by Michael Duca

OAKLAND–It will be wonderful to see what they’ve done with old yard in Mesa the Oakland A’s remodeled training facility. The way it used to be they used to have a huge long chain link fence at one time that went all the way down to the foul poles and a plywood pressbox where you felt like you were watching a game in a prison because everybody felt they were so fairly fenced off from the players.

This might not be better than the A’s clubhouse at the Coliseum, it’s still the A’s spring training your still going to have between 40-60 guys in there. It’s a different kind of situation, you have guys coming and going all spring long, there’s five different days when cuts are made and players move onto minor league camp.

You be assured that there will be a distinct improvement, the minor league facility is the one that has undergone a lot of changes at Ho Ho Kam Stadium and the Chicago Cubs worked out there in spring training for decades. The A’s have more than doubled the size of that facility and they have really turned it into quite a project.

The A’s with the City of Mesa along with a tax fund which is from all the folks who attend spring training are really the first to start the funding there. A lot of that money comes from the people who make the mistake of renting a car during the month of March down there when it’s non March date they’ll hit customers up for regular rental fee but not during spring training. The stadium itself hasn’t moved Ho Ho Kam Park you could say it’s in a quite neighborhood, it’s across the street from a 300 acre cemetery. It’s very quite a marble orchard.

Ex-Giant pitcher Charlie Williams who was traded to San Francisco from the New York Mets during spring training 1973 for Willie Mays passed away at the age of 67 on January 27th. There aren’t too many trades in baseball that make both teams unhappy and that was one of them. Giants fans during the early years never really super accepted Willie Mays in San Francisco they always loved Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda more because they started out as San Francisco players and neither were an import from New York.

The Giants fans really never really gave Williams a fair opportunity to earn a place in their heart, New York fans of course had already seen the miracle Mets of 1969 and the Mets were a pretty good team back then and what they got back in 1973 was just a shell of the real Willie Mays. I remember seeing Mays final base hit as a Met in the 1973 World Series in Oakland against the A’s, he got the hit late in the game and he did wind up on first base. He fell down on the way to first base, it was sad to watch because Mays stayed a year longer than his legacy deserved.

Williams for the Giants split the 1973 season between minor league Phoenix and San Francisco before making the big club for good in 1974 and stayed with the Giants until 1978. Williams passed away in January due to complications from heart surgery with clogged arteries. He was 67.

Michael Duca is covering the A’s and the Giants in Spring Training for http://www.sportsrsadioservice.com listen to his podcast below