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History of the Grape Fruit League

Big league baseball -- the spring training version -- is a Florida tradition dating to the early years of the century. Nearly all the immortals -- from Ruth to Hornsby to Mays and Clemente -- have trod the basepaths of St. Petersburg, Bradenton and points south and north in the state.

In Central Florida the tradition began in October 1908 with a single exhibition game between the Cincinnati Reds and the semi-pro St. Petersburg Saints, and resumed in February 1913, when the Chicago Cubs arrived in Tampa for the region's first spring training.

Lured to Tampa by Mayor D.B. McKay's promise to cover the team's expenses up to $100 per player, the Cubs began workouts at Plant Field (just north of the elegant Tampa Bay Hotel, the present site of the University of Tampa) on February 19, as a crush of curious fans looked on.

Even the vacationing William Jennings Bryan, soon to be sworn in as President Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, was on hand to watch player-manager and future Hall of Famer Johnny Evers, the sure handed second baseman of the famous Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance combo, work his players into shape. National League champions in 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1910, the mighty Cubs had slipped to third place in 1912. But Evers had high hopes that training in the warm Florida sun would boost his team back to the top.

By February 26, the Cubs were ready for the first game of a three-game series against the Havana Athletics, a team of barnstorming Cuban stars, most of whom had played American college ball. With ticket prices ranging from 25 cents for a bleacher seat to one dollar for a box seat, nearly 6,000 fans, at the time the largest crowd ever to witness a sporting event in Tampa Bay watched the Cubs defeat the Athletics 4-2. Cuban cigar workers and their families made up nearly half of the crowd, as several Ybor City and West Tampa cigar factories closed down early to let their employees attend the inter-American contest.

The Cubs went on the sweep the series against the Athletics, treated the fans to several intrasquad games and even traveled by boat to Egmont Key to play a makeshift team of soldiers. By the time Evers and the Cubs boarded the train to Chicago (by way of Jacksonville, Chattanooga, Memphis, and several other cities where exhibition games were scheduled), Tampa Bay's love affair with Major League Baseball was in full flower. Never again would Florida springtime be complete without the sounds and sights of the National Pastime.

In 1913, only two major league teams trained in Florida: the Cubs in Tampa and Cleveland Indians in Pensacola. But baseball fever soon spread to other Florida communities. By the spring of 1914, the Sunshine State had the makings of a rudimentary league with the Cubs in Tampa, the St. Louis Browns in St. Petersburg, the St. Louis Cardinals in St. Augustine and Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics in Jacksonville.

As a young reserve catcher for the Washington Senators in 1888, Mack, the grandfather of Connie Mack III, (a former U.S. Senator from Florida) had played in Jacksonville's first big league exhibition game, won by the New York Giants 10-2, and in 1903, as the skipper of the American League champion Athletics, he had been the first manager to bring a major league team to Florida for an entire season.

The team did not return to the state for 11 years, largely because the 1903 Athletics finished a disappointing 14 1/2 games behind the Red Sox. Predictably, Mack blamed the year-long slump on the tropical temptations of Jacksonville, where his star pitcher, Rube Waddell, had been distracted by several misadventures, including a wrestling match with a live alligator and an attempted suicide following a jilting by a local brunette.

By the time Mack returned to Jacksonville in 1914, the Athletics were the reigning World Champions and Florida, no longer an isolated backwater in the world of baseball, was on the verge of becoming the hub of spring training. As improved train and auto travel made the state more accessible, the natural advantages of Florida's warm, dry winters and the enticements offered by local boosters began to draw the attention of baseball executives.