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In baseball, home plate is where you begin your journey and also your destination. You venture out onto the bases, to first and second and third, always striving to return to the spot from which you began. There is danger on the basepath—pick-offs, rundowns, force-outs, double plays—and safety only back at home. I am not saying, as a true fan would, that baseball is the key to life; rather, life is the key to baseball. We play or watch this game because it draws pictures of our desires.
-Scott Sanders,1945
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game.
-Jaques Barzun, 1976
We played exhibitions during the day and drank most of the night.
-Connie Mack, Catcher Washington Senators, 1892
Long-Toss & Fungo Bats
Florida is a baseball state. Sure the Bucs, Lightning or the Heat grab a headline and the inevitable Famous Florida bandwagon fans every few years, or its High School games can occasionally take on the appearance of a scene from Friday Night Light but Florida is still a baseball state. It is a baseball state in the same vein as Indiana being a basketball state, or Texas being a football state or even Nevada being a blackjack state. No other sport shares the hearts of Floridians like the game of baseball; their people, their history and their culture are intertwined together-at times mirroring and at times providing a microcosm of each other. The notion of the father taking his son to his first ballgame just as his father had, is an American archetype of Jungian proportions and for millions of Americans, those vivid memories happened at a Florida ballpark. Even the weather makes Florida a baseball state. While basketball and football retreat to their arenas and domes when the weather turns cold, baseball in Florida survives year round-with the exception of the late afternoon thunderstorm or midsummer hurricane.
Florida has always had a rich history with the game. From Alexander Cartwright, the reputed inventor of baseball teaching soldiers how to play while serving as an officer at a Naval Base during the Spanish-American War, to alligators chasing Babe Ruth off the field to a World Series in Miami, Florida has more than its share of baseball stories. Florida baseball has become a social institution of itself and for Florida’s baseball fan there is no more hallowed ritual than Spring Training.
Every spring the crack of horsehide and ash rings out across the Florida landscape of blue skies and palm trees to signify that the bitter cold of winter is now a memory. The reporting of Pitchers and Catchers around the first week of February symbolizes the rebirth of hope for every fan whose team did not walk away from the previous season as winners; the proverbial fruition of waiting till next year. Spring training is a time when fans stretch out across bleacher seats to sip overpriced beer and wax poetic of hope springing eternally.
For players, it is a time of refining their skills, both on the playing field and on the golf course. “The young and fringe players, unspoiled by baseball’s excesses, hustle” (Verducci et al. 2002,p25) Although today the evaluation and competition for positions is often already established prior to Spring Training commencing there is always the intrigue of rookie pitchers battling for the fifth slot in the rotation or the former All-Star trying to hang on for one more season in the sun as the fourth outfielder. For those who have secured their long term contracts, Spring Training is often a time of afternoons on the golf course, nights on the town and trading of dorms for luxury beachside condos.
For the cities and towns that host a major league team a deep sense of identity develops. Rabid Red Sox fans descend on Fort Myers every year bringing their New England influence, thousand’s of New York transplants fill the seats of their mini-Yankee stadium in Tampa, Canadian retirees in Dunedin can be heard saying, “How about a pretzel, eh” Spring training was also a major factor in shaping the identity of Florida and its cultural landscape. Sometimes quite literally, like the time Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley carved an entire lake on the grounds of Dodgertown in the shape of a heart for his wife on Valentines Day.
While the institution of spring training has changed tremendously over the course of its century-long history, it has still managed to maintain a certain degree of its sacred charm. The fences may be a bit higher and the beer a bit more expensive, but one can hear the chewing tobacco hit the grass and smell liniment on sore muscles.” (Reed 1989, p11) It has weathered great changes of the game itself, sometimes even being at the center of those changes.
As Josh Pahigian points out “The pace is a little slower, the fans are closer to the action, and the players more accessible: the sport seems to return to its idyllic roots.” (2005) Today Spring Training games attract over 1.6 million fans and contributes nearly $500 million to Florida’s Economy.
