Spring Training Locations By Team
Further information: List of Major League Baseball spring training ballparksIn modern 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. These have been nicknamed the Grapefruit League and Cactus League, respectively, after plants typical of the respective states. The teams can play colleges (Atlanta vs. Georgia Tech, Detroit vs. Florida Southern, Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Arizona State, or the Boston Red Sox vs. Boston College), minor league baseball clubs, intra-squad games (members of the same team play against each other), split-squad games (games when one team is scheduled for two games in one day, so the team splits into two squads and each squad plays in one of the games), and B Games (unofficial Spring Training games where statistics and standings are not counted). In years when the World Baseball Classic occurs, the national teams in the tournament prepare by playing major league teams.
The newest stadium built for MLB spring training is jetBlue Park at Fenway South, the spring training home for the Boston Red Sox in Fort Myers, Florida, which opened in March 2012. jetBlue Park features a replica of Fenway Park's Green Monster, which even has Fenway's original manual scoreboard installed in it. The second-newest MLB spring training facility is the $100 million Salt River Fields at Talking Stick spring training complex on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale (Phoenix), Arizona, that hosted its first games on Feb 26, 2011. The complex is home to the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies, and contains a 11,000-seat stadium, separate clubhouses for each team, and 12 full-size practice fields (six for each team.) Both teams previously conducted spring training in Tucson, Arizona, bringing a total of 15 teams to the Cactus League in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
According to the Arizona Republic, the Cactus League generates more than $300 million a year in economic impact to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area economy. The new Salt River Fields at Talking Stick complex is the latest of eight new stadiums built in the Valley of the Sun over the past 20 years. The Arizona Republic newspaper reports that more than $500 million has been spent on "building eight new stadiums and renovating two others for the 15 teams in the Valley."
Attendance set a new record at 2011 Cactus League games with 1.59 million attending games at the various stadiums in the Phoenix metro area. Much of the attendance surge is attributed to the new Salt Rivers Fields at Talking Stick venue that accounted for 22 percent of the Cactus League attendance.
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