Contributors
by Charles Fountain, March 12, 2009 11:45 AM
When St. Petersburg's future mayor Al Lang was negotiating with St. Louis Browns owner Branch Rickey to bring spring training to St. Petersburg in 1914, the two men agreed that the city businessmen sponsoring the trip would pay for the Browns travel to St. Pete, and pay for their lodging while they were there. They also agreed that the comped traveling party would include five writers from the St. Louis newspapers. The newspaper guys were key for St. Petersburg. This whole spring training deal was an effort to get the city's name out there, and how better to do it than through the datelines in big city newspapers. "There can be no cleaner, no more penetrating, no more exhaustive advertising for [our] city," wrote the organizers, "than the letters and telegrams to their home papers, written by the high-class, competent correspondents and writers who always accompany these major league ball clubs during their spring training trips." (My favorite part of that, by the way, is where it says: " high-class, competent correspondents and writers." We sportswriters haven't always gotten that kind of respect.) Ninety-five years later, when the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear, Arizona, committed to spending $100 million in public money to build a new spring training facility for the Indians and Reds, proponents talked about the national publicity spring training would generate, as Goodyear grows from rural farm village to a city with an expected mid-century population in excess of 400,000. Nobody has ever been able to determine what the cash value of a newspaper dateline is, but for nearly a century, communities investing in spring training have touted their importance. When the Yankees came to St. Petersburg in 1925, for six weeks every winter, the dozen-odd daily newspapers in New York would carry daily stories with the St. Petersburg dateline, and St. Petersburg grew into a major city. Hot Springs, Arkansas, grew its early-century profile as a resort town by hosting eight different major league teams for spring training between 1900-1925. Before it was known as the home of Disney World, Orlando was perhaps best known to northerners as the long-time spring training home of the Washington Senators. Before they were a part of the American consciousness as Gulf Coast resort towns, Bradenton and Sarasota cracked the northern consciousness as the spring training homes of the Braves and the Red Sox. Some towns are still best known to America as spring training destinations. Vero Beach, Port St. Lucie, and Lakeland, Florida, all have their own individual charms, and the folks who live there do so for reasons other than baseball. But people beyond the borders of these smallish cities know them only as spring training datelines. Some cities have outgrown their spring training datelines. Back in the early sixties, Fort Lauderdale was known for spring break and Yankees spring training. No more. The Orioles are there now, and spring training gets lost in the bustle of everything else that goes on in Fort Lauderdale. Even Yankees spring training, now in Tampa, is but a blip on the busy radar of that bustling city. St. Petersburg willingly let spring training go this year; the Tampa Bay Rays play their regular season games in St. Petersburg, of course, and the mayor felt that spring training might be in competition with the regular season. But some towns still seek the cache of a national dateline. Peoria and Surprise, Arizona, anonymous suburbs northwest of Phoenix, bought themselves a bit of national presence when they brought spring training to town in 1993 and 2003, respectively. "Having Peoria, Arizona, as a national dateline every spring was a real coup for us," said Cactus League president and Peoria community services director J. P. de la Montaigne. Goodyear and Glendale feel the same way today. But while these national datelines may have been, and may continue to be, good publicity for the warm-weather cities that host spring training, they are even better balm for readers in the cold-weather cities where those newspapers are published. Forget crocuses and robins. Nothing says spring to a winter-bound newspaper reader better than a spring training dateline from Florida or Arizona.
