Better late than never seemed to sum up the vibe among fans Thursday at spring training in Glendale, on the eve of the first games of what will be an abbreviated schedule.
One week earlier Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association reached a new collective bargaining agreement to halt a 99-day owner-imposed lockout that was the second longest labor dispute in league history. Based on the original 2022 spring training schedule, including split-squad games, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who call Glendale their spring home along with the Chicago White Sox, lost 20 exhibition games in the desert.
“It was disappointing at first,” Dodger fan and Seattle resident Bill Gatlin said Thursday during open workouts at Camelback Ranch-Glendale. With his blue Dodger cap, Gatlin watched the players work drills under a bright blue sky and 72-degree morning. “This is a cool thing I like to do every year is come down here and watch spring training, so I thought I was gonna miss out on it.”
