseball - there is to do when you go to Kissimmee. (Promise: It will not include anything about Disney.)

Spring Training Heaven

After my first March pilgrimage to Florida in 2005, I came back and wrote a long paean called "Spring Training Heaven" -- how my idea of heaven was something along the lines of Groundhog Day, only set in Kissimmee. I remember how surprised I was when I later read in Alyson Footer's columns how the players find Spring Training tedious and can't wait for it to end. For them, a March without end, stuck in the armpit of Orlando, might be how Sartre would have written No Exit if only he'd been American. Anyway, embarrassing or not, since I never posted it with my 2005 Game Diary, I'm reproducing it here.

Spring Training Heaven

Sometimes I have this fantasy about my own personal version of heaven: You die and go to Spring Training. Get up every morning and head out to watch warm-ups, batting practice, pitching, coaching. Grab some lunch and then head over to Osceola County Stadium for the game. You sit in Section 103, Row 2. Row 1 is the Astros bullpen: It's just a bench with a water cooler on it, and an assortment of hunky guys in red Astros Spring Training jerseys. Today's starter - maybe Pettitte, or Clemens, or Oswalt - is warming up a few feet away. Or maybe it's some minor leaguer, trying out for the fifth spot - Ezekiel or Wandy or some new kid you've never seen before.

The relief pitchers are sitting right in front of you, spitting sunflower seeds. There are some -- Franco, Gallo, Harville -- who you don't know whether to love or hate, because you know that sometime in the next few months you'll be groaning when they blow a great start by Clemens or Oswalt. Then there are Wheeler, Qualls, Lidge (be still my heart). Some minor leaguers you've never heard of, and maybe some older guys, non-roster invitees, veterans who used to be better than they are now.

You can eavesdrop on the relievers from Section 103. They rag on the other team. Maybe they'll talk about what they did last night, or where they plan to go after this afternoon's game. They won't be talking about The Future, because in this version of heaven, Spring Training just goes on and on forever. There's no regular season, no post-season, and, best of all, no off-season. Just March, with its sunny afternoons, an occasional cloudburst to cool things off. No rainouts. No delays.

After a while the Good Guys come in, lugging their bags full of bats, gloves, gear. Since it's Heaven, it's always going to be your old favorites - Bagwell, Biggio, Berkman, Ausmus. Plus some new favorites who have done well - Willie Taveras, who made everyone forget about Carlos Beltran in his rookie year. Then for variety, a mix of your really old-time favorites, visiting from the past - Jimmy Wynn and Joe Morgan and Rusty Staub. Maybe Norm Miller and Bob Aspromonte and Roger Metzger. And, of course, a mix of really new guys, up from Corpus or Round Rock, rotating through week by week. They get to stay and play for a day or a week or more, depending on how well they're hitting.

Every day in Spring Training Heaven is a home game. Since it's Heaven, the Astros get to play all the other major league teams, not just the Grapefruit League teams. Most of the games are against teams you like to see - teams with ex-Astro players you remember fondly. The Phillies with Billy Wagner closing (but in Spring Training he pitches in the 7th inning). Or teams you love to hate - especially the Mets.

Even though it's Heaven, the Good Guys don't win every game. That would be boring. The games don't count anyway, so you don't care whether they win all the time, as long as you get to see some good stuff. Of course, the Astros always beat the Mets. They almost always beat the Cards and the Braves.

In Spring Training they still sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame at the 7th inning stretch. They never sing God Bless America. There are no security guards at the stadium, no terrorist threats.

Even though it's Heaven, the food still isn't kosher. But they don't care if you bring your own food into the stadium. A large lemonade is free with every ticket and every ticket is free too. You don't even have to pay for parking.

The players come out for batting practice, throw the ball around the field for a while, stand around and yak with each other. Some of them bring their kids, who wear miniature uniforms with daddy's name on the back. In Spring Training Heaven, none of the players bring their wives. (Hey, it's my version of Heaven, not theirs!) Before the game starts, you shoot a lot of close-ups of the Good Guys, and all the pictures come out great. You don't even need to crop them or muck around with color and contrast.

