Baseball Spring Training Games:
Baseball in the Florida Sunshine!

Charlotte Sports Park

Baseball spring training games on the Florida Gulf coast are a great way to spend a sunny spring day.

Living on Florida’s gulf coast provides many opportunities to enjoy America’s pastime, baseball.

Where else can you watch the Pittsburgh Pirates (Bradenton), the Tampa Bay Rays (Port Charlotte), the Boston Red Sox (Fort Myers) or the New York Yankees (Tampa), hone their skills all within an easy drive from your home?

For many years, we enjoyed an even shorter drive from Englewood to Port Charlotte to the Texas Rangers’ spring training games. But now the Rangers have given up the Grapefruit League in favor of the Cactus League in the south-western United States.

But now, we have a new team holding spring training in the area and it just happens to be our favorite team!

The Tampa Bay Rays now play their home Spring Training games at the Charlotte Sports Park in Port Charlotte, Florida. There is lots of room in this great baseball stadium with over 6,000 seats.

But Englewood’s central location on the Gulf Coast provides a great opportunity to witness baseball’s most fearsome rivals, the Red Sox and the New York Yankees. A drive of less than two hours will take you to the Yankees baseball spring training venue in the Tampa area. And, a drive of about one hour on I-75 will bring you to the Red Sox training camp in the Fort Myers area.

The Boston Red Sox hold their training camp at City of Palms Park in Fort Myers. But, they are not the only Major League Baseball team to call Fort Myers their spring training home. The Minnesota Twins play at Hammond Stadium.

Even closer to Englewood, the Pittsburgh Pirates hold their spring training in nearby Bradenton.

Sarasota used to be a popular baseball spring training destination in the Englewood area, but due to a lot different reasons the Cincinnati Reds are leaving their long-time spring home for the Cactus League in Arizona. So, unless another team decides to move into the Sarasota baseball complex, baseball fans will have one less baseball team to watch in 2010.

Canadian snowbirds can enjoy their favorite team, the Toronto Blue Jays, at one of the many spring training venues in the Englewood area, or they can travel a little more than two hours north on I-75 to Dunedin. This north Tampa community has been the host for Blue Jays spring training camp since the team joined Major League Baseball in 1977.

Because of its proximity to so many baseball spring training camps, it is easy to enjoy that great old song “Take me out to the ball game” in many different locations. Just another reason my you “gotta” Enjoy Englewood Florida!