Hundreds of sports reporters are about to remind the world Tucson is a major league city.

Pitchers and catchers for the 2007 National League Champion Colorado Rockies, the 2001 World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks and the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox will arrive next week to kick off Tucson’s annual spring training show.

When fans from around the globe arrive to see our three teams and nine others from the Phoenix area, they will contribute an estimated $30 million to the Tucson economy over a six-week period.

Hotels, resorts, airlines, rental car agencies, restaurants, bars, stores, entertainment venues, golf courses, RV parks, Realtors and casinos all profit. So do most other firms.

And so do the Pima Air and Space Museum, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Old Tucson, Mount Lemmon, Tombstone, Tubac, Nogales and other Arizona attractions, including the Phoenix area and the Grand Canyon.

Local businesses also benefit from Phoenix visitors who venture south to see their favorite teams play Tucson-based rivals.

Spring training has been a Tucson tradition since the Cleveland Indians and New York Giants fled west from Florida 61 years ago. The Indians chose Tucson’s Hi Corbett Field, while the Giants eventually developed their own site in Casa Grande before moving to the Phoenix area.

When the Indians returned to Florida in 1993, local business people and city officials quickly recruited the newly formed Rockies. They then sealed the deals to open Tucson Electric Park in 1998 for the Diamondbacks and White Sox.

In the past seven years, all three teams have played in the World Series.

But the White Sox have agreed to share a new stadium in Glendale with the Los Angeles Dodgers, perhaps as early as next year.

With a lot of help from the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and its president, Jack Camper, some local business and government officials are working to keep spring training as one of Tucson’s signature attractions. They want to ensure the Rockies and Diamondbacks remain happy here while we seek a replacement for the White Sox.

It’s not an easy task. Cities in Maricopa County and elsewhere want major league teams, too. Florida, which has lost some teams, wants to keep those it still has and woo a few back.

We can keep the Rockies and Diamondbacks if we put together public and private financing to raise Hi Corbett Field’s training complex to the level of other teams’ facilities and to ensure top-flight maintenance for both local ballparks.

Both Colorado and Arizona want to use their Tucson sites from early in the year through the fall for instruction, rehabilitation and practice.

They’d like that third team to arrive here soon, with maybe a fourth later, so they don’t have to travel to the Phoenix area so often for spring games.

Greater Tucson had less than 50,000 people when we got into spring training after World War II. Now we have more than a million people.

But we must prove again over the next few months that we’re a major league city, and here’s how you can help:

1. Let Rockies and Diamondbacks personnel know you’re glad they’re here. Tell them personally if you can. Welcome them in your ads, and consider some window signs or banners.

2. Take your family, co-workers, employees, friends and business associates to spring training games this year.

3. Tell city, county and state politicians – as well as your business colleagues – how much you want to keep Tucson’s unique baseball heritage.

Other major league cities constantly act to improve their quality of life offerings. They don’t let them get away.

We can’t afford to let part of our quality of life leave, either.

E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Steve Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.