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Six lazy weeks in the sun?
Wouldn't you like it, too?
of TheColumnists.com
There is a touch
of snow on the grass outside my window during my first New Jersey
February. The temperature is 30 degrees as I write this. The
wind is howling just a bit, enough to wet my lips with the insatiable
appetite I have had for nearly half a century.
It was 1959, as a young reporter at Sports Illustrated Magazine,
that I got my first all-expenses paid trip to St. Petersburg,
Florida to write scouting reports on the New York Yankees for
our March baseball issue.
Baseball spring training had always been one of those romantic
lores for all kids in my Brooklyn neighborhood. We knew that
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig trained with the Yankees in St. Petersburg.
We knew the Dodgers were in that old Navy base in Vero Beach,
Florida. We knew the New York Giants were far out west in Arizona.
We watched the daily papers for the first pictures, in the middle
of February, of players settling their families in the warm sun
while they played golf at the local clubs.
We knew the spring legends, Jackie Robinson training in Havana
to avoid segregation pressures of Florida, Joe DiMaggio arriving
after a cross country ride in 1936 from his San Francisco home
with teammates Tony Lazzeri and Frank Crosetti, even Don Larsen
cracking up his car before daybreak when he couldn’t miss
a light pole. Yankee manager Casey Stengel explained the journey
to the anxious press by stating, “He went out to mail a
letter.” Larsen responded to that fib with baseball’s
only World Series perfect game some seven months later.
I took an overnight train to St. Petersburg that late February
of 1959, dropped my bags in the lobby of the Soreno Hotel and
raced out to the ball park. No players were around but Stengel
was sitting on the bench at old Al Lang Field entertaining the
New York sportswriters. Suddenly, quietly, shyly, I was one of
them.
Three springs later Stengel sat in the same old spring training
spot with a different uniform on. He was now the 72-year-old
rookie manager of a new team called the New York Mets. “Amazing,
they’re gonna be amazing,” he repeated over and over
again.
Stengel had showed up at spring training half a century earlier
as a bombastic kid outfielder with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was
telling tales of many of his 1912 Brooklyn teammates on that
1962 morning.
There are no real, undisputed records of how this glorious institution
of spring training began. It all happened somewhere before the
turn of the 20th century when 19th century stars like Honus Wagner,
Wee Willie Keeler and John McGraw journeyed south with their
teams to shake the winter cobwebs.
We all followed.
In the early 20th century, teams trained in late February and
March in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama and later in
California and Arizona.
During World War II they even stayed north and trained in places
such as West Point, New York, Jersey City, New Jersey and Great
Lakes, Illinois.
The Dodgers opened the first training complex of their own when
they were awarded a government navy base on Florida’s East
Coast for a dollar. Probably worth two hundred million dollars
now.
The Yankees and Mets have gorgeous facilities of their own now
in Tampa and Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Those escapist avenues probably had more to do with tormenting
players into signing for small salaries than any other baseball
bargaining tool. That aspect has disappeared for two reasons.
Most players own their own homes in warmer climates and work
out all year.
Secondly, most stars have long term contracts with early spring
in the sun being a little incentive to sign.
While the players may not be terribly moved by spring training
locations in the warm south or warm west, the press certainly
is.
While a news writer may get a luxury trip with the President
for four or five days in an exotic land, few get six or seven
weeks in Florida or Arizona with about a three hour work day.
After the baseball writers settle in to the luxurious team hotel
or rent their own luxury condos on the boss’s money, the
fun really begins. There are golf courses and tennis courses
everywhere. The meals are terrific and occasionally the team
will actually pick up the tab for a fancy dinner. All for business
contacts, of course.
The sportswriters will send back a thousand words or so a day
from the luxury of the team press rooms or from the comfort of
their own expense-account sun-filled balcony.
The readers back north will study these reports in their local
journals. A lot of them will lock up a round trip to scout the
newest rookie for themselves.
The telephone wasn’t a bad invention. The computer can do
some word tricks. Television can fill the silence of a quiet
room. For me, I still think the greatest invention ever was baseball
spring training. All aboard.
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This
column first posted on Feb. 13, 2006.
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