Travelers' Aid: Spring Training Roundup

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Last week's Nor'Easter did more than snarl air traffic across the country. It reminded all of us that winter is still here. But warm weather is closer than you think, as is that other joy of spring: baseball! Spring Training is centered in two places: The Cactus league in central Arizona, and Florida's Grapefruit league- around Orlando and Tampa Bay. The games run until the end of the month, and, for the most part, all you need is a game ticket, a hotel reservation and the constitution to take double, triple and quadruple headers.

There's a helpful guide on the subject called, of all things, Spring Training. It has the complete schedule. But Bruce Adams is the real insider. He and his wife wrote Baseball Vacations - it's a guide to creating great Spring Training memories.

There is a way to find that baseball intimacy during the rest of the year - in the minor leagues. No one knows this better than Dan Collison and Chris Aubry. You might remember the story they did for us last year about their annual quest to find "Baseball in its purest form." This summer will be their sixth spent crisscrossing the country, one minor league park at a time. And as for finding the "purest" baseball, well Dan says they've pretty come close.