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7197
Arizona

San Francisco Giants: Arizona Spring Training Baseball

Baseball
Spring Training
Spring Training
Spring Training
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Cheer on your San Francisco Giants as you head to Scottsdale Stadium to celebrate all things baseball. Attend four games and meet baseball insiders who share their love of the game.
Rating (5)
Activity Level
Program No. 7197RJ
Length
6 days
Starts at
1,999
Spring Training
Spring Training
Spring Training
Arizona

San Francisco Giants: Arizona Spring Training Baseball

Cheer on your San Francisco Giants as you head to Scottsdale Stadium to celebrate all things baseball. Attend four games and meet baseball insiders who share their love of the game.
Baseball
Activity Level
Length
6 days
Starts at
1,999
Length
6 days
Rating (5)
Activity Level
Starts at
1,999
Program No. 7197RJ

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DATES & starting prices
PRICES
Mar 5 - Mar 10, 2023
Starting at
1,999
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Mar 12 - Mar 17, 2023
Starting at
1,999
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DATES & starting prices
PRICES
Mar 5 - Mar 10, 2023
Starting at
2,919
Select Date
Mar 12 - Mar 17, 2023
Starting at
2,919
Select Date
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Prefer to enroll or inquire by phone? 800-454-5768
6 days
5 nights
10 meals
5B 1L 4D
1
Check-in, Program Registration, Orientation, Welcome Dinner
Scottsdale Old Town
2
Sportswriter, Spring Fever, Game 1, Baseball Photographer
Scottsdale Old Town
3
The Stoneham Legacy, Game 2, Beat Writer
Scottsdale Old Town
4
Broadcaster, Game 3
Scottsdale Old Town
5
Chase Stadium, Game 4
Scottsdale Old Town
6
Program Concludes, Independent Departures
Scottsdale Old Town
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At a Glance

Enjoy the intimate and casual atmosphere of spring training baseball as you cheer on your San Francisco Giants. Before the Giants hit a single home run into McCovey Cove, they prepare for the season at Scottsdale Stadium, their Arizona home since 1992. Study baseball in-depth as you meet baseball “lifers” from a variety of backgrounds in the game, whose insider experiences and storytelling talents will keep you on the edge of your seat. Scottsdale is buzzing with baseball come March and you will be right in the thick of it!
Activity Level
On Your Feet
Walk one-half mile; stairs at ballparks. Games attended are dependent on Cactus League schedule, which is finalized in December.

Best of all, you’ll…

  • Enjoy “America’s pastime” with great seats at four spring training games in a variety of ballparks.
  • Meet a slew of baseball insiders including authors, reporters broadcasters and more.
  • Rekindle your love of the game, watch the current team up close and get excited for the upcoming season!

General Notes

Meals that take place during games are on your own. In the rare case that the Giants have a day off, a substitute game will be offered.
Featured Expert
All Experts
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Charlie Vascellaro
Author, traveler, historian, bibliophile, and baseball fan, when Charlie Vascellaro first discovered Major League Baseball in Arizona, his junior high school attendance suffered. Thirty years later, Vascellaro still takes a month-long hiatus from his life in Baltimore, MD to make an annual pilgrimage to Arizona for Cactus League spring training. Vascellaro is a constant contributor to many of the Cactus League teams’ spring training programs, appearing in national papers and authoring a limited edition historical volume commissioned by the United States Department of Commerce.

Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.

