After two years of no Spring Training baseball trips (2021 was cancelled due to COVID-19, and then 2022 was cancelled due to the MLB lockout), it’s finally time to get back out to the Cactus League! Last time we went out early at the beginning of the season but this year we’re going at the very end … and going to Opening Day in Seattle! Should be a blast …

I had a 7:30am EDT flight out of Tampa to Phoenix so I was up early Saturday morning. There was no one in the middle seat next to me (bonus!) and the flight was smooth and on-time when we landed at Sky Harbor around 8:40am PDT. My sister’s flight from Seattle was delayed (they were in the process of boarding the plane and had to get off and switch gates and planes!) so I hung out for a bit in the terminal before picking up our rental car. The new SkyTrain was a welcome addition to the airport … no more super long bus lines (I’m guessing the fact that Super Bowl LVII was held in Phoenix earlier this year might have contributed to a lot of the new rennovations I saw)!

Once I my sister arrived we drove out to Scottsdale to get lunch at In-and-Out (always a trip favorite) and then went over to the Frank Lloyd Wright complex at Taliesin West. Unfortunately, we hadn’t planned ahead and bought tickets and by the time we arrived all the tours were sold out. So we just walked around the open (“free”) area and visited the gift shop. Our original plan had been to hang out in the area since our first baseball game was this evening at Salt River Fields, but since our time at Taliesin West was short, and we couldn’t get into our Airbnb until after 3pm, we drove back towards downtown and went to the Desert Botanical Garden next to the Phoenix Zoo. It was a crisp, beautiful day, perfect for spending a few hours wandering around the trails, looking at the desert vegetation and wildlife, what a cool place!

Once we were able to check into the Airbnb we drove over to it and had some time to unpack, unwind, freshen up, and change for the baseball game. Then it was back to Scottsdale to watch our Cleveland Guardians take on the Colorado Rockies at Salt River Fields (at Talking Stick Resort). I had been to this park back in 2014 but it was a first for my sister, and it was also a night game so that was new for me (and once the sun was down, it got chilly quickly!). The new pitch clock definitely speeds up the game (it was just 2 hours and 8 minutes!) and the bigger bases look like pizza boxes. One cool thing about coming near the end of camp is that it’s mostly starters playing, so we got to see a lot of the big names from last year (Kwan, Staw, Gonzales, Zunino, etc.) beat the Rockies 4-2.

The first day is always the longest, especially with a night game, but since the game was shorter we made it back to the Airbnb at a “decent” time (even though it was after midnight EST for me). We’ll be up early, though, to catch workouts and batting practice over in Goodyear.