Spring Training: Buying tickets online in advance?!

By Ed Piper

I've never done Spring Training like this before.

Way back in 1994, my first full year living in San Diego, I left on a Thursday afternoon after substitute-teaching at Correia Middle School. After last period, I turned in my keys and walked from the school to the Shell station on West Point Loma Blvd., where I had left my car before school for an oil change.

I drove like the Dickens, and, much to my luck, the Angels game (opponent long forgotten) at Tempe Diablo Stadium--one of the most beautiful ball parks in the Phoenix/Tempe area with its rock formations beyond left field--was still going on when I arrived. By then it was 8 or 9 p.m. at night.

Whew. Long drive. The first of many.

Being single, I could bum it like I did. I found a park off one of the freeways--I have never been able to locate this idyllic spot since--to park my Toyota pickup next to. I slept in my camper shell, and ignorance was bliss.

I went to parts of seven different games over four days, a record I have never approached in several trips since. My wife would never agree to my sleeping in my truck next to a street.

What's more, at the ballparks I went to--including Peoria Stadium, where the Padres share training facilities with the White Sox--I could just walk up and buy a ticket. No problem. I'm not counting Cubs games, which have always been inundated by Cubbie fans, who are numerous.

It also became more difficult to get Angel tickets at the gate, after they won a World Series in 2002.

This year, for the first time, I'm buying tickets online in advance. I have never done that before. It feels different.

But I had to go this direction, at least for some games, because of my experience last year. In 2014, I drove like a mad man from San Diego because I wanted to attend a game at Sloan Park, the newer Cubs park. I had never been to a game there. It's way east of Phoenix/Tempe in Mesa, Arizona.

I'm kind of a ballpark guy, not a team guy. Sorry, you guys, I love you all but I'm not really a Padres fan. I've mentioned this in other posts on my blog. Don't pass out. I grew up in Long Beach and Camarillo, which are in Dodgers country.

After a fling with the Padres after moving here in the 90's, and getting my wife, who had never been to a game before she met me, to go to 22 games at Qualcomm Stadium in one season, she began bringing a novel, then finally said, "Ed, how about if you go alone?" That was the beginning of the end for my honeymoon with the Padres.

Anyway, back to Sloan Park. There were 38 tickets left when I bought my ticket, so I finally had to realize: This isn't working. I'm going to have to re-think my two-decade approach of showing up at the ballpark without ticket in hand.

Giants game sell out, following the three World Series victories. I grew up hating the Giants, rivals of my beloved boyhood Dodgers. But for some reason I'm attracted to see them. I got to see James Shields, as a new and high-priced free agent acquisition of the Padres last year, pitch an inning against Madison Bumgarner, the Giants' World Series record-setting pitcher, who went three innings.

Not wanting to lug my big camera equipment around, I took snapshots of them with my tiny point-and-shoot from far away.

Anyway, I've reformed my ways and been forced to go to the Internet to buy Spring Training tickets in advance. Who would have ever thought. I'm doing it for all six games I plan to go to over a five-day span in March, plus one extra travel day home.

The reason is that Spring Training, with all other sports events in our society, has grown to be a giant business drawing millions of people.

It was funny walking around Sloan Park last year seeing all the Chicagoans wearing shorts with dress shoes. No tan on their legs. Escapees from cold Illinois. Hey, I don't have any tan on my legs, and I'm a life-long Southern Californian!

I'll be at Sloan Park again March 4 for the Cubs' first Friday game the first week of Spring Training.

For you Padres fans, I will see them play the Rockies at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, a beautiful ballpark I first went to last year as well.