Profile Image of Charlie Vascellaro
Charlie Vascellaro View biography
Author, traveler, historian, bibliophile, and baseball fan, when Charlie Vascellaro first discovered Major League Baseball in Arizona, his junior high school attendance suffered. Thirty years later, Vascellaro still takes a month-long hiatus from his life in Baltimore, MD to make an annual pilgrimage to Arizona for Cactus League spring training. Vascellaro is a constant contributor to many of the Cactus League teams’ spring training programs, appearing in national papers and authoring a limited edition historical volume commissioned by the United States Department of Commerce.
Profile Image of Barry Bloom
Barry Bloom View biography
Native New Yorker, Barry Bloom, was fortunate enough to grow up watching the Giants and Dodgers play at the Polo Fields, and his love of the game has never wavered. Considered one of the best baseball beat writers, Barry spent 15 years covering sports for the “San Diego Union-Tribune,” five years at “Bloomberg News,” and the last decade and a half, at MLB.com. He saw Pete Rose break Ty Cobb’s all-time hit record, Ripken break Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak, and numerous World Series games.
Profile Image of Jaime Rupert
Jaime Rupert View biography
Jaime Rupert grew up a Giant. As the granddaughter of Horace Stoneham, her "Pop" was more than just a legend of the Giants, but a key figure in all of MLB history. As her father worked for the Giants as well, her childhood was am immersion to all things Giants and baseball lore. Enjoy your time with Jaime as she recounts stories of baseballs all times greats as told by her "Pop" and seen through her eyes.
Visit the Road Scholar Bookshop
You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.
Search for a Title
Wait Till Next Year - A Memoir
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
When historian Goodwin was six years old, her father taught her how to keep score for "their" team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. While this activity forged a lifelong bond between father and daughter, her mother formed an equally strong relationship with her through the shared love of reading. Goodwin recounts some wonderful stories in this coming-of-age tale about both her family and an era when baseball truly was the national pastime that brought whole communities together.
Moneyball
by Michael Lewis
Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager, is leading a revolution. Reinventing his team on a budget, he needs to outsmart the richer teams. He signs undervalued players whom the scouts consider flawed but who have a knack for getting on base, scoring runs, and winning games. Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball and a tale of the search for new baseball knowledge—insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.
Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell,
by Roger Angell,
In Game Time, Roger Angell’s essays illuminate baseball’s heart and history in careful prose that New Yorker readers have grown to anticipate each spring. The collection spans the forty-plus years of Angell’s baseball writing career and includes many of his favorite pieces as well as never-before-published material.
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It
by Lawrence S. Ritter
The voices of the game's distant past continue to reverberate with a distinct freshness in Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times. An oral history of the game in the first two decades of the century, Glory sends out its impressive roster of players to tell their own stories, and what stories they tell. A delight from cover to cover, Glory is the next best thing to having been there in the days when the ball may have been dead, but the personalities were anything but.
Ball Four
by Jim Bouton
When first published in 1970, Ball Four stunned the sports world. The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and "social leper." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer's Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still considered a classic baseball related read.
Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox
by Jacob Pomrenke
The Black Sox Scandal is a cold case, not a closed case. When Eliot Asinof wrote his classic history about the fixing of the 1919 World Series, Eight Men Out, he told a dramatic story of undereducated and underpaid Chicago White Sox ballplayers, disgruntled by their low pay and poor treatment by team management, who fell prey to the wiles of double-crossing big-city gamblers offering them bribes to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Eddie Cicotte, and the other Black Sox players were all banned from organized baseball for life. But the real story is a lot more complex. We now have access to crucial information that changes what we thought we knew about “baseball’s darkest hour” — including rare film footage from that fateful fall classic, legal documents from the criminal and civil court proceedings, and accurate salary information for major-league players and teams. All of these new pieces to the Black Sox puzzle provide definitive answers to some old mysteries and raise other questions in their place.
The Brothers K
by David James Duncan
While this is not a pure "baseball book", baseball provides the central metaphor for this huge hypnotic novel. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad. The novel is narrated by Kincaid Chance, the youngest son in a family of six, the children of Hugh Chance, a discouraged minor-league ballplayer whose once-promising career was curtained by an industrial accident, and his wife Laura, an increasingly fanatical Seventh-Day Adventist. The plot traces the working-out of the family's fate from the beginning of the Eisenhower years through the traumas of Vietnam.
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend
by James S Hirsch
This is the definitive Mays biography. Mays was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a brilliant portrait of one of America’s most significant cultural icons.
The Boys of Summer
by Roger Kahn
"At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams." Sentimental because it holds such promise, and bittersweet because that promise is past, the first sentence of this masterpiece of sporting literature, first published in the early '70s, sets its tone. What follows only gets better, deeper, more sentimental, and more bittersweet. The team, of course, is the mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers, the team of Robinson and Snyder and Hodges and Reese, a team of great triumph and historical import composed of men whose fragile lives were filled with dignity and pathos.
SATCHEL: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye
by Larry Tye
He is that rare American icon who has never been captured in a biography worthy of him. Now, at last, here is the superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy “Satchel” Paige. Tye shows Paige barnstorming across America and growing into the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping they seemed like misprints, and spent as much money as he made. In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. He threw his last pitch from a big-league mound at an improbable fifty-nine. (“Age is a case of mind over matter,” he said. “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”)
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6 days
5 nights
10 meals
5 B 1 L 4 D
DAY
1
Check-in, Program Registration, Orientation, Welcome Dinner
Scottsdale Old Town
D
Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale Old Town

Activity note: Hotel check-in from 3:00 p.m.