Brad Lidge is sitting on the bench right in front of you in the Houston bullpen. Little kids come up and ask him politely for his autograph, and he's nice to them. They also ask Wheeler and Qualls and the bat boy. In Spring Training Heaven, there are no adult autograph seekers, with their boxes of memorabilia to sell on eBay.

Game Time. In Spring Training Heaven, someone different sings the Star Spangled Banner every day. But no one ever sings it in hip hop or rock beats, or forgets the words, or (being a non-native speaker of English) memorizes the words incorrectly. No one sings it out of tune, or misses '"free" by a mile and makes you grind your teeth. After the national anthem, all the players finger-comb their hair, as if it really matters how their hair looks when they plunk their caps on.

Sitting in Section 103, you have a great view and can eavesdrop on the relievers. But you can't see into the Astros dugout, and the view of the right-handed batters isn't as good. And, of course, being on the third-base side, you're farther away from Bagwell on first. So every third game you get tickets across the stadium, in Section 117, right behind the opposing team's bullpen. You have to put up with their fans, who tend to congregate on that side of the field. But as long as the Good Guys are winning, they are pretty subdued. Anyway, you have to let them have their fun, especially when one of their players is so exceptional that you want to cheer for him. Like Dontrelle pitching a shutout for the Marlins, hitting a double when he's up to bat, galloping around the bases like a giant colt -- then diving into home plate (pitching hand first!) to score on a single. Crazy fool! It's just Spring Training! But you've got to appreciate his chutzpah; you aren't his manager. Maybe since it's Heaven, Ausmus tags him out on a perfect throw from Taveras in center field. There is a limit to appreciation, after all.

From Section 117, you've got a great view of Bagwell and Biggio, playing back, yakking between batters. Bagwell looks so serious at the plate, but on first base, he's chatty with the ump, the opposing team's first base coach, the rare runner who makes it to first base, and of course, with Biggio between batters. Bagwell and Biggio start every game at first and second base, stay in for three at-bats, then come out to let the new kids play an inning or two.

On the first base side, you also have a great view of the right-handed batters. You get a lot of great shots of your favorite players up to bat. Every day you take ten more pictures of Bagwell at the plate in his crazy batting stance, crouched with his feet 3 feet apart. He goes through his batting ritual, adjusts the wrist straps on his batting gloves, windmills the bat a couple of times before pulling it up over his right shoulder. He still drops his bat down a bit before he swings (his pre-2005 swing), then raises it back up and lets it fly, hitting a long fly ball over the left field wall. In Spring Training Heaven, Bagwell's shoulder might give him a twinge now and then, but he isn't in excruciating pain all the time. He can throw a bullet to home plate and he can hit home runs in every game. He never strikes out looking.

In Spring Training Heaven Biggio is always the leadoff hitter. He still gets hit by a lot of pitches, but he never gets hurt. In honor of his rightful place at second base, he gets a lot of doubles. But he doesn't stay there long; he steals third whenever he has the chance. And of course, Bagwell hits him around.

In Spring Training Heaven Ausmus changes his batting stance every fourth week; this week he is experimenting with a high kick.

In Spring Training Heaven the Good Guys win 75% of the games. But you don't really care, since the games don't count. Every game is played for the pleasure. The players don't even get paid. (Who needs money when you're dead anyway?) They are there as a reward for a career of games well played, if not a life well lived. A few (on the other teams, of course) are there as their Eternal Punishment - Spring Training Hell for players who cheated or used steroids or were jerks off the field. They get to play every game, but make lots of fielding errors; they strike out looking or embarrass themselves swinging wildly at Lidge's slider. Then there are some, all ex-Astros, who are in Spring Training purgatory. Carlos Beltran is one of them. He hits lots of homers and makes great catches playing center field for the Mets for eternity. But it's all for naught: The Mets lose every single game.

Over on the Other Side, in the so-called real world, life goes on. Every year the off-season grows longer and colder. The fans go stir crazy, watching reruns of their favorite games on the mlb.tv archives. Some get desperate and have to take up watching football games to pass the time. Their day jobs are boring; they spend their lives surrounded by people who don't know the difference between Burke and Berkman. Here in Spring Training Heaven, it's March, the sun is shining, the beer is cold, and the dress code is always casual. The singer hits the high note on "free" perfectly. The players are just about to take the field. Come on, admit it: Real life is boring. Spring Training is heaven.

