Welcome to Charlotte County, Rays fans: Your spring training guide - part I

January 17, 1:52 PMTampa Bay Rays ExaminerRob Quinn

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The Rays are settling into their new spring training home, the Charlotte Sports Park, and that leaves Rays fans in the Tampa Bay area with a bunch of questions about how to get the best spring training experience. If only there was some loser with nothing to do that you could send down there for a day and scope the place out.

Rob Quinn, Rays Examiner, at your service.

The drive down from the Tampa Bay area is not as bad as you might think. I got on the Veteran’s Expressway at Citrus Park at 11:40 a.m. and arrived at the park at 1:15 p.m. That makes the drive 1 hour and 35 minutes from most Tampa locations and about 1 hour and 10 minutes from the Trop. The distance makes day trips easily doable. Plus, the drive is very scenic if you’re into that. I had one eye on the road and one eye on the awesome views of Tampa Bay from the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

When I arrived at the park, the place was buzzing with construction and renovations were going strong. Account Representative Andy Beuster was gracious enough to let me tag along on a ballpark tour for the Charlotte Stone Crabs’ season ticket holders. The ballpark looks amazing and I wasn’t in there very long before I got really fired up for Spring Training to finally begin. I scouted out all the seating areas and almost every seat in the house provides fans with a great view of the game.

I say "almost" every seat only because I have one small reservation about the Bermuda grass sections in the outfield. If you get there early enough you should be fine, but if you are unlucky enough to end up right where the stands end and the Berm grass begins, you may have to stand up to see the game. Also, there is more grass space on the left field side than right field so you might want to get there a little earlier if you plan on getting a good seat between the Rays’ dugout and bullpen on the right field side.

One side note about tickets while I am on the subject. The only tickets available for Spring Training games through the Rays are Berm grass general admission. I was able to find good seats at a reasonable price on Ticket Liquidator. E-bay was hit or miss, and the prices were so offensive on every other site I checked that I will not even mention them. Ticket brokers are the devil.

Back to the park. Andy gave me his best assurance that parking will be more than adequate even though the lot isn’t fully completed yet. He also informed me that concessions at the park will be of the classic ballpark variety – no pretentious sushi salad bar or anything like that.

Overall, the park looks great and will undoubtedly be a worthy spring home for the American League Champions.

Take the virtual tour of Charlotte Sports Park and then move on to part II of the Spring Training Guide.

Feel free to add your insights on the new Charlotte County home of the Rays in a comment or e-mail me at raysexaminer@live.com.