Afternoon: Program Registration: 4:30-5:15 p.m. After you have your room assignment, come over to the Road Scholar desk located adjacent to the hotel lobby to register with the program staff and get your welcome packet containing the up-to-date schedule that reflects any last-minute changes, other important information, and to confirm the time and location of the Orientation session. If you arrive late, please ask for your packet when you check in. Orientation: 5:30 p.m. The Group Leader will greet everyone and lead introductions as we gather in our private meeting room. We will review the up-to-date program schedule and any changes, discuss roles and responsibilities, logistics, safety guidelines, emergency procedures, and answer questions. THE ITINERARY THAT FOLLOWS IS A REPRESENTATION FROM PRIOR YEARS AS THE GAME SCHEDULE DOES NOT GET RELEASED UNTIL NOVEMBER AND THE SPEAKER SCHEDULE WILL BE DIFFERENT AS WELL In the unlikely event that a game is rained out, an alternative activity will be provided (no refunds). Free time is limited and unscheduled at this time. Periods in the daily schedule designated as “Free time” and “At leisure” offer opportunities to do what you like and make your experience even more meaningful and memorable according to your personal preferences. The Group Leader will be happy to offer suggestions. Program activities, schedules, personnel, and indicated distances or times may change due to local circumstances/conditions. In the event of changes, we will alert you as quickly as possible. Thank you for your understanding.

Dinner: In the hotel restaurant, the dinner buffet includes savory dishes and entrées that vary nightly, plus coffee, tea, water; other beverages available for purchase.

Evening: At leisure. Continue getting to know your follow participants, settle in, and get a good night’s rest for the day ahead.

DAY
2
Sportswriter, Spring Fever, Game 1, Baseball Photographer
Scottsdale Old Town
B,D
Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale Old Town

Activity note: Walking up to 1 mile throughout the day; distances less than 1/2 mile at a time; paved, flat surfaces; some stairs at the stadium. Free Old Town Trolley available for transfer from hotel to stadium.

Breakfast: In the hotel dining room, the breakfast buffet offers choices such as eggs and omelets cooked to order, breakfast meats, oatmeal, fruit, and toast, plus juice, coffee, tea, water.

Morning: Throughout the program, we’ll meet wonderful baseball personalities who have intimate and often long histories with the game. Sports writer Charlie Vascellaro will join us and provide unique perspectives on baseball history and personalities. In addition to his lifelong love of baseball, Charlie is a bibliophile, historian, raconteur, traveler, and author of a biography on Hank Aaron. Charlie took part in his first Road Scholar program in 2004 and has been a regular guest ever since, delighting our folks with Spring Training chronicles. We’ll take a short break before gathering to head over to our first baseball game.

Lunch: This meal has been excluded from the program cost and is on your own to enjoy what you like at the ballpark. The Group Leader will be happy to offer suggestions.

Afternoon: Game 1! Our program is planned far in advance of the spring training schedule being announced (December). Once tickets have been purchased, the information will be posted on the Road Scholar website under this program number and will also be included in preparatory materials sent following enrollment. The Cactus League was launched in 1946. There are now 15 teams that practice and play in a relatively tight radius surrounding Phoenix, Arizona. From MLB.com: “It is here where the ballparks are surrounded by mesas, rock formations and cacti. It is here where stars stretch and hit and throw and play games in the laid-back atmosphere of Minor League-sized parks with beautiful, warm and frequently sunny backdrops.” We’ll return to the hotel after the game.

Dinner: Hotel buffet.

Evening: We’ll then settle into the hotel conference room to enjoy a presentation from John Antonoff. John is an official MLB photographer and he will share some of his stories and best photos from over the years.

DAY
3
The Stoneham Legacy, Game 2, Beat Writer
Scottsdale Old Town
B,D
Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale Old Town

Activity note: Driving approximately 30 miles one way to stadium; about 45 minutes. Walking approx. 1/2 mile at stadium; some stairs.

Breakfast: Hotel buffet.

Morning: This morning we will hear a special presentation on the "Stoneham Family Legacy" with special guests providing insights and stories about the Giants move from New York to San Francisco. Following our presentation, we’ll transfer to the stadium for our second game.