Susan Lilly
Spring Training, March 2005, Kissimmee, Florida

Five Things to Consider When Picking Dates for Astros Spring Training

Someone asked Alyson Footer a question about when is the best time to come to Spring Training, and she answered, comparing February (to see practices) to March (to see games). As a reporter who comes for all of Spring Training -- and gets paid to do it -- she may not be the best guide on this subject. On the other hand, I've got the selection of Spring Training dates down to an art form. There are whole books of tips for Spring Training, but for me, it can be reduced to five things to consider:

1. Forget about February. You want to see games! So plan to come in March. (The February and April games this year are an anomaly, due to the WBC.) On no-game days, you can get into the morning practices, so you can have both. Last year I got an extra bonus: I got to see Bagwell at the practice field working with the Minor League guys.

2. Look at the Spring Training schedule. The dark-grey blocks are home games. Unless you want to chase the team all over Central Florida, you want to find a week (or however long you can stay) that has a clump of home games. For instance, let's say you can only go for 5 days. March 8-12 would be a lousy choice, since there is only one home game in that time block. March 20-24, on the other hand, has 4 games - much better! Treat an away game against the Braves as a home game, since they play down the road at Disney.

3. Do you want to check out lots of prospects or do you really want to see the team that is likely to start the season? If you want to see the "kids," come early in March, before they start getting sent down to Minor League camp. In 2006, I came the first week of March, saw Hunter Pence (wearing jersey 91) up for a "cup of coffee," then saw him the next day on the practice field in his Minor League jersey.

4. Do you really want to check out the pitching rotation? If you come early in March, the starters will only be pitching a couple of innings. Late in the month they'll be in for 5 or 6 innings.

5. Do you particularly want to see (or want to avoid) a specific opposing team? Me, I don't care, but there are a whole bunch of folks who are gaga for the Yankees. If one of your games is against the Yankees, get your tickets as early as possible (like the day the go on sale in January) or you might be disappointed in the seat selection. Better yet, avoid the Yankees games unless you're a New Yorker - they jack up the ticket prices and the fans are, shall we say, not very polite.

I've come to Spring Training early, mid, and late, and each has its advantages. The only really bad choice is not to come to Spring Training!

What I Hate About Baseball Blogs

The Houston Chronicle sports writers all blog. Now Alyson's got a blog too. I don't have any gripes about these bloggers, since they're professionals who generally have something to say that's worth reading. It's the so-called fans who post opinions that are annoying - the ones who:
-Berate the reporters for bothering to write about players they deem as losers (or worse).
-Declare the season dead on arrival before the position players have even reported to Spring Training.
- Feel sorry for themselves for having to live through what promises to be a totally frustrating season.

I stopped reading comment postings in the Chronicle last season, because so many of them were on the verge of abusive. There were some interesting and insightful ones mixed in too, but they'd often be buried in mean-spirited griping about the players, coaches, owners -- and other fans. I still read the online articles and blogs, but just skipped the comment feedback.

This year, the Astros.com site has been bitten by the Web 2.0 bug - now all the articles have comments, and the cranks and complainers have taken center stage. I wasn't going to add to the problem by commenting on the comments, but I couldn't stand it. After "commenter" (a big whiner) bashed various aspects of the team, and then posted: It's going to be a really long season of futility," I felt compelled to respond:

Wow, it really WILL be a long season if we all have to listen to you guys whine about the team every day! I bet on June 1, 2005, when you opened your newspaper and saw that tombstone, you were all nodding like bobbleheads. Not me - I still believed they were going to the World Series. I'd rather be a loony and still be cheering than be gloomy all season. And the position players haven't even showed up yet! As a Fan in Exile, I'm totally dependent on electronic media like Astros.com and mlb.tv to follow my team during the regular season. One of the things I've always liked about reading Astros.com is the way that Alyson Footer can write up a less-than-perfect game with both angst and humor, and can report realistically when things are down without being whiny. I'm not sure that the inclusion of these wah-wah-wah complaints is an improvement...I can't wait to get to Kissimmee!

