Anticipating the Return of Florida Grapefruit League in 2021
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – When the final out was recorded on Thursday, March 12 at the Charlotte Sports Park, just after 4:30 p.m., in a game between Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays, the 2020 Florida Spring Training season came to an end.
Because of the nearly 1,000 inning void, a shortened 60-game schedule in 2020, and fanless baseball games, the 2021 season may be one of the most anticipated in over 100 years of Florida Spring Training.
Let’s face it, every Florida Spring Training season is anxiously awaited after sitting through the winter doldrums. Baseball fans in the Northeast and Midwest have endured freezing temperatures and months of snow.
Hearing the term, “Pitchers and Catchers report,” is music to the ears. Seeing videos of team equipment trucks leaving their home parks for Florida are as welcomed as a bottom of ninth inning walk-off home run.
The end of the 2020 season was certainly unprecedented. The long and storied history of Florida Spring Training has provided many other reasons that have brought fans flocking to various Grapefruit League locations.
Come late February 2021, baseball fans will be lined up at the gates of Florida’s 12 spring training sites waiting for those two words.
Play Ball!
1946 – Spring Training Returns after World War II
Following a three-year absence, from 1943-45 during World War II, Major League Baseball teams were restricted from traveling south and were forced to find sites north of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers and east of the Mississippi River. The St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, the western-most teams, were given exceptions and allowed to remain west of the Mississippi to train near Missouri.
While many teams attempted to hold outdoor workouts in the Midwest and Northeast, weather was not ideal for players used to the Florida sunshine. Some found college field houses for indoor workouts.
Fielding games were another story, and weather often was a factor.
In 1944, the town of Frederick, Maryland, the Philadelphia Athletics training site, declared a half-day holiday so fans could attend a game between the Athletics and New York Yankees. It was the only scheduled exhibition the A’s played against another Major League club and 1,500 fans showed up.
Unfortunately, the weather had other plans. It started snowing in the fourth inning, but play continued and the snow eventually stopped. In the eighth inning, it came back with a vengeance, reaching blizzard-like conditions. The umpires were forced to cancel the game, and it was never resumed. Such was Spring Training in the north.
With the end of the war in 1945, 12 of the 16 MLB teams returned to Florida for Spring Training in 1946.
Players responded positively to not being forced to play baseball out in the cold or inside dusty old gyms. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Indians were in better shape after two weeks in Clearwater (The Indians only season at Athletic Field) than they were at the same point during any of their years in of training in Indiana.
For the 1946 season, baseball fans in 10 Florida communities welcomed back the boys of summer, and there has been no stoppage of play until the 2020 season.
Florida Spring Training Landscape for 1946 season after World War II
Atlanta Braves – Fort Lauderdale, Westside Baseball Park
Boston Red Sox – Sarasota, Payne Park
Detroit Tigers – Lakeland, Henley Field
Washington Senators – Orlando, Tinker Field
New York Yankees/St. Louis Cardinals – St. Petersburg, Waterfront Park
New York Giants/Philadelphia Phillies – Miami Beach, Flamingo Field
Philadelphia Athletics – West Palm Beach, Connie Mack Field
Cincinnati Reds – Tampa, Plant Field
Cleveland Indians – Clearwater Athletic Field
Brooklyn Dodgers – Daytona Beach, City Island Ballpark
Only the Detroit Tigers still play in Lakeland. The City of Lakeland and the Tigers have the longest-standing relationship between a Major League team and spring training host community. The 2021 season will be the Tigers 85th season, dating back to 1934.
1994 – Sarasota in the Spotlight with a Celebrity in Camp
Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium has experienced some anticipated seasons beginning with the ballpark’s opening day of 1989 when the Chicago White Sox debuted their first round draft pick, future Hall of Famer, Frank Thomas. Bo Jackson returned to play for White Sox in the heyday of the “Bo Knows,” Nike ad campaign, in 1992 and 1993. The 2011 season, featuring a renovated Ed Smith Stadium, had fans flocking to the 12th Street location for a peek at the new digs.
But, it was the 1994 season, when Michael Jordan took his break from basketball to play for the White Sox, that was the most anticipated of them all.
