Tired of winter and trash sports (i.e., anything but baseball)?
Spring training is just around the corner -- on the calendar, at least. Beginning Feb. 28, you can have a sneak preview of the slightly revised, not-quite-American-League-champion Baltimore Orioles as they gear up for the 1998 campaign.
Trouble is, you'll have to do it in Florida.
But that's not so bad. Figure on temperatures edging upward from the 70s, perhaps closing in on the 90s, as the Orioles swing through nearly the entire month of March in the Sunshine State.
They have scheduled 30 games against eight opponents, 15 of them at their "home" in Fort Lauderdale. The Florida "away" games are split among the other teams' spring-training homes in five towns -- except for three visits to Fort Myers, all within a 150-mile stretch of the Atlantic Coast and requiring at worst a three-hour drive.
The ballparks across Florida are small -- at least two of them new this year -- and the best seats in the house generally run $9 to $12. (Compare that, and the food prices, to Baltimore's Camden Yards stadium, where ticket prices rise to $9 for remote bleacher seats and as high as $35 in the premium "club level" this year.)
But there are disadvantages to chasing the Birds around Florida, pursuing any of the 19 other "Grapefruit League" teams that call it home during spring training, such as:
* Travel costs, which depend on variable airline fares (plan ahead, and grab the phone quickly when cheap promotional prices are announced) if you favor a quick trip over trains, buses or personal vehicles.
* The crush of tourism, as the place gets crowded and lodging more expensive, because March also brings the "spring break" collegiate migration.
* The Orioles' relative isolation in Fort Lauderdale -- which could complicate the planning for fans determined to see as many of their games as possible. Their nearest neighbors are in Jupiter, about 50 miles to the north, where the Montreal Expos and St. Louis Cardinals will share the new Municipal Stadium.
The other 19 teams all have closer neighbors in spring training, with clusters along the Atlantic Coast, on the Gulf Coast, and in central Florida.
For baseball lovers, though, there's nothing quite like it -- generally terrific weather; intimate, sometimes quirky, stadiums (in Baltimore you won't see a home-run ball chase a pelican out of a palm tree, as did a shot by a hot-hitting Jeffrey Hammonds at Fort Lauderdale Stadium last year); and for most games, plenty of seats available.
