Byline: Kent McDill Daily Herald Sports Writer
If you have a baseball 'itch,' you can scratch it early by getting down to Arizona for spring training, which begins now.
Thanks to the success of the 2005 White Sox, baseball fever in Chicago rarely has been higher. Sox fans are preparing to spend a season crowing and hope to see an improbable repeat of last year, while Cubs fans are thinking, 'If the Sox can do it, why can't we?'
If you believe in feeding the fever, then one way to do it is to get on a plane and head to Arizona, where the Cubs and White Sox are preparing for the 2006 season starting this week.
Pitchers and catchers arrive Friday for the defending world champion White Sox, who play their first spring training game March 1 against the Colorado Rockies. They play former White Sox slugger Frank Thomas and the Oakland Athletics March 7 at their home field, Tucson Electric Park.
The White Sox share the 11,500-seat facility with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
'The game on the 18th against the Cubs is sold out,' said Laura Watson, assistant ticket manager at Tucson Electric. 'But the rest of the games do have tickets available. There is no front row available, and no tickets in the first five or six rows behind the dugout, because we have gotten a lot of people from Chicago who want to be close to their world champions.
'But otherwise there is plenty of seating available,' she said. 'That includes the lawn seating, which can hold 3,000 people.'
Ticket prices range from $16 to $4.
For the real early birds, who want to see the team before it plays any minor league games, workouts are held in the mornings on the minor league fields behind the White Sox facility at the Kino Sports Complex, which houses Tucson Electric Park. Fans can watch from behind a rope just off the field.
The Cubs' pitchers and catchers reported Wednesday, and the team gets started with games March 2 against Thomas and the Athletics at HoHoKam Park, which is operated by the city of Mesa. HoHoKam's capacity is 12,575, including an outfield lawn area that seats 2,575. Ticket prices range from $20 to $6.
The Cubs were the most popular team in the 2005 spring training season, drawing a major league record 193,993 fans to HoHoKam.
'We have two games sold out, March 26 (against the Diamondbacks) and March 27 (against the White Sox),' said HoHoKam ticket director Nancy Hunter. 'But the rest of the month, we have plenty of seats available.'
Hunter said weekend games will sell out before the day of the game, but that weekday games usually have tickets available for walk-up sales.
Hunter said they estimate 65 percent of their fan base is 'foreigners.'
'We have good, loyal fans, that come out every year,' Hunter said. 'They come from Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, all those good Midwestern states.'
The Cubs work out at Fitch Park, the minor league complex just south of HoHoKam, until the spring training game schedule begins.
