AP Photo/Richard Drew

The beauty of spring training, when you can get an autograph while the game is going on.

JOY OF SPRING

By Tim Kurkjian, ESPN

Spring training is my favorite time of year for a lot of reasons. Here are just a few:

Many years ago, Brian Anderson, a pitcher for the Indians, was taking a long bus trip with the team in spring training. After he got on the bus and the team was on its way, he realized he forgot his glove, hat and spikes back at the complex. There he was on the way to a game, in which he was pitching, without a hat, glove or spikes. He went to a mall and bought a pair of spikes, but he still couldn't find a glove. So he tracked down a Wal-Mart where he knew they had to have one.

"Wal-Mart's got everything. They have tires. They have produce. So they have to have a baseball glove," he told me later.

Well he did find one, but he said, "it was the most hideous thing you've ever seen. And it was even bigger than Greg Maddux's glove."

He wore the monster on the mound and, of course, had five comebackers hit to him that day. To me that sums up what spring training is all about. All the guys take long bus rides just like they did in high school. Even the major league veterans are treated like the guys in A-ball.

Another thing I love is that there are so many people at camp. I'm old enough to remember that in 1980 the A's had no fewer than 100 people in camp. They had a backup catcher named Scott Meyer and they actually issued him a jersey with No. 100. So here's a baseball player with a three-digit number out there because they had no other choice. As you might imagine, he did not make the team that year.

In spring training you obviously have a lot of roster changes and plenty of players coming and going. When I covered the Orioles many, many years ago, a writer from the Miami Herald hurriedly asked me who was starting the next day for the White Sox. Nobody knows a lot of the guys pitching in spring training because they are from A-ball and who knows where else. I jokingly said Gary Peters and Joel Horlen were pitching. He didn't even blink and I didn't know what he was doing, but it ended up in the paper the next day that Peters and Horlen were pitching. Both of them were well into their 50s at the time!

I just heard this story this week: Duane Kuiper, the great broadcaster for the Giants, told me that about eight years ago, Danny Navarro, the kid who lived down the street from him, had just been cut from his high school team and he was pretty down about it. So Kuiper decided that he would get him into the game somehow the next day. So there was a fly ball to the outfield in the ninth inning of a meaningless spring training game and Duane's call was "fly ball to Danny Navarro … he catches it … throws it back into the infield."

Kuiper got a tape of it made and sent it to Navarro, who proudly took it to his coach and said, "Listen to this. I may not have been good enough to make your team, but I was good enough to play in a major league game."

Only in the ninth inning of an exhibition game at spring training can you get away with that.

Years ago when I covered the Rangers, the team's hilarious manager, Doug Rader, found a drunk on the street outside the ballpark in Pompano Beach, Fla., where the team trained. He tried to sober him up a little bit, but basically just put him in a Rangers uniform and introduced him to the clubhouse as the new special hitting instructor that the team was going to use that spring. So, this hopeless drunk who had no clue what he was talking about, started to instruct the guys on proper hitting techniques. Half the team caught on quickly and was in absolute hysterics, but the immortal Mickey Rivers said, "Yeah, this guy is really good we should listen to him!"

They gave the guy a shower, helped him back to the street, and there he sat, still in his Rangers uniform.

So spring training is such a relaxed and different time from the regular season because once the real season begins nobody is having this kind of fun.

Past Baseball Tonight Clubhouses: March 25 | March 24 | March 23 | March 22 | March 19

BEST OF THE BLOGS

Each day, ESPN.com's contributors offer a wide array of thoughts and analysis in their blogs. Buster Olney notes that the economic troubles in Detroit are impacting the Tigers:

There have been rumblings all during the offseason about how teams such as the Padres are having a tough time selling tickets, but here is the biggest red flag to date: The Tigers' season-ticket sales have dropped from 27,000 to 15,000, as Shawn Windsor and Jon Paul Morosi report.

So now we have a clearer understanding of the context in which the Tigers are making their final roster choices. Their ticket sales are awful, making it even more important that Detroit starts its season strongly. If the Tigers get off to a terrible start, as they did last season, fan interest in the team -- already impacted by the economy -- will take a body blow. (Privately, executives with other clubs say the same thing could be said for about 15 to 20 other teams in the big leagues.)

The Tigers are obligated to pay $22 million to Dontrelle Willis in 2009 and 2010, and although Willis made some progress in a minor league game Tuesday, the hard truth is that he is not one of the 11 or 12 best pitchers in the Detroit camp. "He looks terrible," said a rival talent evaluator who has seen Willis pitch several times this spring.

In another time, such as Spring 2008, the Tigers easily could have considered tucking Willis into the No. 5 spot in their rotation as they bought time for their investment to pay off. In another time, they easily could have ignored the promise of 20-year-old right-handed pitcher Rick Porcello and assigned him to the minors, rather than employing him in the big leagues and running the risk of rushing him.

For the rest of this entry from Buster Olney's blog, click here.

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Rob Neyer offers some thoughts on the Rays' controversial decision to send David Price to the minors:

David Price has been sent to the minors, and The Tampa Tribune's Martin Fennelly is less than thrilled:

If the Rays hadn't just won the American League pennant like 19 minutes ago, today we'd be saying the whole lot of them, from manager Joe Maddon to baseball ops chief Andrew Friedman, are out of their minds.
That's because the man who got the save in winning that pennant, towering lefty David Price, has been dispatched to Triple-A Durham. The electricity is already building for Jason Hammel's first start of the season.
Price to the minors was in the bag before spring training. He could have struck out four guys in an inning, thrown the first no-hit game in Rays spring history and re-painted the clubhouse and he still would have wound up in the bushes.
--snip--
Yes, there were practical reasons to send Price down. For one thing, despite his amazing finish last season, he has only made 19 professional starts.
Second, the Rays were out of options for two of Price's competitors for the fifth spot in the Rays' starting rotation, Hammel and Jeff Niemann.
And now my practical reason to keep him:
Price is better than the other guys.
What's the point of Jason Hammel options if Hammel can't get it done?
Shouldn't it be about that sometimes -- the other guy being better?

Well, yeah. But I'm not sure what Fennelly is suggesting here. Is he suggesting that David Price should open the season in the Rays' rotation and -- pitching against most of the best hitters in the world -- wind up throwing more than 180 innings? After throwing only 130 professional innings last year?

For the rest of this entry from Rob Neyer's blog, click here.