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Contributors
by Charles Fountain, March 11, 2009 11:40 AM
A reporter asked me today which was my favorite of all the spring training sites. I told her that I had always been partial to two places that lost spring training this year — Dodgertown in Vero Beach and Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg — and told her why — the history and ambiance of Dodgertown, that great view of Tampa Bay from Al Lang. But that got me to thinking: How long can I keep saying my favorite spring training site isn't a spring training site anymore, and what then, among the active sites, would now be my favorite? There are really no bad spring training sites. Among the current inventory of spring training parks and facilities, all but one has been either built or completely overhauled in the last twenty years. But which one is the best? What makes a spring training site special? Is it the grandeur of the ballpark? The new parks in Glendale (White Sox and Dodgers) and Goodyear (Indians) will certainly enter the conversation as more people visit them; but most discussions of grand spring training stadiums would probably begin with Steinbrenner Field, formerly Legends Field, the Tampa home of the Yankees. Surely Champion Stadium at Walt Disney World is as pretty as they come, its lines and construction evoking parks of the 1920s, with all the 21st century amenities. But as much as the visual evokes the heritage of the game, the damn place keeps changing its name practically every year. It's only a decade old and it's been known officially as Disney Field, Crackerjack Stadium, The Ballpark at Disney's Wide World of Sports, and now Champion Stadium. What kind of heritage can there be a place that changes its name all the time? The prettiest, most comfortable, most amenity-rich spring training ballpark is probably Brighthouse Networks Field in Clearwater, where the Phillies play. But it sits on one of the ugliest pieces of land in all of Florida, surrounded by high-voltage electrical wires and a particularly busy and soulless piece of U.S. Route 19. So, is the scenery beyond the outfield fences important? Tough to beat the Cactus League parks then. Virtually every park looks out upon a mountain range, and in Tempe Diablo Stadium, the mountain looms just past the left field fence, sorta' like the wall at Fenway Park only five time higher. Is history important? With this year's shuttering of Dodgertown, Winter Haven and Al Lang, that really leaves only two choices. Fort Lauderdale Stadium was built for the Yankees in 1962 and has been home to the Orioles since the Yankees left for Tampa in '96. It's a window on old-time spring training, which is exactly why it's doomed. It doesn't have the clubhouse, strength-training, or medical-rehab facilities to support a modern spring training, and it doesn't even have room for the Orioles minor leaguers, who train across the state in Sarasota. So the Orioles will be leaving Fort Lauderdale for somewhere, maybe as early as next year. That will leave Hi Corbett Field in Tucson as the last of spring training's historical parks. Home to the Rockies now, it was built in the 1920s and has hosted spring training every year since 1947, when Bill Veeck brought the Indians there. It's where the spring training scenes from the movie Major League were filmed; that alone makes it worth the visit. How much weight to you give to the spirit of the fans when it comes to making a place special? Every team likes to claim that its fans are the best. Cubs fans and Red Sox fans are probably the most famous, but for pure unadulterated, demonstrative affection, it would be tough to top the sea of Cardinal red that fans wear to Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter to watch St. Louis play. Is the neighborhood important — you know, the old real estate maxim of location, location, location. Then it's probably got to be Scottsdale Stadium, right in the heart of downtown, just a couple of blocks from the bars and restaurants of Old Town Scottsdale. It's spring training's only neighborhood ballpark, and what a neighborhood! As I've traveled about spring training the last three years, I can't tell you how many different places I heard someone say: This is the best complex in all of spring training. Or: We wouldn't trade spring training sites with anyone. Or: There's no place better for getting a team ready for the season. Or: I wouldn't come anywhere else for spring training. So bring out all the clichés: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Home is where the heart is — or maybe, more accurately: the heart is where home is. The best spring training facility? It's really quite simple. That's going to be the place where your team plays.
