by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

The Oakland A’s have a ambidextrous pitcher with Pat Venditte and the Giants are trying to stay a winner for this 2015 season. It’s going to be a great spring training, Barry Zito is back as a non-rostered invitee with the A’s Zito a former Cy Young Award winner over a decade ago. Everything looks good. Like I said in spring training 30 teams are in first place.

Every team is talking about “we have a shot” whether your the Astros, Phillies, A’s or one of the worst teams in the Majors spring is the best time of the year for baseball. Even if someone struck out multiple times everyone is happy to be at spring training, spring training is a great time to go down to Arizona.

I have been going to Arizona when there were only four or five teams it was the A’s, Cleveland, Brewers, Cubs, Giants, and Padres before the 1977 expansion. Now you have 15 teams in the Cactus League. You have half the teams in MLB that train in the Valley of the Sun as the former A’s announcer Bill King used to call it.

Things have changed a lot in Arizona for example in downtown Phoenix I remember going to the Pink Pony, it was a water hole for the media and guys like Billy Martin who did some interviews there. You could drive into Phoenix and I would fly out of a Bay Area into Phoenix and during those early days you could come into town and get a hotel room.

You can’t do that any more, if you want a decent place you had to make reservations several months in advance because everything is sold out. Right now there are thousands of people there planning their vacations around spring training, then you have the Giants who have won in recent years. There was a time when people could careless about the Giants, now the Giants sell out every game in Scottsdale.

I remember with the A’s the same thing, there was a good size amount of media and fans who would make the trip to Arizona, but now you have thousands and thousands of fans. This is good news for the Arizona economy as the Phoenix economy is thriving now and this is one of the best times of the year for baseball. Remember they had the Super Bowl in Phoenix at the first part of the year and has been a very good one with fans coming to Arizona spending their money.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to Amaury’s podcast below