Major League Baseball Spring Training
Spring Training (see: Spring Training Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide To The Ballparks Of The Grapefruit And Cactus Leagues
Today all Major League teams train in either the state of Florida (see: Florida Spring Training, 3rd Edition: Your Guide to Touring the Grapefruit League
Florida and Arizona have not always been the only states to host Major League Baseball teams for Spring Training. In the early part of the 20th century, it was not uncommon to see Spring Training camps set up in any number of warm-weather states including Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, and Mississippi. The Brooklyn Dodgers trained in Havana, Cuba and in the Dominican Republic at various times during the 1940s, and the Pittsburgh Pirates trained in Havana in 1953. During World War II, most teams held an abbreviated Spring Training at non-traditional locales, many of them northern to be within easy reach of their cities. For many years prior to Major League Baseball's arrival to the West Coast, a number of teams regularly trained in California.
As the older and larger of the two circuits, the Grapefruit League dates back to about 1914 which was around the time that Spring Training became a standard institution for major league teams. The Cactus League took much longer to develop, and didn't take root until the mid-1940s when teams began to set up camp in Arizona. Prior to that time, California had been the venue of choice for teams training in the West. The first two teams to set up shop in Arizona were the Cleveland Indians (Hi Corbett Field in Tucson) and New York Giants (Municipal Stadium in Phoenix). In 1951, the two New York teams (Giants and Yankees) swapped Spring Training sites for one season, giving Cactus League fans the opportunity to witness the only spring where Joe DiMaggio (entering his final spring) and Mickey Mantle (entering his first) would train together. Within a few years, the Chicago Cubs (Mesa) and Baltimore Orioles (Yuma) would join the Giants and Indians in Arizona for Spring Training, giving rise to the circuit's official designation as "Cactus League". In 1954 baseball saw its first World Series take place between two Cactus League teams (Indians and Giants).
For the next two decades, a number of teams switched training locales to and from Arizona, but by the late 1970s the Cactus League had somewhat stabilized with eight teams: Angels (Mesa), Athletics (Phoenix), Brewers (Chandler), Cubs (Mesa), Giants (Scottsdale), Indians (Tucson), Mariners (Tempe), and Padres (Yuma). This is how things stood for about a decade, but by the late-1980s, an aggressive marketing campaign by Florida cities, which included the introduction of various mechanisms to assist communities in building new facilities, began to lure some of Arizona's staple teams to the Grapefruit League. The state of Arizona countered this push with the creation of the Arizona Baseball Commission, followed by the construction of new baseball stadiums in its cities and the refurbishment of older ones. As things stand today, both leagues are prospering and both states recognize the growing popularity and economic importance of baseball's Spring Training.