That quickly got me tagged as a "loony" who needed to read the newspaper and be "realistic," to which I replied:

Commenter - Alas, when I open my newspaper (Washington Post), I won't see more than the occasional one-liner discussng the Astros and the daily boxscore! If i wanted to live in the past, I'd remember the Astros (Colts) in the 60's, when I first became a big fan - despite them! I'm an engineer, and a Sabermetrician-wannabee, so I understand about looking at facts and figures. I also know that it's virtually impossible to accurately predict the performance of extremely complex systems, let alone the relative performance as compared to other extremely complex systems. If that weren't the case, we could just run computer models, with the gazillions of baseball stats, and declare a winner -- why bother with the season? If you want to be "realistic" (pessimistic) so that you don't risk being disappointed later, that's cool. But it's also cool to be moved to tears every year at the first glimpse of the field in Osceola Park, to hope for the unexpected, and to enjoy the ride.

After that a couple of people jumped on the bandwagon and agreed: What's the point of being a fan if you're so "realistic" (i.e., pessimistic) that you already dread the losing season that hasn't yet started?

Alyson Footer kicked off her new blog with news from Spring Training, her Kissimmee restaurant recommendations, and reminders to bring sun block. The comments so far have been friendly, but I suspect that once the season starts and the Astros lose a few games, the gripers and complainers will predominate.

I suppose that it's fairly hypocritical of me to criticize baseball blogs, while writing in one. It's probably even more hypocritical to criticize baseball blogs comment posters, and then to quote my Astros.com postings in my own baseball blog. But on the other hand, since I'm the only person who reads this blog, I can say whatever I want without anyone posting any complaints.

Refreshing the Astros Fan in Exile Website

After the long winter hiatus, I've returned to Astros Fan in Exile Website, only to discover that I never actually got around to updating the player pages of the Photo Album after Spring Training. I did post several pages of Spring Training photos, but I guess the season started and I got distracted with real games. Knowing that I'm likely to return from Spring Training with a few thousand new pictures, I decided to try to get my website fixed up before I go.

Of course, I immediately concluded that the site needed a new design. I did jiggle around a few things on the home page, but it was the Photo Album that needed to be redesigned entirely. Those slide show gadgets loaded really slowly and made the pages ugly. Instead I decided to just post pages of thumbnails that could be enlarged to full size by clicking. I started last night and worked on it most of the day - made some progress but there 's still a lot to do. I want to have at least one page of photos for each player on the 25-man roster, coming out of Spring Training. And I'd like to have a page of pictures for many of my old favorites, who've left the team by retirement, trade, or free agency.

So far, it's coming along - I have updated the existing "current roster" player pages, and added a few new ones - Matsui and Tejada, who were not previously on the team, Backe who I'd never actually seen pitch until last year. I updated a few of the old friends pages, and one of the event pages - the Nats game from July.

I'm not totally thrilled with the results, though: The software I use to create the pages arbitrarily crops the thumbnails into square formats, brutally decapitating many of the player photos. They look fine when you click on them, but given how carefully I crop them, it's annoying to see a page of headless or handless players. It's also annoying that once you do click on a picture, bringing up the fullsized photo, there is no "slide show" option, just a "Next" button that's invisible until you mouse over it - if you know to do that. The pictures do look nice blown up though - in the old slide viewer, I had to shring them down to about 300 pixels in the longest direction. I wish that I could load the full-sized high res photos, but they are large files, and my web hosting arrangement is pretty limited.

It's not clear to me why I go to all this trouble to make the website nice, or for that matter, why I update bother to this blog. I never do anything to advertise the website or the blog, so there are only sporadic hits. I don't get any comments on the blog entries, which I interpret to mean that I am the only one who reads them. I'm not complaining - I'm not sure that I really want to have any readers. And I am sure that I don't want to have to monitor annoying comments. If people did comment, I'd probably have turned that feature off by now. I haven't yet decided whether I am going to write up every game of the season, as I did in 2005, 2006, and 2008. It's a lot of work, and as noted, I'm the only known reader.

I guess that I'll go to Spring Training, see what the team looks like, and then decide. Meanwhile, I have a few thousand more pictures to post.