On February 4, 1994, Jordan signed a minor-league contract with the White Sox. The best player in basketball was leaving the hardwood court for the outfield grass of baseball.
“There was a significant spike in ticket sales after he signed,” said Pat Calhoon, the long-time facilities director for the City of Sarasota and Ed Smith Stadium. “We had a little bit of a dress rehearsal the previous year with Bo Jackson.”
Calhoon pointed out there were numerous fans buying tickets that were not the biggest baseball fans occupying the seats at Ed Smith Stadium. Many ticket buyers brought basketballs to the games for Jordan to autograph.
“I can’t tell you how many times I had to ask people to stop dribbling basketballs in the stands and ask them to stop passing the ball back and forth,” Calhoon said.
A record 115,000 fans jammed Ed Smith Stadium in 1994, over 7,000 per game, for a glimpse of MJ.
“They were selling standing-room-only tickets,” said Ed Edwards, the former P.A. announcer at Ed Smith Stadium. “You couldn’t even see the field! You were staring at a brick wall! But people wanted to say they were there.”
1996 and 1998 – Tampa Bay Area Welcomes New Stadium and Team
The Tampa Bay area, a longtime hotbed of Florida Spring Training since the 1920s, had baseball fans anxiously awaiting a couple of debuts in the late 1990s. With the arrival of the New York Yankees in 1996, it filled a void in Tampa, left by the Cincinnati Reds when they relocated to Plant City in 1987. The Tampa Bay Rays were still two seasons away from their debut.
Originally known as Legends Field, now George M. Steinbrenner Field, opened in Tampa in 1996 to great fanfare. It was the first Florida Spring Training stadium with the ability to host 10,000+ fans and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner’s home base had been in Tampa for quite a few years.
The inaugural game against the Cleveland Indians on March 1, 1996 Legends Field was not without Yankees legends in attendance. On hand for the first pitch was Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, and of course, Yankees principal owner, George Steinbrenner.
On the Yankees roster were future Hall of Fame selections Wade Boggs, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.
“It was huge, a sell out,” said Rick Nafe, who at the time was the Tampa Sports Authority Executive Director, who oversaw the design and construction of the stadium. “It was an opening worthy of the Yankees tradition.”
A couple of years later, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays hit the field for the first time at Al Lang Field, against the Florida Marlins, on February 27, in preparation for their inaugural season of 1998.
St. Petersburg had finally realized its dream of securing a Major League Baseball team after over 20 years of disappointments.
In an in-state matchup, the Devil Rays met the Florida Marlins in the legendary downtown waterfront ballpark on Friday, February 27, 1998.
By this time Rick Nafe had moved across Tampa Bay to become the Vice President of Operations for the Devil Rays and was witness to another moment in Florida Spring Training history.
“There was a lot of love on the Pinellas side for that game,” Nafe said. “Al Lang is such a great stadium with the palm trees and the waterfront. Everyone’s attention was drawn to the team making its debut in the area.”
2005 – A Long-Awaited Celebration in Fort Myers
Fort Myers was abuzz in 2005 when the Boston Red Sox returned to Southwest Florida after winning their first World Series since 1918. Rabid fans didn’t even wait until opening day at City of Palms Park to get a glimpse of their heroes of the diamond. Boston.com described the first day of full squad practice.
“Lines snaked down the blistering sidewalk at City of Palms Park, where the Red Sox play their exhibition games. Here’s the drill: Wait in line for a bracelet that costs a buck and gets you onto a bus that will take you a couple of miles down Edison Avenue to the practice fields, where there is no parking. At the fields, wait again while security checks all bags. At the end of practice, wait in a long line for a bus back to the park.
But it’s what happens inside the park that makes up for everything else. That first day, the 2,555 fans who showed up — a record number — got a close-up look at the players, as close as the tight security would allow. They came with bats, balls, T-shirts, visors, and programs in hopes of bagging their quarry: Red Sox autographs. But just seeing the team was thrill enough for many.
A veteran journalist surveyed the scene and shook his head. ”I’ve been covering spring training for 20 years, and this is the craziest I’ve seen it,” he said.
Come February 2021, it will be a return to the field comparable to an 11-month rain delay. It will return, as sure as there are Yankees pinstripes, the old English D of the Detroit Tigers and the Cardinal Way.