Description
Under the March Sun tells the story of baseball's spring training from its origins to the present day. The book covers a dozen milestones in spring training history, including the first time a team traveled south for spring training, the first time a league consolidated all of its spring training in one location, and the first time a team trained in a new location due to wartime travel restrictions. Today, baseball's spring training is a billion-dollar industry that attracts fans from all over the country.
There is nothing in all of American sport quite like baseball's spring training. This annual six-week ritual, whose origins date back nearly a century and a half, fires the hearts and imaginations of fans who flock by the hundreds of thousands to places like Dodgertown to glimpse superstars and living legends in a relaxed moment and watch the drama of journeyman veterans and starry-eyed kids in search of that last spot on the bench. In Under the March Sun, Charles Fountain recounts for the first time the full and fascinating history of spring training and its growth from a shoestring-budget roadtrip to burn off winter calories into a billion-dollar-a-year business. In the early days southern hotels only reluctantly admitted ballplayers--and only if they agreed not to mingle with other guests. Today cities fight for teams by spending millions in public money to build ever-more-elaborate spring-training stadiums. In the early years of the 20th century, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, Al Lang, first realized that coverage in northern newspapers every spring was publicity his growing city could never afford to buy. As the book demonstrates, cities have been following Lang's lead ever since, building identities and economies through the media exposure and visitors that spring training brings. An entertaining cultural history that taps into the romance of baseball even as it reveals its more hard-nosed commercial machinations, Under the March Sun shows why spring training draws so many fans southward every March. While the prices may be growing and the intimacy and accessibility shrinking, they come because the sunshine and sense of hope are timeless.
There is nothing in all of American sport quite like baseball's spring training. This annual six-week ritual, whose origins date back nearly a century and a half, fires the hearts and imaginations of fans who flock by the hundreds of thousands to places like Dodgertown to glimpse superstars and living legends in a relaxed moment and watch the drama of journeyman veterans and starry-eyed kids in search of that last spot on the bench. In
Under the March Sun, Charles Fountain recounts for the first time the full and fascinating history of spring training. A Dozen Milestones in Spring Training History
1869 New York politico William Marcy "Boss" Tweed sends the amateur New York Mutuals to New Orleans, the first recorded instance of a baseball teams heading south for spring training. No record exists of whether or not the trip was paid for with money Tweed extorted from city contractors, but that would be the smart-money bet.
1885 Cap Anson takes a newspaper reporter along when he brings the Chicago White Stockings to Hot Springs Arkansas. The news stories, and the White Stockings subsequent success, popularize the idea of southern spring training trips and soon all big league teams are taking them, with reporters along to send stories back to the chilly north.
1920s The Grapefruit League is born. Former St. Petersburg Mayor Al Lang works to consolidate all of spring training in Florida, attracting the Braves and the Yankees to his city, and helping attract nearly a dozen other major league teams to long-term spring home in other Florida cities.
1934 The Detroit Tigers train for the first time in Lakeland, Florida, where, but for the World War II years, they have trained ever since. It is the longest continuous association between a major league team and its spring training city.
1943-45 Wartime travel restrictions force Major League Baseball to hold spring training within fifty miles of teams' home cities.
1947 The Cleveland Indians and New York Giants move their spring trai
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