Pitchers and Catchers are in Kissimmee

It may still be chilly outside here in Maryland, but with the Astros' pitchers and catchers working out in Kissimmee, I know that spring is just around the corner. My tickets are already tucked away in my camera bag, and my flights to Florida are booked. Baseball is back!

I went to Houston last week for the funeral of a favorite aunt - a wonderful, intelligent, and creative person (although not a baseball fan). After the funeral, we went back to a cousin's home for lunch, and I found myself at a table with several other Astros fans. While this is a normal occurrence for people who actually live in Houston, for me it's a rare thrill to be able to talk baseball with others who cheer for my team - the lonely aspect of being a Fan in Exile. I turned on my laptop and set it up to do a slide show of pictures from Spring Training last year, getting more appreciative oohs and aahs than I ever get at home. (Especially from the women, when I got to the closeups of Brad Ausmus.) I had thought a bit, during the long winter (any months without baseball seem to drag on and on), whether I should just give it up. Why be a Fan in Exile for my original home team - especially now that some of my team favorites are gone? Now that Washington has a team, why not change my allegiance? I can just hop on a Metro train from my office and go to Nationals games all summer. I don't mind if they are not a winning team this year - God knows that I cheered for the Astros enough in the bad old days of my childhood, when I hardly ever saw them win. I always kind of liked cheering for the underdog.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to see a lot of regular season games in a stadium, not just on my computer? Wouldn't it be nice to be cheering for the home team for a change?

I really did think about this, for a few minutes during the off season. And that was it. Then I went back to reading Astros.com and the sports section of the Chronicle, catching up on trade rumors and checking out the prospects. Waiting for Spring Training, so I could make my annual pilgrimage to Kissimmee.

Pitchers and catchers had their first practice today. First thing after the Sabbath ended tonight,* I turned on my laptop to see how it went. WOOO HOOO - baseball is back!

* The blogger server must be on the West Coast - the time stamp on my entries are 3 hours early.

Spring Training Alpha State

Ever since I purchased my Spring Training tickets last week, I need only imagine myself sitting in the sun in Osceola Stadium, right behind the bullpen, and I immediately go into an alpha state. There's just something about Spring Training that brings on a mood of total relaxation and euphoria. I don't even have to be there; just thinking about it makes me happy.

Every year the big decision is when to go? Early in March, I'll get to see more of the minor leaguers up for their cup of coffee. But the starting pitchers only throw a couple of innings. If I go late in the month, after most of the young guys are sent back down to the minor league camp, I'll get to see the final roster guys, and the pitchers will be up to 5 or 6 innings. This year, it's all complicated by the World Baseball Championship. The Spring Training games start early - in late February - and end late - in early April. But some of the major league players may be gone, playing for their home countries' WBC teams. It would be a bummer to miss seeing Oswalt, who's going to be the USA team ace.

In the end, it usually comes down to figuring out which week has the most home games, since I don't want to drive all over Central Florida to go to the games. Besides the starters often stay back home on away game days. This year, the best week for me is smack in the middle of Spring Training. While I generally don't care which teams the Astros are playing against, I did end up with a good set: Starting with the Yankees, ending with my arch-enemy Mets. The Nats in the middle - good chance to take some photos for my local friends. The Reds (our division) and the Rays (last year's AL champs) round it out.

The next big question is who can I sucker into going with me? While my son Josh (the Yankee fan) would enjoy it, he's busy with his last semester of law school. Older son David went with me once in 2005, and that was enough for life. Husband Robert, who couldn't care less about sports events, has gone to Kissimmee at least part of the week for the past 3 years. My daughters don't like baseball, and my friends think my passion for the Astros is unnatural. But this year I found the perfect Spring Training partner - my sister, who was an Astros fan years ago, and who's celebrating her 50th birthday right in the middle of March. It will be a nice gift for both of us - I'll treat her to Spring Training and she'll treat me to being with someone who actually wants to be there!

I'm not really in a rush for Spring Training to arrive. Now that I've scored my tickets (good seats, bought in the presale), I'm enjoying just thinking about being there. There's just something about a field of green, speckled with dozens of young men in tight pants, that puts me in a great mood.