Atlanta Braves: A trip down to Florida to catch some Spring Training action

Enjoying the deep south, sunshine and baseball. I took a trip to Florida to watch some Spring Training action

The smell of freshly cut green grass on a brisk morning.  The feeling you get when you breathe in that pleasant-smelling aroma.  The sounds of a ball hitting a mit.  The concessions yelling out “peanuts, beer”.  The public announcers voice coming from the loud speakers.  This is baseball season and there is nothing like it.

I got to experience these sounds this past weekend and I couldn’t have been more grateful.  Because of work schedules and other things already planned, I haven’t been able to get down to Florida for a few years.

There is nothing like Spring Training baseball.  Each year when February/March come along, we’re all super stoked about the return of baseball.  But there’s a huge difference between watching it at home and then going to a regular season game than being able to go to Spring Training.

So I pitched the idea to my wife of going this year and before I knew it we had our plans in order.  After looking at the Atlanta Braves schedule and our personal schedule, the March 9th through March 11th weekend worked out perfectly for us.  This meant going to the Braves vs Yankees on Friday at the Wide World of Sports and then driving to Bradenton to catch the Braves vs Pirates game.

The wife and I jumped into our 2018 Chevrolet Cruze Friday morning and we were off.  The Cruze gets an insane amount of miles to the gallon.  We got all the way to Florida on one tank of gas and still had some left in the tank.  The Cruze also has WiFi built-in the car so we were able to get some work done and we got caught up on our Netflix shows (of course I wasn’t watching while driving).

Over the years, I have attended practices and games at the Wide World of Sports complex.  The facility itself has a lot going on all the time.  Plus, you mix that into Disney being right around the corner and you usually have traffic nightmare.  Follow the 2019 spring season, the Braves will move to Sarasota County, Florida as the least with Champion Stadium is up.  I’ll definitely be making plans to visit the new stadium in 2020.  As for Wide World of Sports?  I may not be back.

LECOM Park is actually fantastic.  Inside the gates, it’s a terrific place to watch a baseball game.  I actually went to this field about eight years ago and they did some major work fixing the place up.

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All Spring Training seats are good, but for this game we had second row seats right behind the Braves dugout.  Before the game, I went into the field and watched the Braves players warm up and stretch.  It’s cool to be so close to the stars you see on TV…and also Braves top prospect Ronald Acuna.

We sat in our seats for a few innings, then walked around to different areas of the ball field.  We watched a couple innings from the outfield.  They have stools set up all around the outfield that if they’re open you can sit there.  We got a beer and a hot dog and it was perfect.

I won’t go through how these games went, because by now I’m sure you’ve seen a box score.  We were really close to catching Dansby Swanson’s home run ball and Acuna’s blast off the center field wall, we were standing right there.  The Dustin Peterson homer was gone in no time.  It left the park, literally.

We were able to see all the Braves stars either Friday or Saturday so that was really cool.  I will say this though, having Ozzie Albies and Acuna in the lineup is going to be a lot of fun.

After the game, we checked out the two breweries that are around the Pirates field.  One was called Darwin Brewing Company and the other was Motorworks Brewing.

On Sunday, we took the long nine-hour drive home.  The Chevy Cruze did it’s thing again and we got home on one tank of gas.  I was able to pull up my MLBtv app on my phone and watched the entire Braves game with the WiFi in the car.

Next: Checking up on the pitching battles

Overall, the experience was terrific.  My wife and I had a fantastic time.  We’re already trying to plan a trip for 2019.  Getting down to Florida to watch the Spring Training action is  never easy, but I highly recommend it.  Go Braves!