Baseball once put Surprise on the world map.
When the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals agreed in 2003 to move to a stadium in a city with just about 60,000 people, it was no surprise people had not heard of that name before then.
Now as the city welcomes in the first game of the city’s 24th season of Cactus League baseball on Friday, Feb. 20, baseball continues to be a driving force of the Surprise tourism economy. Besides the 30 days of games through Saturday, March 21, Surprise is hosting this weekend’s College Baseball Classic, dozens of amateur tournaments — and for the first time, the Big 12 Conference baseball tournament in May.