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Contributors
by Charles Fountain, March 10, 2009 1:00 PM
I saw spring training's two newest complexes last Friday and they are spectacular. They are places of beauty as well as function, and the cities that built them — the west Phoenix suburbs of Glendale and Goodyear — are confident that they will be a boon to their community, growing their national profiles and their economies as well. These new facilities — the Dodgers and White Sox share Glendale and the Indians are down in Goodyear — are the very symbol of what I have been writing about these last three years, the symbol of what the new spring training has become — state-of-the-art conditioning and rehab facilities for the players, and theme-park-like destination resorts for the fans. When Goodyear is done building its new downtown city center around the ballpark in a few years, the concourse around the grandstand will become a city street; pedestrians on non-game days will be able to use the grandstand as park benches. There is land inside the gates of the park that city officials expect will one day house hotels. The one dark cloud in the blue skies over these complexes is the fact that they have been financed in part by state taxes to be collected from tourists who won't visit until years in the future, and in part by local bonds to be paid off with tax revenues from the anticipated private development surrounding the new complexes. But if the economy continues to bat .091, as it has been these last few months, will any of that ever happen? Attendance is off notably in spring training this year, and local officials point to a variety of factors. The World Baseball Classic — a bore to most American fans, a nuisance to major league managers and coaches, but a boon to Major League Baseball's international marketing — has extended spring training by a week, and filled the schedules with a lot of exhibitions against WBC teams. Spring training games started this year on February 25 and won't end until April 3. Each team plays upwards of 40 exhibitions this year, up from 30 most years. When all is said and done, total spring training attendance might be level with the recent record-setting springs, but per-game attendance is certain to be way down. In the Cactus League, three new teams in the Greater Phoenix area give vacationing baseball fans three new options; some local officials in places like Scottsdale and Mesa worry that fans in Glendale and Goodyear might account for some of the empty seats in their parks. But it is impossible to ignore the economy in all of this. Chambers of commerce across Florida and Arizona report that hotel reservations are down anywhere from five to 20 percent this year. In Phoenix, the upscale Arizona Biltmore Hotel is selling rooms for $199 a night, about half off their regular March rate. The collateral development planned for the areas around the new ballparks — hotels, restaurants, retail, golf courses, and in Goodyear's case, a new city hall and office and residential space as well — has all been put on indefinite hold. But the stadiums are there, and whether the reality dwarfs the dream, or vice versa, depends upon whether you're seeing the glass half empty or half full. Meanwhile, there is baseball being played there right now. Game time today is 1 p.m. Pacific.
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Contributors
by Charles Fountain, March 5, 2009 1:05 PM
The Cactus League, spring training baseball in Arizona, really had two beginnings. The first came in 1947, and it was a very small part of the American civil rights movement. Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck had been watching closely the progress of Jackie Robinson, intending to integrate his own team as soon as the Robinson story played out. Veeck had had some uncomfortable run-ins with segregation while running spring training in Florida for the minor league Milwaukee Brewers, and he felt that Arizona would be more hospitable to an integrated team. So in 1947, he took the Indians to Tucson, persuading Horace Stoneham to bring the New York Giants to Phoenix so the Indians would have someone to play exhibition games against. There were no blacks at Indians spring training in 1947; Veeck integrated the Indians in July of that year when he signed Larry Doby. When he brought Doby to spring training in 1948, he found he was only partly right about Tucson and an integrated team. The city was not exactly welcoming, just less hostile than many places in segregated Florida might have been. The real father of the Cactus League was a Mesa rancher and hotel owner by the name of Dwight Patterson, who brought the Cubs to Mesa and worked to grow the league to seven clubs during the 1950s and '60s. But in a talk I gave at the Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism yesterday, I skipped over Patterson and went right from Veeck to O.P.M. as the second beginning of the Cactus League. O.P.M., as the politicians and business developers like to explain, is Other People's Money, and it's become the secret to spring training baseball in Florida and Arizona. In the mid 1980s, Florida had found a way to build sparkling new spring training facilities using O.P.M., instituting a tourist development or "bed tax" on hotel stays. The tax brought in millions of dollars to Florida counties, and several used the windfall to build new, made-to-order, spring training complexes and lure teams from other Florida cities to theirs. Major league baseball teams, who'd always had to pretty much take what they could get from cash-strapped local governments in the smaller