Beginnings
By Kevin Schindler
Baseball Spring training can be traced back to 1870 and involved two teams – Cincinnati and Chicago – from the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), America’s first governing organization for baseball. In the ensuing years, teams from different leagues, including today’s Major League Baseball’s (MLB) National (established 1976) and American (established 1901) Leagues, set up spring camps to prepare for the regular season.
Early on, most MLB spring training camps were in Florida and surrounding localities in the American southeast or the Caribbean. The Cubs were the first team to train out west, in Los Angeles in 1903. The Cubs’ cross-town rival White Sox were the first team to play in Arizona, matching up against a local team in Yuma while barnstorming back east from California.
The first spring training game in Arizona between MLB clubs was in 1929, with the Tigers hosting the Pirates in Phoenix. However, the majority of training remained focused in Florida or California. In 1942 the Cubs met with leaders of the Phoenix suburb of Mesa to explore training here, but WW II wartime restrictions ultimately canceled this proposal.
In 1945, Bill Veeck led a group that bought the Cleveland Indians. Veeck was a publicity-minded individual who in the 1930s had worked for the Cubs when his father was their president. In later years he owned other MLB teams and is remembered as a sort of P.T. Barnum of baseball who created a bunch of often wacky promotions to increase interest in his teams.
Soon after buying the Indians, Veeck and Giants owner Horace Stoneham began discussing the possibility of jointly moving their respective teams to Arizona for spring training. Later accounts by Veeck and Stoneham differ as to the exact details. However, the most commonly followed story points to Veeck as the original mastermind behind the plan.
The Indians had been training in Clearwater, Florida, but to relatively small crowds. When Veeck took over the team one of his major goals was to increase attendance at all games, for both spring training and the regular season. A move to another location might facilitate such an increase for spring games, and since Veeck owned a cattle ranch in Tucson and loved the spring weather there, he decided to target Arizona as a new center for training.
Veeck later said that social issues also factored into his decision to move his team to Arizona. In 1947 Veeck signed Negro League star Larry Doby, who would become the first black player in the American League, breaking in just a few months after Jackie Robinson did for the National League’s Dodgers. Veeck believed the racial tensions in Arizona were not as severe as in Florida, thus reducing the possibility of racial problems arising because of the presence of Doby.
Veeck didn’t want to relocate to Arizona unless another team did too, so he contacted Stoneham, who Veeck knew was unhappy training in Miami. Stoneham liked the idea of moving to Arizona for many reasons, including the presence of the well-known Buckhorn Hot Mineral Baths in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. Here, his Giants players joined Hollywood movie stars and later, players from other baseball teams, in soaking in the mineral water.
Veeck and Stoneham agreed to relocate their teams and in 1947 the Indians began training in Tucson, playing their home games at Randolph Field (later renamed to Hi Corbett Field) while the Giants practiced in Phoenix, playing games at the original Phoenix Municipal Stadium. They played their first game March 8, 1947 at Hi Corbett Field, with the Indians winning 3-1.
In 1952 the Cubs moved their spring training operations from Catalina Island in California to Mesa. With the arrival of the Baltimore Orioles in 1954 the circuit of teams in Arizona became known as the Cactus League (as compared to the Grapefruit League in Florida). Since then, the Cactus League has gained and lost teams and today has the highest number of teams ever with 15, exactly half of the 30 MLB teams.
For a look at the Cactus League stadiums from the past that are no longer in operation, go here.