We were fortunate enough to attend opening night in March, 1992 of the then-redone Scottsdale Stadium. It was one of the smaller HOK projects, but the stadium looked cool as we watched the Giants play the A’s. Today, 13 years later, we toured Scottsdale Stadium as a new facelift had been completed.

The Giants made noises about leaving Scottsdale as a Spring Training facility and heading out to some new Arizona spot such as Goodyear. Scottsdale responded by upgrading the stadium and surrounding practice facilities. Did the city do a good job? Judge for yourself.

In my year-plus of videoblogging, my best coup is the footage in this clip--the Chinese national baseball team as they prepare for the World Baseball Classic. The team is very quietly training in Scottsdale under the tutelage of Jim Lefevbre, former LA Dodgers player and ex-manager of the Mariners, Cubs and Brewers. Lefevbre will manage the Chinese national team in the WBC; a team from Taiwan also will be represented in the classic. The teams from the Asian region will play their first round in Tokyo.

This is the first of a long series of World Baseball Classic reports, running through the finals in San Diego. The teams from South Africa, Mexico and USA will train in Scottsdale; the fourth team in the Arizona region, Canada, will train in Florida (they are being hosted by the Toronto Blue Jays) before heading here the first week of March for games at Scottsdale Stadium and Chase Field.

The most humorous thing about this clip is that my producer and I had to walk across an active driving range to get to the practice field. Luckily, John Daly was not on the range at the time.