Pitchers and catchers report to their spring training ballparks in Florida and Arizona this week, with the rest of the team arriving five days later. This is a wonderful time of year for baseball fans. Every team in major league baseball has a chance to win it all, no matter what the experts predict. My South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox, report to Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona today, anxious to get started with their climb back to respectability. Meanwhile, their North Side rivals, the Chicago Cubs, are having their pitchers and catchers report to Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona tomorrow, no doubt confident they are destined to finish first this year in the NL Central and move on to the playoffs. My adopted hometown team, the Colorado Rockies, are waiting until Thursday for pitchers and catchers to report to Salt River Fields at Talking Stick in Scottsdale, Arizona. As Rockies fans will remember, the pitching staff put up a 6.65 ERA last season, the worst in major league baseball since 1901, and the starting rotation tied a modern-era record with 93 losses. The Rockies missed tying the White Sox for the worst record in the history of baseball by 2 games, finishing with 119 losses. Perhaps management wants to put off seeing that pitching staff back in action as long as they can. Thursday doesn't work? How about next week instead? And yes, the photograph above is still another that I took at the late, great Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach during spring training back in March of 1996. Since I haven't been to a spring training game since then, I have a very limited number of spring training photos to show. Perhaps that's for the best.
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