Anybody want to go San Antonio, Texas in April for some good spring training games?
John Reel and I are going down April 7th-10th (it’s old home week for both of us) and we’re hoping to get at least 13-15 more guys who are over 38 to join us.
I’ve made arrangements with my old league, the San Antonio Men’s Senior Baseball League , to play 3 to 6 games against us, each 9 innings long, on very good fields, over the three-and-one half days. At least two of the games will under the lights.
I have also made air, hotel and car arrangements with Plaza Travel in Latham. The agency has guaranteed us flights on Delta or Northwestern at $350. round trip (about $14 cheaper than the going rate right now). Guys will choose which airline and which departure times they prefer. And the agency has set aside rooms in two of San Antonio’s best downtown hotels - the Crowne Plaza and the St. Anthony, both AAA hotels - at a rate of $125.10 a night for a double (normally the rooms are $200+ per night.)
The hotels are not far from the Alamo, the Riverwalk, the Spurs’ arena, golf courses, some great ribs and blues joints, and close to all the fields. Based on a group size of 12 (John will be staying with his family) the estimated price for travel, hotel, food, van, gas and umpires will range from $820 to $1080 . (The lower prices would be for guys who share a room, which then comes to $62.50 per night.) SAMSBL is not charging us for field use. Obviously, the prices will drop some if we get more than 11 guys.
The competition will be good. It won’t be a tournament. It will be a series of games against various SAMSBL teams at different fields. League president Skip Bradley said he would do his best to schedule us into their schedule - and the sooner we can tell him how many teams will be coming the better. SAMSBL starts its season in mid-March,
Because SAMSBL teams will have played two to three games by the time we get there, they should have a lot of their rust off. Originally, I thought we’d be playing to warm-up for our season - to get our rust off - but I was told otherwise. Come ready to play, I was informed. And they will. SAMSBL Pirates' manager Tommy Yeates, who's helping to organize things for us in San Antonio, brought group of San Antonio guys to Albany last July, and four hours off the plane, the tired Texas nine beat a mix of rested CDMSBL players, 8-5. It’s possible that we might face Skip’s over-38 Rangers who won the MSBL national tournament in Phoenix two years ago and came in second this past year. Skip put it this way: “It’s too bad you guys will be flying all that way only to go home 0-4.”
We’ll be playing on good fields, and, if we’re lucky, some great fields. Under Skip’s direction, SAMSBL has grown from 6 teams in the early ‘90s, to more than 50 teams in five leagues now with over-18, -28, -38,-48 and -58 divisions. The teams play on about 20 diamonds in the area, including the Dodgers AA affiliate, the Missions’ Wolf Stadium, (10 years old; 10,000 seats); five college parks; Lackland Field (on the Air Force base); a number of good high school diamonds and last year the league bought its own diamond - Sanchez-Spencer - which had formerly been in the Span-Am league and remodeled it. You can see the field on the league’s website: www.samsbl.com. Go to “Action Pictures.” The two top photos are Sanchez-Spencer.
We’ll leave Albany early on Thursday the 7th and return Sunday afternoon or evening on the 10th. Our first game will be Thursday at 7 p.m. and we’ll have another on Friday at 7 p.m. We’ll also have a Saturday game either during the day or at night. Those games are fixed. Then, depending on the players and teams available we could play another game on Friday and/or Saturday and/or a Sunday morning game.
San Antonio is a great family town too - lots to see and do: the Alamo, the historic missions trail, the Spurs, Sea World, Seven Flags amusement park, golf courses, good museums, jazz, blues and salsa night clubs - so if some of you think you’d like to bring your significant others, it would be a nice 3.5-day mini-vacation. (My wife, who runs the Martinez Art Gallery in Troy,will be coming; she’ll be bringing a group of Albany artists to meet artists in San Antonio and tour museums.) And because it’s so brief (for many guys a loss of two work days), hopefully it won’t cut into a lot of guys’ work/vacation time.
As for the weather, nobody can guarantee warmth and sunshine, but we should come close. According to the Old Famer’s Almanac, the daytime temperature in San Antonio in early April will be about 67 degrees, though it could easily be warmer (high 70s and low 80s have happened for the past three years); nighttime, about 58. While April showers can hit, the Almanac said the region, from Oklahoma City to the Tex-Mexican border can expect that “April and May will be drier and warmer than usual, with a major tornado outbreak in late April.” Remember, we’ll be there in early April. (When the Alamac says it'll be "chilly" in Albany with "showers and flurries.")
Anybody who’d like to go - or would like more information - feel free to contact me - mhart2@nycap.rr.com. I’ll put you through to the travel agency and you can join up. The sooner we get 13 guys the better.
If we get more than 13, fine. We’ll accommodate them, even if that means making two teams. Hope y’all come - stretch, play some good ball, get ready for our season.
By the way, the Texas guys are coming back to Albany next year - the third week in September - for some games. Good tuneup for fall tournaments. But that’s another entry.
