Spring Training Report

I know, I know. I've been back for a week and am just now posting.

Anyhoo, last weekend we were flown out to Phoenix on a Texas Rangers spring training junket. We were housed in the the beautiful JW Marriott Desert Ridge resort - a 5-star hotel in the middle of the desert.

Of course, when we arrived on Friday, it was raining and overcast.

Notice the lovely green grass. ONLY on the resort grounds and golf courses was there green grass. Perhaps this is why there were bunnies everywhere! They came for the green grass buffet!

I know some of you live in Arizona and other desert locales, and while I did my best to appreciate it, there's no place like home where everything is green and bursting forth this time of year.

Here's a pic of Russ at the baseball game in Surprise, AZ. He said "Hey, take my picture in front of the mountains!" and then proceeded to stand right in a place where the buildings covered up most of the mountains. But the light standard was safe from falling over with him leaning up against it.... As you can see, Saturday was overcast and threatening more rain...

This is as close as we got to Sammy Sosa.

Saturday evening, there was a cocktail party with a handful of Ranger players (past and present) invited to autograph baseballs. Of course, Russ and I got a bigger charge out of meeting the past players (Jim Sundberg, Rusty Greer, Fergie Jenkins, Tom Grieve, Art Howe) than the current players because, let's face it, we haven't really been following baseball for the last couple of years and don't really "know" the current crop. But we met so great people and had a blast. Free booze can do that to ya.... After the party, we went to a local casino where we did our best to support the Arizona Indian economy...

Of course, Sunday the weather was brilliant and we had to get on a bus at 11:00am to go back to the airport. This seems to be the trend whenever we go on vacay. This last photo is of us with Rusty Greer. He was one of our favorite players in the late '90s and was an all-around nice guy the whole weekend.

All in all, we had a great time and would certainly like to be invited back next year!