cities where they trained, were suddenly being given everything they asked for and more, the communities saying: "Hey, it's not our money; the tourists are paying for this." Arizona didn't have any O.P.M., but when the Indians announced in 1991 that they would be leaving Arizona for Florida, and other Cactus League teams started looking hard at these new facilities in Florida, Arizona quickly figured out they'd better get some O.P.M. too. The state instituted a tax on car rentals in Maricopa County — Greater Phoenix — of $2.50 per rental contract, the money to go to the construction and maintenance of spring training facilities. The revenues helped stave off any more defections, building new facilities for the Cubs, Brewers, Mariners, and Padres. But the money quickly ran out, and in 2000, Cactus League officials were able to attach a rider to a bill for a new football stadium for the Arizona Cardinals. That money, from a bed tax and an increase in the car rental tax, allowed Arizona to become the aggressor, luring six teams from Florida over the span of a dozen years. When the Cincinnati Reds move from Sarasota to join the Indians in the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear next year, the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues will be equal at 15 teams apiece. But both Florida and Arizona have now run out of O.P.M., the revenues committed years in advance. And in this economy, they don't have any of their own. Perhaps that's the next
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Contributors
by Charles Fountain, March 3, 2009 1:45 PM
Waiting at the airport to go from Orlando to Phoenix has summoned thoughts of spring training travel, and the differences between March baseball in Florida and Arizona. Travel is probably the critical difference between Grapefruit and Cactus leagues. It is, at the very least, the difference that gets talked about with the most passion and regularity. In Arizona, 12 of the 14 teams are located in and around Phoenix. The largest spread between any two teams training in the Valley of the Sun is the 40 miles between the Angels in Tempe and the Royals and Rangers up in Surprise. Two teams, the Rockies and the Diamondbacks, play down in Tucson, just over a hundred miles from the center of Phoenix, and players and writers — especially the writers — grumble whenever they have to make the 90-minute to two-hour trip through the desert for a game down in Tucson. "Ease of travel" is the one phrase general managers and team officials most regularly use when talking about why they like training in Arizona. In Florida, by contrast, 90 minutes would be a rather short bus ride; the farthest distance between teams is more than twice the ride from Phoenix to Tucson. The bus ride from Fort Lauderdale, where the Orioles train, to Dunedin, home to the Blue Jays and just northwest of Tampa, would be 250 miles. Not surprisingly, the Orioles and Blue Jays never take that ride; they don't play one another in Florida. And there are many other teams whose paths hardly ever cross in Florida. With teams spread from Fort Myers to Dunedin on the Gulf Coast, from Fort Lauderdale to Viera on the Atlantic Coast, and with three more teams spread along I-4 from Lakeland to Disney, the Grapefruit League map is a map of all of Southern Florida, and long bus rides are the bane of everybody's existence. When the Red Sox and Twins ride up from Fort Myers to Clearwater or Dunedin, the ride begins at seven in the morning and can take more than three hours. The ride home, through Tampa Bay's punishing rush-hour traffic, is generally even longer. When the Orioles, down in Fort Lauderdale, go anywhere except up to Jupiter to play the Cardinals or the Marlins, it's a sunrise-to-sunset affair. "Managing travel" so as not to lose too much time to player training is how Grapefruit League GMs and team execs discuss the travel challenges of Florida. The weather gets a lot of talk too. For most of winter-bound America, there's not a lot of difference between the sun of Florida and the sun of Arizona, but the locals in both states like to point out how theirs is better. "They get all that rain in Florida," say the chamber of commerce people in Arizona. "You lose a lot of games and training time to rain." "Players don't sweat in Arizona," counters one Florida person. "They don't get in the same kind of shape because they never sweat. You look at the conditioning of teams in the early season, and you'll see that the teams that trained in Florida seem to be in much better shape." But the difference that matters most these days is money. Spring training is big business now, and since the beginning of this century, Arizona has spent $250 million in public money building and improving spring training facilities for major league baseball teams. Florida has spent too, but $100 million less than Arizona has. This has led to a dramatic shift in the spring training map. Since 1998, five teams have shifted from Florida to Arizona, with a sixth, the Cincinnati Reds, scheduled to join them in 2010. When that happens, the leagues will be even at 15 teams apiece for the first time. That has a nice symmetry, but it will surely not remain that way forever. Inevitably, some team will start to see a greener patch of grass and a greener pile of money in a new community hankering for spring training, and the map will change again. It's not likely to happen soon in this economy; state budgets in both Florida and Arizona are in tatters. But history shows us that recessions are not forever. Baseball and spring training surely
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