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World Baseball Classic Makes Tough Tickets Tougher

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

November 22, 2005
Baseball spring training, once a sleepy sideshow that had to fight for space in newspaper sports sections, has become such a travel magnet that fans should plan now for flights, rooms, and game tickets.

That's especially true for fans planning visits to Central Florida, where first-round games of the new World Baseball Classic will be played at Disney's Wide World of Sports complex from March 8-11, 2006.

The games, allowing current stars to represent their home countries in an Olympic-style format, will mark the first spring training appearance by Barry Bonds in the Sunshine State since 1992. It should also be his last, since the tournament won't be played again until 2009. By that time, the retired Bonds could hold both the single-season and career home run records.

Though World Baseball Classic games will diminish the star power of every club, spring training attendance is not expected to suffer. A record 1,598,454 fans watched 256 games in 17 Florida venues last March, for a per-game average of 6,244.

That pleased baseball officials, who noted that the previous marks of 1,598,255 fans and a 5,794 single-game average were set in 1998, when 20 teams trained in the state. Eighteen teams now train in Florida, with the other dozen in Arizona.

Exhibition game tickets for games of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox often sell out - especially when they face each other. Weekend tickets are also hard to find.

The Yankees were the biggest draw last year, pulling 152,655 fans through the turnstiles at Legends Field in Tampa. The Atlanta Braves, primary occupants of Cracker Jack Stadium, placed second with 123,858.

Three Florida cities host two teams each: Kissimmee, where the Braves and National League champion Houston Astros play in parks 30 minutes apart; Fort Myers, home of the Red Sox and Minnesota Twins; and Jupiter, where the close-to-home Florida Marlins share Roger Dean Stadium with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Eight teams train on the Gulf Coast with five each in the center of the state and down the Atlantic coast.

Pitchers and catchers report to loosen their arms in mid-February, while most of March centers around a 30-game exhibition schedule that is primarily a period of conditioning for the established players or auditioning for newcomers. Newspapers refer to the six-week training period as "the Grapefruit League," though most ballparks are based in urban locales.

A notable exception, Dodgertown in Vero Beach, has been in active service since 1948, when the team built its own dormitories to avoid segregated hotels.

With hotel space tight and rates rising, alternate accommodations may be found through companies that rent furnished homes. One such firm in the Disney vicinity is Premier Vacation Homes (800-396-2401, 407-396-2401, www.pr-vacation.com.

Though the six-week spring training period usually injects $450 million into the Florida economy, the number will jump in 2006 because of the World Baseball Classic.

Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is president of the North American Travel Journalists Association, and a frequent contributor to AAA Traveler and USAirways Magazine.

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