WBC and Spring Training

Topps 2023 baseball cards for Padres (from left):

Ha Seong Kim, Juan Soto, and Blake Snell.

By Ed Piper

Pretty intense is the word--two words--to describe right now in sports, including the second or third week of high school sports at La Jolla High.

Mainly with the excitement in the baseball world, the World Baseball Classic starts tomorrow night (March 7) with Latin teams, especially, feeling the excitement of their fans and Team Dominican Republic favored to win the whole thing. (Nelson Cruz is general manager/designated hitter of the team, as he networks and helps build enthusiasm among his compatriots on the island.)

MLB Spring Training, which I would normally have visited by now (I favor the last weekend in February, because it isn't yet hot-hot-hot like late March and I can get an early glimpse of workouts of some of the 15 teams in 10 complexes in Greater Phoenix), is going to take a backseat to the WBC March 7-21 while many members of teams go off to play for the Netherlands (Xander Bogaerts, shortstop for the Padres), the Dominican Republic (Manny Machado), Canada (Freddie Freeman--who would have thought both his parents were born in the Great White North?).

Viewing the WBC is going to be a little weird: lots of games at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Pacific Time on FSN1. Also, Fox; also TruTV, I think. What FSN2 is, I don't know. I called Spectrum, and Angela, my respondee, couldn't find a listing for FSN2. Some kind of streaming?

I drove Spectrum crazy by calling twice about getting MLB Extra Innings during the regular season. "That hasn't dropped yet," said my first agent three weeks ago. I have never watched as many MLB games as I did last year, when I first, belatedly, discovered Extra Innings. I couldn't believe I never tried it before!

What finally pushed me to try, and like it, was the increasing cost of going to a baseball game in person. Ticket plus transpo plus concessions is a lot of money, whether Petco Park or going all the way up to Dodger Stadium, which I did until two years ago (not counting 2020 and COVID).

I keep repeating the story the last week or so that I used to buy a ticket and attend a game at Qualcomm Stadium in the old days for $4--park free on the dirt next to IKEA, walk up and buy a centerfield seat for $4, then watch a game and read a book the rest of the afternoon. That's when I was single and had nothing better to do on Sunday afternoons.

In the days of Tom Werner, and after the "fire sale" of valuable Padres to gut the franchise in the early 90's, it was super-cheap to go to a game. There were so few people in the stadium, you could hear a single voice calling out to the players. Incredible compared to today's noisebox.

Shohei Ohtani of the Angels, warming up to pitch

for the Japan national team against China.

(Photo capture of TV screen)