Spring training coming up

Baseball’s spring training is fast approaching, and that’s a perfect excuse to head for Florida or Arizona for a weekend or a week.

Start at the beginning with Major League Baseball (http://mlb.mlb.com/) and look for “Spring Training” on the right side of the page. Then look under “Visitor’s Guides” for your league and team to get a rundown of where and when they practice, how you get there and how you get tickets.

If you want a visual guide to plan visits to more than one team, a travel site called Johnny Roadtrip (www.johnnyroadtrip.com/events/springtraining.htm) has maps for the Grapefruit League in Florida and the Cactus League in Arizona, with locations of their fields.

You can zoom in for more details in the major metro areas. Back on the main page, they provide schedules, extra information on the biggest cities and links for getting tickets and room reservations.

Johnny Roadtrip also has one really important tip: This is a busy tourist season, so make your reservations early.

Want to learn a little about the teams’ spring homes? Look at Spring Training Online (www.springtrainingonline.com/) and click on your team.

Focus on the Cactus League (www.cactusleague.com/) for details on the action in the Tucson and Phoenix metropolitan areas, including the Seattle Mariners’ spring training site in Peoria. There’s a “Trip Planner,” where you pick the dates of your visit and check the teams you want to see, and then click “Display Results” for a schedule.

The site supplies maps of the stadiums, but you might also look at a separate Web site, www.cactus-league.com/ (pay attention to that hyphen), which provides directories of motels close to each venue.

For more details, the Phoenix Vacation Center (www.visitphoenix.com/visitor/index.cfm) can show you around the city (Peoria is about 25 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix), while the Tucson Convention & Visitors Center (www.visittucson.org/) has the details on that city.