The stories of spring training are the lore of Florida’s history. In 1903, New York Giants pitcher Rube Wadell was so heart broken over his unrequited love he had found with a young Florida woman that in a drunken state he attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge into the St. John’s River only to be pulled from the waist-deep mud of a low-tide by his laughing teammates. (McCarthy 1996,p142) It is said that the name of the Grapefruit League itself was the result of a prank played by catcher Casey Stengall on his manager Wilbert Robinson. That spring Wilbert boasted he could catch a baseball dropped from an airplane. Stengall accepted that bet, but failed to inform his coach that the baseball was to be replaced by a grapefruit. Upon the impact with Wilbert’s mitt, the grapefruit exploded, coating the manager with grapefruit juice and nearly knocking him unconscious. Upon his returning to consciousness, Wilbert cried out that he was covered in blood and that the baseball had torn his chest open. (McCarthy 1996, p148)
Play Ball!: The Early Years
Although the practice of baseball clubs heading to warmer climates to allow players to workout and get themselves back into game-ready shape began in 1870 when the Cincinnati and Chicago ballclubs held organized exercise camps in New Orleans, it wasn’t until 1888 that professional teams discovered Florida as a baseball oasis. That year, the Washington Nationals held a four-day camp in Jacksonville before engaging in a barnstorming tour of exhibition games and train rides back home. Unlike the ballplayers of today, ballplayers around the turn of the century made little money and often spent the off-season working menial jobs in warehouses, factories and loading docks. For the hard-nosed and often harder carousing ballplayer, the workout sessions also served as a chance for players to sober up and dry out from what was often an alcohol-soaked winter.
By 1900, spring training had become a ritual of every professional team. Some owners had at first been reluctant to train far from their home facilities, but following the precedent set by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, owner Aaron Stern and manager Gus Schmelz, many other team owners realized the value of training in warmer climates. Under the Reds Stocking’s arrangement, the cost of training was often split between owners and players, as were the profits from gate revenue created by the exhibition games that the teams played. Aside from the chance it gave players to shake off their winter rust, spring training was a chance for owners and the coaching staff to evaluate the players it brought to camp. Young players could be judged of their talent to play at the highest level and veteran players could be deemed expendable. The camps often attracted walk-ons, especially during the Depression, who hoped to make a roster or at least have a few good meals during camp. (McCarthy 1996)
In the south, the game of baseball had spread quickly and the sight of a professional ballplayer was still a novelty; making exhibition games against local college and city league teams popular events. City Leagues and amatuer teams funded by local factories or companies had already been commonplace, often rivalries between neighboring towns and cities became celebrated events that often included the hiring of ringers in order to gain victory. The Tampa Bay area, with its numerous semipro teams and large contingent of Cuban-born ballplayers working in Tampa’s nearly 200 cigar factories (Cosby 2003), was a particular hotbed of baseball and provided a steady contingent of exhibition opponents.
It wasn’t until 1914 that major league clubs would come face-to-face to play each other in Spring Training. That year, the St. Louis Browns who were training in St. Petersburg faced off against the Chicago Cubs who arrived by steamboat from across the bay where they were training in Tampa. In honor of the first game between major league teams, the mayor of the city declared the day a holiday and schools and businesses around the city closed and over 4,000 spectators filled the grandstand bleachers and concourses of Coffee Pot Park.(McCarthy 1996, p145) Later that spring, the Grapefruit League and its formalized 5-week exhibition schedule was born.
No man was more instrumental in bringing baseball to the Gulf Coast than Albert Lang. Sunshine Al Lang, who made his money in the laundry business, moved from Pennsylvania to the warm air of St. Petersburg in 1910 when his deteriorating lungs could no longer handle the harsh chilly winters. It was Lang who was responsible for putting on that first exhibition game after convincing the Browns to hold their training camp in St. Pete. It was Lang who convinced the Phillies to train there the following year and by 1925 he had also convinced the Braves and Yankees to call St. Pete home. In 1920, it was Lang who spearheaded the fundraising effort in order to build Waterfront Park and when it was remodeled in 1947 it would be named after him in his honor.
