Hosts Steve Goldstein and Mark Brodie are big baseball fans, you might even say they're fanatics. So, when pitchers and catchers report and spring training gets underway, it’s a time of year they like to think about.

Mark Brodie:

Growing up in southern New England, there were two Major League Baseball teams within a short drive — three, if you count the Mets.

Every year, come February, I’d burrow a tunnel through the snow to get to the newspaper box so I could read about all things Yankees in sunny Florida. There was never any real jealousy about my baseball heroes practicing among the palm trees, while I was putting on my 8th layer of clothes to go out and shovel snow. That’s because no matter how cold it got and how many times I slipped on the ice, I knew that baseball, and by extension summer, would be here soon enough.

I never was able to get to a spring training game until I moved to Arizona more than a decade ago. When I was growing up, the games weren’t even broadcast. And this was more than a few years before live-streaming would become a thing anyone had heard of.

But I imagined the players, having escaped the Northeastern winter, basking in the warm sun of Florida and Arizona, playing catch and taking batting practice. I dreamed about the day when the snow would melt and my next-door neighbor and I could bundle up, dig out our wiffle-ball bats and renew our version of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.

When I finally got to a spring training game, it was fun. A relaxed atmosphere, beautiful weather and lots of excitement. But it also felt a little like a regular season game, just with players I’d never heard of. I recognize the reality probably never matched by frost-bitten fantasy, but frankly, I’m just happy people are playing baseball.

Steve Goldstein:

Growing up in Phoenix as a baseball fan, once the regular season started in April, the closest I’d get to a Major League Baseball game was my radio with Vin Scully doing Dodgers play-by-plays. And the Dodgers were the despised rivals of my favorite team, the Cincinnati Reds.

So when mid-February arrived and brought some of the best baseball players in the world to my hometown, whether the games counted or not, I was ecstatic. That spring sensory explosion that poets often write about but sounds too ridiculous to be real was an actual collection of feelings I had. And most of them revolved around spring training.

The smell of a freshly-mowed outfield, the sounds of a pitch popping the catcher’s mitt and the taste of an overcooked hot dog with just a little bit of mustard in a soft, squishy bun. 

And in those early to mid-80s days — I’m talking about the year and the temperature — we could get autographs and the players never seemed wary or thinking that we only wanted to sell them.

Usually, we didn’t even know who the players were because they were wearing uniform numbers between 70 and 90 and probably wouldn’t even go north with the big league team. 

But the innocence of those days really hit me when I looked into buying tickets last spring. If I wanted to be in a real seat and not on a towel, I’d be paying at least 20 bucks. Because, yes, spring training is now big business with top-notch stadiums that need to be paid for.

I understand all of that. I also understand how much fun it was to arrive at a game in the 5th inning and have a security guard let you in for free.