Spring Training in Tampa — Tampa, Florida

Seven Major League clubs have used Tampa as a spring home. The Tampa Bay Rays history of the sport in the region lists them in order: the Chicago Cubs (1913-16), Boston Red Sox (1919), Washington Senators (1920-29), Detroit Tigers (1930), Cincinnati Reds (1931-42; 1946-87), Chicago White Sox (1954-59) and New York Yankees (1996-). The Reds stand out on that list. Counting both of their stretches, Cincinnati trained in Tampa for more than half a century, longer than any other visitor to the city.

The same Rays page notes that Major League Baseball has had a presence in the area since 1913, except for 1943-45, when World War II kept teams from traveling south. By its count, Tampa has hosted at least one team for spring training in 93 of the past 106 years. Across the bay, St. Petersburg drew a different roster, including the Yankees in an earlier era, which is why the Yankees appear in both cities' histories. The Tampa list runs through three ballparks: Plant Field beside the Tampa Bay Hotel, Al Lopez Field, and the current George M. Steinbrenner Field off North Dale Mabry Highway.

Baseball itself was already familiar in Tampa by then. The Tampa Bay History Center traces the local game to the early 1880s, when soldiers from Fort Brooke and young Tampa men formed teams. By the early 1910s, professional clubs had begun heading south before the season to work out and play exhibitions, and the History Center names the Chicago Cubs in 1913 as the first team to come to the Tampa Bay area. The Cubs trained at Plant Field, next to the Tampa Bay Hotel, which is now the University of Tampa. Local papers quickly adopted the Chicago club as the city's own springtime team and kept rooting for it through the regular season.

Two accounts explain how the deal came together. The Rays history says the Cubs moved their spring operation from New Orleans to Tampa, and that St. Petersburg promoter Al Lang had urged the Cubs to come to the bay area, only to see them choose Tampa instead. A 2015 history on Deadball Baseball adds that Tampa Mayor D.B. McKay convinced the Cubs to train at Plant Field by actually paying the team to play in Tampa. A year later the St. Louis Browns settled in St. Petersburg, and the rivalry produced the first game between two Major League teams in the area on March 26, 1914. At Plant Field, the host Cubs beat the Browns 3-2 despite making six errors, according to MLB.com.

Plant Field was more than a ball field. Deadball Baseball places it near the northeast intersection of North Boulevard and West North B Street, on grounds built in the 1890s for guests of Henry Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel. For much of its existence it shared the Florida State Fairgrounds and was ringed by a horse and automobile race track. After the Cubs left following the 1916 season, the Boston Red Sox trained there in 1919, and that spring produced the field's most retold moment.

On April 4, 1919, Babe Ruth, then with the Red Sox, hit what many consider his longest home run, a 587-foot drive against the New York Giants at Plant Field, according to the Rays history. Deadball Baseball reports that the ball came to rest near the site of what later became the City of Tampa Municipal Auditorium, and that a historic plaque on the University of Tampa campus marks the approximate spot where the ball was found.

The 1920s and 1930s brought steadier tenants to the Tampa fairgrounds park. From 1920 to 1929 the Washington Senators trained at Plant Field; the Detroit Tigers followed for the single 1930 season, and the Cincinnati Reds trained there from 1931 to 1942 and again from 1946 to 1954. The minor league Tampa Smokers also played home games at Plant Field from 1919 to 1927, and again from 1946 through 1954. A Hillsborough County historical marker now stands at the site, and its text adds an event outside the Major League calendar: in November 1950, an African American all-star team led by Jackie Robinson played the Tampa Rockets there in an exhibition.

The Chicago White Sox spent only the 1954 season at Plant Field before moving their spring training four miles northeast to the new Al Lopez Field in 1955, according to Deadball Baseball. The Reds kept training at Plant Field but began playing their home exhibitions at the new park that year, and they took over sole occupancy of Al Lopez Field in 1960, when the White Sox left for Payne Park in Sarasota. That move matches the Rays list, which ends the White Sox era in Tampa in 1959.

The ballpark carried the name of a Tampa son. The SABR biography of Al Lopez records that his family settled in the Ybor City section of Tampa in 1906, that he was born there on August 20, 1908, and that he made the Tampa Smokers of the Florida State League in 1925 before a long career as a catcher and manager. Losing the 1954 World Series as Cleveland's manager did not stop the City of Tampa from dedicating its new spring training facility in his honor, SABR notes, and for better than three decades Al Lopez Field was the winter home of the Reds. The Hall of Fame inducted Lopez in 1977. He also outlived the stadium, which was destroyed in 1989, two years after the Reds' final Tampa spring in 1987.

The current era began in 1996. According to the New York Yankees, George M. Steinbrenner Field was built that year as a 31-acre complex centrally located in Tampa. It serves as the spring home of the Yankees and the summer home of the Tampa Tarpons, the club's Class A-Advanced affiliate, and it hosts concerts, baseball tournaments and corporate events the rest of the year. The Yankees state that 2027 marks the team's 32nd season in Tampa, which would make the Bronx club the city's second longest spring tenant after the Reds.

The ballpark took its present name on March 27, 2008. The Yankees report that the renaming followed two unanimous resolutions from the Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa City Council, which cited Steinbrenner's charitable donations to youth activities, hospitals and the arts. The complex sits at 1 Steinbrenner Drive. By the team's directions, it lies about 3 miles north of the I-275 exit for North Dale Mabry (US Highway 92), with Tampa International Airport roughly 3 miles away.

Gaps in the Major League schedule did not empty Tampa's ballparks. When wartime travel limits kept clubs home from 1943 to 1945, Tampa organized the Inter-Social League in 1943, and crowds averaged several thousand in West Tampa and Ybor City, according to the Rays history. Its players included the fathers of future Major Leaguers Lou Piniella and Dave Magadan.

Minor league ball also tied into the spring calendar. Tampa became a charter member of the Class-D Florida State League in 1919, and after a last-place first season its 1920 team went 89-28, a .745 winning percentage that MLB.com says remains the best in league history. Plant Field itself left professional baseball by 1960. The University of Tampa acquired the field in 1971 and renamed it Pepin/Rood Stadium, Deadball Baseball reports, and a newer grandstand now stands near the spot of the original. Two antique turnstiles from Plant Field remain inside Pepin Stadium, a small link to the 1913 spring that started Tampa's run as a Major League training town.