Whose Fans Experience Biggest Warm-up?
Arizona Diamondbacks stretch at a spring training workout on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
It's still frigid in most parts of the country, but spring training is well under way in Florida and Arizona, where the grass is green, the sky is blue, sunshine warms arms and legs exposed by shorts and T-shirts, and all 30 teams are still contenders.
The taste of the baseball season to come got us wondering: What fans experience the biggest warm-up as they head west and south to follow their teams for spring training?
Using 30-year average high data from 1981-2010 for Feb. 23 – when most exhibition seasons for both the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues started this year – we determined which teams typically experience the biggest temperature swings.
In the following pages, we count down the biggest spring training temperature benefactors. (Hint: They aren't represented in the slideshow above. Yes, we're talking to you, Miami Marlins.)
