Last week was a busy one. Too much travel. Not enough time spent in any one place. I was in Arizona for a conference from Wednesday through Friday. It turned out that the Chicago Cubs have a training facility just a few blocks away from the conference hotel. It also turns out that one of my fellow attendees is a big baseball fan and gets to Arizona almost every year to see spring training.

We spent some of our free time watching the Cubs train. It was an enlightening experience for me. First off, I've never been to any spring training activities. So I didn't really know what to expect. Spending time at the practice got me thinking.

The Cubs have a big facility in Mesa. There are four diamonds in one cluster and at least two other fields on the east side, along with a big building and parking area. Fans are allowed to roam between the four diamonds in the main cluster. Based on the hundreds of baseball players dressed in Cubs blue it is apparent that the entire Cubs organization attends.

I'm not really familiar with the Cubs organization. But unless there is a roster of 250 players there had to be a huge collection of players. I imagine that the whole farm system, rookie league through triple A were there, along with new recruits, coaches and others. I don't know for sure, but the bat boys might have been there, too.

There were shopping carts filled with balls behind each pitching mound and batting practice was taking place just about every where I looked. Pitchers and catchers were all collected together in one field and some fundamental fielding drills were taking place on another. I couldn't tell who was who. It was impossible for me to distinguished the big league players from the hopefuls.

We had an hour or so to watch and as I took it all in the big picture started to come into focus. Spring training starts in February. The whole organization gets together to work on skills and prepare for the season. It's pretty intense and takes nearly two months to do right. Then the season starts.

For the next six months those skills are used in competition with other teams. Then comes the playoffs. That lasts a month or more for the best teams. At the end of which a winner is declared and everyone goes home for three months. After a reasonable break, the new season begins with the next spring training. Repeat.

I think we need to have spring training where I work. Managers and directors report early. Then everyone else shows up. We take a couple of months to go over fundamentals. Everyone attends. It's impossible to tell the new recruits from the veterans. We all spend time helping each other to perfect our skills. Oh, and we do it in a nice place with great weather. Then the regular season starts. We do our job for the next six months, using the skills we perfected in spring training.

Then, at the end of the season we have our testing period. We see who has done the best, declare a winner and go on to a well deserved three month break. And then next Spring we all get together and do it again. Yeah, that would be pretty cool............
8:05:12 AM    comment []