What is Spring Training?

It’s spring training season in baseball world. But what does that mean, exactly? Read on to learn a lot about spring training and a little about ancient civilizations, forgetful aviators, and exploding fruit.

So what is spring training?

Spring training is the time in U.S. Major League Baseball (MLB) when teams start getting ready for the regular season. They work out, practice, and play preseason games.

When is spring training?

Spring training actually starts in winter. This year, teams started heading to their spring training grounds around the very end of January or the beginning of February. You might see team accounts refer to #truckday on social media: that’s the day when a team’s truck gets loaded up with sports equipment, uniforms, medical supplies, snacks, and personal luggage before being driven to the spring training site. The stuff arrives first, pitchers and catchers follow about a week later, and the rest of the players show up a few days after that. A week or two after everyone arrives, preseason games begin. This year, preseason games started on February 21.

Where is spring training?

Spring training happens in warm places. There are two designated locations: Florida and Arizona. Fifteen teams travel to Florida and fifteen travel to Arizona right now, but that’s just coincidence and could change at any time; there’s no rule about who should attend spring training where. Lately, teams have been relocating from Florida to Arizona for financial reasons. When preseason games begin, teams play other teams training in the same state. Because the stadiums in Florida are quite spread out, not every team there plays every other team. The Arizona stadiums are much closer together, and teams there are also more likely to share stadiums.

Is there anything special about the spring training stadiums?

A couple of them have interesting features or histories. LECOM Park in Bradenton, FL, where the Pittsburgh Pirates train, is the oldest spring training site and the third-oldest park used by a major league team. It was built in 1923. Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, AZ, where the Oakland Athletics train, is named after the Indigenous civilization that occupied the surrounding land from approximately AD 1 to the mid-15th century. The Hohokam people are the ancestors of modern-day Pima and Tohono O’odham peoples. Salt River Fields at Talking Stick is located in the Salt River Pima—Maricopa Indian Community. It’s the first MLB park built on Native American land. Salt River Fields is currently engaged in sustainability initiatives in partnership with Arizona State University. Most spring training stadiums are not that exciting. They tend to be fairly modern, architecturally uninteresting, and called by tedious corporate names that change every few years as sponsorship contracts run out.

How did spring training get started?

Teams started training away from their home parks in the 1880s. The Chicago White Stockings (now the Chicago Cubs) first traveled to Hot Springs, AR in 1886 to train and other teams soon followed suit, training in Hot Springs or other warm places around the U.S. The practice was widespread by the 1910s. Teams are now organized into two spring training leagues: the Grapefruit League in Florida and the Cactus League in Arizona.

Grapefruit League and Cactus League?

The Grapefruit League in Florida owes its name to aviator Ruth Law. In 1915, Law had been advertising for a golf course in the Daytona Beach area by throwing golf balls from her airplane. Someone suggested she throw a baseball, and Brooklyn Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson, whose team was training nearby, offered to try to catch it. Things didn’t go according to plan: Law forgot the baseball and improvised by throwing a grapefruit, which hit Robinson in the face. Robinson felt the juice running down his face and thought he was seriously injured. That’s how the Grapefruit League got its name, but there are a few interesting twists later in the story. Brooklyn Dodgers player Casey Stengel began claiming publicly that he was the one to throw the grapefruit and was apparently taken at his word, as he was often given credit for the stunt. I guess no one cared enough to fact-check him. Ruth Law set the record straight in a 1957 interview. Law’s husband forced her to quit flying in 1922. She took up cactus gardening instead.

The Cactus League in Arizona owes its existence to Black MLB players. Baseball was segregated in the U.S. until 1947. Bill Veeck, owner of the Cleveland team at the time, wanted to introduce Black players but was concerned about discrimination in Florida after a 1946 run-in with Ocala law enforcement: Veeck had inadvertently sat in the Black section of segregated stands at a baseball game and had been forced to leave. In 1947, he decided to train his team in Tucson, AZ and convinced the New York Giants to begin training in Phoenix, AZ. In 1947, Larry Doby was signed to Cleveland, making him the second Black man to play MLB and the first to play in the National League.

What happens during spring training?

Spring training has two main phases: practice and preseason games. Pitchers and catchers are expected to arrive first and get a head start on practice, but other players sometimes show up early. They work out together and start getting ready for games. After a couple weeks of practice, preseason games begin. You might hear this called exhibition season because the games don’t count towards any standings. The widely publicized games are played between two MLB teams, but teams can also play minor league teams, college teams, and themselves (when players face members of their own team, it’s called an intra-squad game). Sometimes teams split in two and travel to different stadiums to play games against different teams on the same day; these are called split-squad games. The Major League Baseball Players Association, the baseball players’ union, will sometimes field a team if enough players haven’t been signed to MLB teams by the start of spring training. The flexible nature of spring training competition strikes me as the perfect opportunity to introduce women’s baseball teams to the Major League, so I’ll be keeping my hopes up for that. Right now, though, it’s rare for women to be directly involved in spring training at all. One notable exception is Justine Siegal, PhD, coach, and gender equity activist, who became the first woman to throw batting practice to an MLB team during 2009 spring training.

What happens after spring training?

Regular baseball season comes after spring training, but so does something called extended spring training. Extended spring training is for players who weren’t assigned to teams and have to stay behind practicing until June. This is often the fate of inexperienced players, injured players, and older players. It can be difficult for these players not only psychologically, but financially, as players don’t get paid for spring training.

Wait, players don’t get paid for spring training?

Nope. According to the official MLB definition, it’s not considered work. This doesn’t sound like a big deal when you picture an MLB star making millions of dollars per year, but it’s a real hardship for poorly-paid Minor League players and for catchers, who are needed in great numbers during spring training but are unlikely to be signed to Major League teams.

Does performance during spring training count for anything?

It doesn’t count towards official statistics, but players have to do well during spring training if they want to be considered for positions that haven’t been finalized yet. Spring training also matters from a marketing perspective: teams are increasingly promoting it as a way for fans to engage.

Can I watch spring training?

You can! Preseason games are timed to coincide with American universities’ spring break and lots of people travel to Florida or Arizona to watch them. If you don’t have a favorite team you want to see or location you want to visit, some people recommend the Cactus League because it’s less expensive and easier to travel between stadiums. Preseason games are also streamed.