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Florida Spring Training: Your Guide To Touring The Grapefruit League |
Spring Training has been a part of the Florida landscape nearly as long as orange groves, pink flamingos, and bright sunny beaches. Well, maybe not that long, but close. The first official Spring Training event took place over a century ago when the Washington Capitals decided to prepare for the 1888 baseball season in Jacksonville, Florida. To put that in perspective, the New York Yankees didn’t yet exist and Babe Ruth wouldn’t be born for another seven years.
Spring Training in Florida didn’t last long then; the Capitals failed to return the following year. Spring Training wouldn’t come back until 1903, when Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack brought his Philadelphia Athletics to Jacksonville to train. But this time it took hold. Slowly other teams followed the Athletics to Florida. Over the course of time, a league came together and dubbed itself the Grapefruit League. The modern era of Spring Training traces its roots to 1948 in Vero Beach. At that time, Dodgers’ executives Branch Rickey, Walter O’Malley, and Bud Holman decided that Florida could be more than just a place their Major League team visited to prepare for the season. It could be a year-round baseball school, a place every player in the Dodgers organization could visit, practice, and leave a better player for the experience. To carry out their vision, the Dodgers’ executives bought a large plot of land in tiny Vero Beach and built a sprawling campus that could house the entire organization. It included dormitories, health facilities, and nearly every type of training complex available. They named it Dodgertown. That campus still stands in Vero Beach, although the city recently constructed updated facilities to help the team train. A trip to Florida for Spring Training is incomplete without a visit to Dodgertown. It is the shrine of Spring Training. Not surprisingly, once they saw Dodgertown, other teams wanted similar facilities. Although nothing like the Dodger campus was built for several years, Spring Training took hold over the next few decades and the teams’ host cities reaped growing financial benefits from the annual influx of visitors from the north. Indeed, most cities in Florida have hosted a Major League Baseball team at one time or another. In the early years, training activities centered mostly around Jacksonville. They spread to locations around the state as more teams trekked south for training in the early spring and more Florida cities took a liking to baseball in March and the dollars it brought them. Fort Myers, now home to the Minnesota Twins and the Boston Red Sox, has held Grapefruit League Spring Training contests since 1925. Even cities as far flung as Pensacola have held Grapefruit League events. Over the decades, millions of fans have flocked to Florida in March just to watch a few baseball games. For many people it’s become an annual ritual, passed on from generation to generation. Why? Because traditionally there has been something special about Spring Training that is not found in any other sports arena or in Major League Baseball itself after the boys of summer head north. Part of it is the intimacy. While most people will never get the opportunity to sit behind home plate at a Major League Baseball stadium, anybody can sit close enough at Spring Training to spit sunflower seeds onto the field. It’s also an inexpensive treat. While tickets next to the field in a Major League Baseball stadium can cost up to $100 or more — if you can get them — you’re going to be hard pressed to spend more than $20 on a ticket to a Grapefruit League game in most stadiums. In fact, you’ll find places where you can get good seats for less than $10. But, perhaps more than anything else, the real attraction of Spring Training is the attitude of the players. While many people view professional athletes as distant and aloof, in Spring Training, most are anything but. They are willing to talk to fans. They sign plenty of autographs. They joke with each other. They look like they are having fun. At least they used to. Unfortunately, Spring Training is changing in many places. The change began in the late 1980s when the team owners realized there was money to be made and better facilities to be had, thanks to the ardor of fans and the visitor dollars they bring to the teams’ Spring Training communities. As a result, the days of a team like the Dodgers buying land and building a large campus for itself were over. Team managers started pressuring cities and counties to build them updated stadiums and training facilities at taxpayer expense or lose the team to another locality. It was now up to local governments to make sure the teams continued to visit every March. The result has been an intense competition for teams that has generated constant change. Only five of the 18 teams that practice in Florida are training at the same place they practiced in 1980. Cities such as Winter Haven lost teams they had hosted for decades and had to woo others. Others, such as Orlando, Daytona Beach, Plant City, and Port Charlotte, have been left without Spring Training events. Three teams have left the state and now practice in Arizona in the Cactus League. Didn't find what you were looking for? Try a Google search.
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