Before a new baseball season begins, all 30 teams gather in Florida and Arizona to prepare for a new year. Hope springs eternal before the season for all teams until the real games commence. Let’s cover the purpose and history of Spring Training as we go into a new season full of MLB betting opportunities.
What is Accomplished in Spring Training?
Baseball in late February and most of March is a time to have teams determine their rosters. All teams have morning practices mostly working on fundamentals for hitting and fielding for position players.
Pitchers usually report to “camp” a week prior to the other players where they can begin building up arm strength for the long 162-game season.
All pitchers need the entire 40 days to gradually build that strength and muscle memory and work on possible changes in delivery or adding a new pitch to their repertoire.
Talk to any position player and they will tell you two and a half to three weeks is enough time to prepare for a new campaign.
Spring Training games now run from the last weekend in February to the final weekend of March depending on how March weeks work.
Welcome to Sox spring training. Here’s the first of many through-the-fence videos of batting practice. pic.twitter.com/tssXJdG8Re
— Vinnie Duber (@VinnieDuber) February 13, 2024
Spring Training Beginnings
Opinions vary, with two different origins of Spring Training beginnings being discussed. The earliest reports of gathering in a warmer climate before the season date back to 1870 when the Cincinnati Red Stockings (today’s Reds) and the Chicago White Stockings (today’s Cubs) held organized camps in New Orleans to prepare for the upcoming season.
Others suggest 1888 was where it truly began with the Washington Capitals (not the hockey team), with reports having them staying in Jacksonville, FL for three weeks before the season began.
By the 1900s, it was becoming more normal for teams to prepare for a new season, and Hot Springs, AK is largely credited with having more than one team practicing, which led to having games played at those fields.
Florida’s Grapefruit League – Where it Started
Florida was the first home of Spring Training. Most accounts have this starting in 1910. There were a total of 16 teams, eight in each the National and American Leagues. Spring Training was becoming a necessary part of the preparation since almost every player, coach and manager had a real job in the offseason. This was important, as few players had time to swing a bat or throw a ball while trying to make a living.
The Origin Story
The term – Grapefruit League – has two stories. Nobody knows if either was actually true, but both involved Brooklyn Dodger Casey Stengel, who had a long and colorful career as a player and manager.
One story has Stengel throwing a grapefruit at his manager in 1915 and that incident caught on. The other is Stengel convinced an aviatrix named Ruth Law to drop a baseball from a plane, flying low over the Dodgers Daytona Beach facility and bet his manager Wilbert Robinson he could not catch it. The story goes Law didn’t have a baseball and instead dropped a grapefruit and it splattered all over Robinson in his attempt to catch it.
With Spring Training six to eight weeks in the early days, various cities found that locals would come to watch the players they had only heard about or read about in the newspaper. Later, more affluent people from the East or Midwest would come to the Sunshine State to leave the cold behind and take a vacation watching baseball and spending time in the different cities. This led the Florida cities to try to entice the owners of baseball teams to choose their town and offered to build stadiums and other amenities.
After the Great Depression, baseball was a cottage industry in Florida and continued to grow and thrive, welcoming baseball fans from everywhere.
Arizona’s Cactus League – It Started, Nearly Collapsed and Thrives Today
Bill Veeck bought the Cleveland Indians in 1946 and as the promoter, he decided he wanted his baseball team to play in Arizona, not Florida, because he had property in Tucson.
He talked to fellow owner Horace Stoneham of the New York Giants to join him because Cleveland needed someone to play and Veeck convinced him. Veeck befriended Arizona businessmen like Dwight Patterson (sometimes referred to as The Father of the Cactus League) to recruit more clubs out west.
The Chicago Cubs followed in 1951 and Baltimore in 1954 and the Cactus League was born.
By the early 1990s, eight teams were in State 48, but the distances between them were hours of bus trips. With Florida snagging Cleveland back, Seattle, Colorado, and the Cubs being wooed, the Cactus League was looking at four maybe five teams remaining, which would have ended it.
Joe Garagiola Jr. was named to a special task force by then-Governor Rose Mofford to help save spring baseball in Arizona. Garagiola knew he needed the beloved Chicago Cubs, and with the help of the aforementioned Patterson, deals were made and the Cubs, Mariners and Rockies stayed, and the Arizona Diamondbacks were soon to be a major league franchise, saving the Cactus League.
With the growth of the Phoenix area, 15 of the 30 teams now reside in Arizona, and like Florida, this is big business.
Spring Training Today
All baseball teams now have facilities that they can use year-round. Not just for Spring Training, but for rehabbing injuries, and bringing prospects in from the annual draft. The cities own the parks and they are used year round for various events.
The Cactus League has caught up with the Grapefruit League not only in the same number of teams but also in attendance, peaking at 1.7 million in each state in 2019.
Spring training tickets used to be $13, MAYBE $40 MAXXXX.
Now they start at $72???
Yall not even real fans fr 😞
Sick world.— Ohtani Stan Account (@ahtzirimx) February 13, 2024
The 2023 attendance figures were 1.4 million in each spot and that was affected by missing 2020 and limited for 2021 because of Covid. Another big factor is Spring Training used to be a write-off for the owner, now it is a profit center. Prices for games have jumped dramatically, which has turned off some locals and made it pricier for vacationers. Consider that the price of a major league regular season game in 1997 is lower than a spring training game today.
Nonetheless, if you are from a cold weather region, there is nothing like spending a 75-degree day in March with brilliant sunshine watching baseball with a hot dog and a beer.