With the advent of the Grapefruit League, springtime baseball in Florida had become an institution and helped put small sleepy cities like Clearwater, Lakeland, Fort Myers and Sanford on the national map. In the 1920’s and 30’s competition among Florida cities to attract a major league team for spring training was fierce. City officials knew the value of having a team and its legion of fans each spring and the tourism dollars that inevitably followed. It was during this time that dozens of parks popped up around the state and lucrative leasing and land grants were offered to entice teams to call their cities home. The plethora of available sites enabled major league teams to shop around for the best location from both a financial and baseball standpoint. This resulted in many teams switching sites after a year or two; perhaps the biggest factor for a team to return to a particular site stemmed from superstition after a successful year. By 1929, 10 of the 16 major league teams had moved their spring training to Florida. (McCarthy 1996, p154)
It was during this period that some of Florida’s most historic ballparks came into being. Tinker Field in Orlando was perhaps the most historic of these. The site had been in use since 1914 and in 1924 bleachers and grandstands were added. Named for former Cubs shortstop Joe Tinker of Tinker to Evers to Chance fame it has been the spring home for the Cincinnati Reds/Red Stockings, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Washington Senators and the Minnesota Twins, as well as numerous minor league ballclubs. Although the field still stands today in the shadow of the Orlando Citrus Bowl it is no longer used by any major league club.
Baseball parks were often the centerpiece for many quiet Florida towns and a common practice was to construct these fields along the main streets of downtown. Two examples of this can be found in Sarasota and Bradenton. McKechnie Field was built in 1923 as the centerpiece of Bradenton’s downtown district. The stadium is a true metropolitan stadium in that there is no on-site parking for the games and that the grandstands nestle up to the main road leading through downtown; foul balls caroming off the hoods and windshields of passing traffic is a common occurrence. Since 1969, the Pittsburgh Pirates have called McKechnie home and with its intimate design and old style bleachers it is still a favorite of many fans.
Payne Park was another example of the downtown ballparks of that era. Built in 1924 and sandwiched between the old municipal buildings and adjacent to the county courthouse, Payne Park had been host to the New York Giants, the Boston Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox. Although the park has since been converted to a multi-purpose athletic facilty a memorial still stands in front of its new tennis courts.
The popularity of baseball in Florida continued to grow at a tremendous pace until America entered World War II. Although President Roosevelt deemed the game of baseball as necessary to maintaining the national morale, many changes were in store, especially in Florida. Since trains were the primary means of transporting both the soldiers and the vast amount of wartime goods being produced, traveling for luxury or vacations became nonexistent. Trains had also been the main form of travel for the baseball players as well and once the war effort went full swing it was deemed a waste of national resources to transport teams around the country. The Commissioner of Baseball Kennesaw Landis and the Director of Defense Transportation Joseph Eastman recognized this and instituted a restriction on major league teams traveling south. From 1943 to 1946, there was no baseball in Florida. Most minor leagues were discontinued during this period and although Major Leaguers were exempt from the draft, many of the young men enlisted in the Armed Forces anyway.
Post War Boom
The bleak period during the war did not last long for the game of baseball. Wartime production had brought a new level of wealth to the populace of America and helped create an affluent middle class that was more than ready to spend their newly found discretionary income on leisure activities like roadtrip vacations. The construction of an interstate highway system meant that long distance travel could be achieved without trains. Soon Florida became the most popular tourist attraction in America. Fans up north would be enthralled with spring training reports about their teams, complete with description of the warm weather and natural beauty during a time when most northern cities were still feeling the lingering effects of winter. It was not uncommon for fans to make the pilgrimage down south with their favorite team and was partly responsible for the Florida phenomenon known as the snow-bird migration; a phenomenon that is visible on a small plaque on St. Petersburg’s Central Avenue that commemorates the swelling in population every spring in most Florida towns and cities. On the plaque, it attributes the nearly five fold increase in the population of St. Petersburg in the fifties to the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees holding their spring camps there.
It is during this post war boom, the teams became more stationary with their training grounds; often forming deep and intimate bonds within those communities. City officials, long having realized the importance-both sociologically and financially- of having a major league spring training site, provided ball clubs with lucrative land leases and modern stadiums. Grant Field in Dunedin is one such example. Originally built in 1930 and named after the Mayor who championed its construction, this park has undergone numerous renovations and is still used by the Toronto Blue Jays today. With the popularity of minor league baseball and the newly created Florida State League, these stadiums were mini-meccas of baseball well into the summer.
