What is this? Spring training or pampering?

Descriptions of the White Sox' new spring-training facility in Glendale, Ariz., are more appropriate for a spa.

What kind of name is Camelback Ranch for a place where a pro sports team - or in this case both the Sox and the Dodgers - prepares for a new season?

My goodness, it sounds like somewhere the overweight go to diet or addicts go to dry out.

The Ranch part would be OK if it were preceded by, say, Badlands or Stampede or Clint Eastwood Slept Here.

Better yet, forget the Ranch part entirely and settle into something like Fort Sudden Death Valley or Crushed Granite Creek Compound.

But Camelback Ranch? What's next, the Bears training at Taffy Apple Springs and having pillow fights instead of scrimmages?

I haven't been to Camelback Ranch, but it's supposed to be "picturesque" and "landscaped," with walking trails, an orange grove and a river running through it.

This is the Sox' fourth spring site in less than three decades. The first two were in Sarasota, Fla., the third in Tucson, Ariz.

Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf keeps leveraging communities into building him glitzier, more modern, more expansive places for his players to escape winter.

Other major-league teams are doing the same. They're moving from Florida to Arizona, or demanding fancier facilities where they are, or like Reinsdorf doing both.

Each facility is an upgrade over the previous and more comfortable with a nicer clubhouse and training room, sort of a halfway house between home and a country club.

At least there have been no reports of massages and manicures at Camelback Ranch, but stay tuned.

Listen, everybody likes a comfy, safe, state-of-the-art workplace. That's what the Sox and the Cubs should have in Chicago during the season.

But in Arizona, where they should be roughing it toward a playoff run? No wonder so many teams wind up so soft.

Sox manager Ozzie Guillen should be leading his players on marches up Camelback Mountain, not in playdays around Camelback Ranch.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention that the Sox and the Dodgers have more land to practice on - six fields apiece - than the Department of the Interior oversees nationwide.

What for? So pitchers can practice covering first base? So fielders can practice rundowns? So power hitters can practice bunting?

Yes, to work on the fundamentals most of them will forget by Opening Day anyway.

Here's the thing about all this: The facilities are light-years improved over the ones used decades ago but performance during the season isn't an inch better.

I implore you to count how many times you watch a game, slap your forehead and moan to yourself, "What the bleep was that sap thinking?"

There aren't any fewer errors, fewer botched pickoff attempts, fewer botched hit-and-runs, fewer missed signals or fewer mistakes in general than before these new spring digs were dug.

Maybe there are more.

If teams were interested in improving they would conduct drills under the blazing afternoon sun instead of in the cooler mornings and on gritty gravel instead of fresh grass.

Players are pampered at places with all the conveniences of home and names like Poodle Paw Farms, er, Camelback Ranch.

The game isn't better for it and might be worse because of it.

mimrem@dailyherald.com