Lunch: On your own to enjoy what you like at the ballpark.

Afternoon: Game 2! Teams and game times will be posted on our website when available and included in preparatory materials sent following enrollment. Spring training has been a fact of MLB life since 1886! It was “invented” by the Chicago White Stockings (now the Cubs) who held their spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Many other teams followed suit, attracted not only by warmer weather but also the idea that healing waters could help players. The move to Arizona in 1946 was also related to a local hot spring.

Dinner: Hotel buffet.

Evening: Sports writer Barry Bloom is one of the best in the game today. One of mlb.com's top beat reporters, Barry has covered many of baseball's biggest events and milestones and has interviewed the game’s top players. While at the hotel, Barry will delight us with his knowledge of baseball history and anecdotes from his remarkable career

DAY
4
Broadcaster, Game 3
Scottsdale Old Town
B,L
Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale Old Town

Activity note: Walking up to 1 mile throughout the day; distances less than 1/2 mile at a time; paved, flat surfaces; some stairs at the stadium. Free Old Town Trolley available for transfer from hotel to stadium.

Breakfast: Hotel buffet.

Morning: At the hotel, we’ll be joined by Marty Lurie who has been a long time voice of the Giants of KNBR radio. Marty will share stories of the many Giant greats he has interviewed over the years and speak of the behind the scenes challenges of broadcasting. We’ll take a short break before departing to our baseball game.

Lunch: At an eatery near Chase Field, we’ll have plated meals with soft drinks, iced tea, water.

Afternoon: Free Time. Take this opportunity for personal independent exploration to see and do what interests you most. Please refer to the list of Free Time Opportunities. The Group Leader will be happy to offer suggestions.

Dinner: On your own to enjoy what you like at the ballpark.

Evening: Game 3! The information will be posted on our website when available and included in preparatory materials sent following enrollment. We’ll go under the lights tonight. Night games have been growing in popularity, with audiences averaging about 35% higher than day games since more people who work can attend.

DAY
5
Chase Stadium, Game 4
Scottsdale Old Town
B,D
Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale Old Town

Activity note: Driving to Chase Field 13 miles one way, approximately 20 minutes. Walking about 1/2 mile; some stairs (can be avoided if need be); periods of standing for about 1/2 hour at each of 3 stops. Driving approx. 10 miles one way to stadium, about 20 minutes one way. Walking approx. 1/2 mile at stadium; some stairs.

Breakfast: Hotel buffet.

Morning: This morning's presentation at the hotel will be by the Director of Editorial Content for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He is the editor of “Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox” as well as numerous articles on the games early 20th century corruption scandals.

Lunch: On your own to enjoy while at the ballpark.

Afternoon: Game 4! The information will be posted on our website when available and included in preparatory materials sent following enrollment. When the Cactus League was formed following World War II, profound changes were taking place throughout the U.S. Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Bill Veeck, Cleveland Indians owner, were among the prime movers in promoting the idea of recruiting black athletes into Major League Baseball. It was a matter of strengthening the bench, broadening the fan base, and simple morality. Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler, a former Kentucky governor and senator, said, "If they (Negroes) can fight and die on Okinawa, Guadalcanal, in the South Pacific, hell, they can play baseball in America." As it turned out, the Cactus League offered a more accepting climate than that which Jackie Robinson initially encountered in the Grapefruit League.

Dinner: At a local restaurant, we’ll have a delightful farewell dinner with a plated and served meal to celebrate our program. Coffee, tea, water included; other beverages available for purchase. Share some of your favorite experiences from the program with new Road Scholar friends.

Evening: We will then return to the hotel for a short program wrap-up to reflect upon our week. The remainder of the evening will be at leisure. Be sure to prepare for check-out and departures in the morning.

DAY
6
Program Concludes, Independent Departures
Scottsdale Old Town
B

Activity note: Hotel check-out by 12:00 Noon.

Breakfast: Hotel buffet. This concludes our program.

Morning: If you are returning home, safe travels. If you are staying on independently, have a wonderful time. If you are transferring to another Road Scholar program, detailed instructions are included in your Information Packet for that program. We hope you enjoy Road Scholar learning adventures and look forward to having you on rewarding programs in the future. Don’t forget to join our Facebook page and follow us on Instagram. Best wishes for all your journeys!






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