No major league team has had a longer history with its spring training community than the Detroit Tigers and the city of Lakeland. With the exception of the years during the war, the Tigers have spent every spring since 1934 in the small agricultural town of Lakeland. First at Hendry Park and then Joker Marchant Stadium, named for the popular City Parks & Recreation Director, built in 1966. Marchant Stadium was the first of any Spring Training facility to offer berm seating, where fans could bring their own blankets to view a game from the graded lawn.
While no other team has a longer history with its host city than the Tigers, no team has a deeper more intimate bond than that between Vero Beach and those fans whose hearts pump Dodger blue. The Dodgers had long used various sites for their spring training camps including Sarasota and Sanford but it wasn’t until 1948 that the Dodgers found their true home in Vero Beach. In 1947, Branch Rickey and the Dodgers had invited the young Jackie Robinson to their training camp in the hopes of eventually breaking the long standing color barrier. That spring, Rickey, in an attempt to avert controversy transferred their training camp from Sanford to Havana, Cuba. Cuba, where black players had been competing in professional leagues since the 1900’s, offered shelter from the South’s Jim Crowe Laws and the racist culture of most Southerners. That year, Jackie Robinson would be assigned to the Dodger’s minor league affiliate, the Montreal Royals. In the spring of 1948, Rickey would invite four players, including Robinson to try out, only this time he didn’t plan on hiding his team far away from the scrutiny of a nation. Vero Beach, with its Air Force Base sitting empty since the close of the war, provided Rickey not only with plenty of room to construct playing fields but also a way to house both his black and white players in accordance with Jim Crowe Laws. The small town of Vero, with a population of only about 3,000, also offered a level of seclusion that few sites could offer. This is not to say that problems were not encountered. During an exhibition in Jacksonville, police marched onto the field and halted play until Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright, the only other black player to make it to the Dodger camp, left the playing field. (Lamb & Bleske 1998, p58) That year Robinson would make the Major League team, effectively changing the course of baseball history. Wright would be sent to the Montreal Royals.
On the grounds of the retired Air Base, Dodgertown would become an institution of Florida baseball. The large amount of on site housing permitted the entire Dodger organization to train in one central location, where all ballplayers could be taught the fundamental skills of the game and the philosophies of the organization while using the latest training equipment like pitching machines. In fact, the Dodger Organization’s model of training its young players proved so successful that the cost of operating the facility was covered by the selling some of its young prospects to other ballclubs. The 450-acre complex would soon come to include conference, business and shopping centers and a golf course. Holman Stadium, the centerpiece of Dodgertown, remains one of the most intimate fields in all of baseball. Chain link fences are the only barrier separating the fans from the players, who sit in dugouts that have no roofs. The small open air pressbox is overshadowed by the oak trees that have grown into the box seats in many places. The low fences that surround the field are devoid of the advertising that has become commonplace at every sports site. Here “time does mosey. It flutters like a soft breeze through the azaleas, palmettos, royal palms and scrub pines in a baseball training facility disguised as an arboretum. With Dodgertown, as with the Acropolis or Sophia Loren, time slows its usual advance when under the spell of archetypical beauty.” (Verducci 2004, p28)
With the departure of the Giants to Arizona, there were enough teams to begin a structured exhibition schedule among the teams training in Arizona and Southern California. Although several teams had been training in the area for decades, it wasn’t until 1947 that the Cactus League became a structured exhibition league. For cities and towns hopeful of luring a major league team, they not only faced competition from other cities in the Sunshine State but also faced serious competition from Cities in Arizona; a problem that the Grapefruit League faces still today.
Despite the competition to land a major league ballclub, once a city managed to land one the impact would be very beneficial. Spring Training meant a yearly influx of northern tourists and their dollars, not to mention national exposure free positive publicity for what were otherwise small retirement or beachside communities. Baseball had become firmly entrenched as America’s past time and spring training became one of its most honored rituals. Fans would flock to the bleachers to watch their diamond heroes smack towering flyballs into Florida’s blue skies and rookies desperate to win the open outfield position laying out for a gapping linedrive. This was the golden age of baseball in Florida.
