If you want to see what a young hitter is made of, stand about 15 feet behind him as he takes his cuts in the batting cage. All eyes at Milwaukee Brewers Spring Training camp were on Prince Fielder, the young slugging first baseman. Son of former home run king Cecil Fielder, Prince has a compact, powerful swing.

Will Prince be the next Ryan Howard, a slugging first sacker who comes NL Rookie of the Year? Looks promising.

According to a list I saw, there are 62 living members of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. I think it’s out of date, but my goal for 2006 is to capture as many of the living members on video as possible. Given I will be at the World Baseball Classic finals and the MLB All-Star Game, I might get to quite a few. Some will be simple: Billy Williams and Ryne Sandburg are at Cubs spring training. Others, such has Steve Carlton, will be close to impossible.

For starters, here are two: Fergie Jenkins and Harmon Killebrew. That leaves me with about 60 more to go…

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.

Maybe it’s the fact that I live in Arizona, one of two major U.S. sites for Spring Training and the World Baseball Classic, but baseball fever is in the air. Here’s a quick pictorial look at last season featuring a number of familiar faces and places including Ryan Howard, Huston Street, Petco Park, Citizens Bank Park, Cactus League and Arizona Fall League.

Podsafe music is “The Driving Song,” by Bob Hughes.