Spring training
training during the spring season, in baseball
Spring training, also called spring camp, is the preseason of the Summer Professional Baseball Leagues, such as Major League Baseball (MLB), and it is a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season. Spring training allows new players to try out for the roster and position spots, and it gives established players practice time prior to competitive play. Spring training has always attracted fan attention, drawing crowds who travel to the warm climates (MLB goes to Arizona and Florida while the KBO, NPB, and CPBL go to Okinawa, Kyushu, Australia, and Taiwan) to enjoy the weather and watch their favorite teams play.
In modern MLB training, teams that train in Florida will play other Florida-training teams in their exhibition games, regardless of regular-season league affiliations. Likewise, Arizona-training teams will play other Arizona teams. This arrangement commenced long before either state received MLB franchises of their own, and thus at the time were widely considered "neutral" sites for preseason MLB play. All MLB teams (including those permanently based in Arizona and Florida) each own or hold a long-term lease for a spring training ballpark distinct from their regular stadium. These facilities are typically comparable to the AAA-caliber ballparks of Minor League Baseball.
Sometimes, teams will finish the preseason with games in their home ballpark (often against local opposition from the opposite league) although with the introduction of interleague play this has become less common. Over time, the Florida and Arizona preseason circuits were informally nicknamed the Grapefruit League and Cactus League, respectively, after plants typical of the respective states.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spring training” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.