New stadiums popped up across the state to accommodate the increasingly larger crowds. Box seats replaced wooden grandstands and modest housing dormitories made way for modern training facilities. New stadiums that appeared during this time included Jack Russel Stadium in Clearwater in 1955, Fort Lauderdale Stadium in Miami in 1962, and Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven in 1966.
Spring Training goes Commercial
In 1973, Florida’s tourism industry would be transformed forever when Walt Disney World was opened in Kissimmee, just west of Orlando. The park was an instant success and soon tourists would be flocking to Florida in unheard of numbers; tourism quickly became the biggest industry in Florida, a fact many major league team owners didn’t overlook.
The blending of the game of baseball and the tourism industry can best be seen in a place called Baseball City. In 1973, Ringling Bros. Circus opened a theme park near Haines City called Circus World. This theme park was built around the circus theme and featured three ring shows as well as rides and exhibitions. Despite the initial backing of the successful Ringling Empire, the park failed to become successful in the shadows of Disney World to the East and Busch Gardens to the west. In 1986, the park was bought out by the publishing firm Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich and renovated to look like the turn-of-the-century boardwalks of Atlantic City and Coney Island, complete with roller coasters, thrill rides and a wooden boardwalk sprawled across the 366 acre park. The theme park re-opened in the spring of 1987 under its new name, Boardwalk & Baseball.
At the heart of the new theme park was an 8,000 seat baseball stadium which would now play home of the Kansas City Royals, who had been lured away from their previous home in Fort Myers to take part in the experiment. Park visitors could take in the Cooperstown like-exhibitions, a performance of the Royal Lippizaner Stallion Show, or ride the roller coaster that soared just past the right field fences, before taking in an exhibition game. For the team and players, the complex featured five practice fields, player dorms and corporate offices. While attendance was great during the spring games, the theme park had trouble attracting visitors during the rest of the year and by 1990, Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich was forced to sell its theme park to Anheiser Busch, the parent company of its nearby competitor Busch Gardens, which quickly closed the doors to the theme park. The Kansas City Royals would remain in Baseball City for Spring Training until 2002 but without the draw of the theme park, fan attendance plummeted until the team was lured away to Surprise, Arizona.
The rise of The MegaComplex
By the late 80’s baseball had become a billion dollar industry. Spring Training was no longer the domain of vacationers and retirees. By 1989, the economic impact of the 18 teams training in Florida was $295 million per year (Fimrite 1989, p59) The swelling population of Florida now enabled teams to fill increasingly larger stadiums. These parks in turn began to adopt the amenities of their regular season counterparts such as luxury boxes and novel concessionaires. Housing dorms and weightrooms gave way to luxury condos and modern workout facilities catering to the million dollar egos of the athletes. Today’s parks feature corporate sponsorship and multimillion dollar naming right deals.
The construction of Legends Field in Tampa in 2006, marked the end of the traditional concrete block stadiums that exemplified Florida baseball. Legends Field was constructed adjacent to the home field of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League and is characterized by its Yankee Stadium-like replication of arched facades along the upper bowl and its identical field dimensions to Yankee Stadium in New York. At over 10,000, it has the highest seating capacity of any Spring Training site in Florida and exhibition games frequently outdraw the regular season games of the homecrowd Devil Rays.
Two years later, Disney opened its own sporting megaplex called Disney’s Wide World of Sports. Cracker Jack Park is the home of the Atlanta Braves and is considered the center of the $100 million sports complex which features facilities for over 30 professional and amateur sports, 6 golf courses and a 7,500 seat Tennis Arena.
The latest of the Spring Training megaplexes is Brighthouse Networks Field in Clearwater, which was unveiled in 2004. The stadium, built using over $18 million in county tax dollars for the long-time Clearwater resident Philadelphia Phillies (Hyman 2003), features an open-air concession concourse and state-of-the-art video scoreboard, as well as architectural features that combine both traditional Florida design and features of it regular season counterpart, Citizen’s Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia. Perhaps it’s most recognizably unique feature is the 60 barstool, 50 foot thatched-roof tiki bar located just beyond the outfield fence in leftfield.
Bibliography
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