by Michael Duca
MESA AZ–The Oakland A’s new stadium for spring training known as Ho Ho Kam Park will have the same foot print as it did before, so the soccer field beyond right field will remain. The clubhouse for the A’s will only be smaller than the entire facility of one of the Cactus League parks by 2,000 feet.

The grounds crew is replanting the fields, here’s a clever way to tell you the difference of beating the Cubs and beating the A’s,for all those years the Cubs were in Ho Ho Camp Stadium and downstairs right next to the entrance was a very large place called the Ho Ho Kam Room.

The Ho Ho Kam Room was where the Cubs posted one of two free meals in Arizona and it was notable because it had draft beer. There was beer on tap, there was a 70 inch television on one side of the room and there were photos of Cubs notables and Ho Ho Kam notables all over the room. Well the Ho Ho Kam Room is going away under the A’s it’s going to become a ticket office.

An A’s executive said that the Cubs actually never had to use the office for game of day sales because the games were sold out to sell any tickets. Also advance ticket sales are just a word in the dictionary. The media will get a patio outside of the pressbox which is pretty traditonal that’s the way it’s done in most place in spring training parks.

The big question that was brought up on Thursday was what to do with all those historical photographs? That’s the latest with the A’s facility which the A’s will move into Spring Training of 2015. Meanwhile in Phoenix Municipal the A’s current camp will be taken over by Arizona State University’s baseball program after the A’s leave for the regular season at the end of this month.

On Thursday night it was historical it was the final Major League night game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium after it’s long and historical time hosting Spring Training baseball. The park is 60 years old and they have four light towers in the outfield that were brought in from the Polo Grounds in 1958 by way of Casa Grande by the Giants.

Mesa has always had a team, they had the A’s for awhile and then they have the Cubs and now they will have two teams because it’s kind of in a no man’s land where Scottdale, Mesa, and Tempe all share a demilitarize zone right there and there’s a huge shopping center right next to where they are but your still technically in Mesa.

What people don’t understand is how large the suburbs are, Tempe has almost 400,000 residents now and Mesa is the largest city in the United States that doesn’t not have a Major League Baseball team. There are over 600,000 people living there in Mesa and it’s just astonishing how big these cities are.

Michael Duca is covering the Giants and A’s for Sportstalk radio in Arizona at the Cactus League