Spring training baseball games used to be held in downtown St. Pete, Florida.<\/p>\n
getty<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg, Florida, hardly ever comes up in conversations about America\u2019s great baseball cities, but it probably should. Long before it became a Gulf Coast destination known as the \u201cSunshine City,\u201d it quietly helped invent one of the sport\u2019s defining traditions: spring training as we know it today.<\/p>\n
For more than a century, professional baseball teams have come to St. Pete to escape northern winters and warm up for the regular season. In the process, the city became a kind of winter getaway for the sport itself\u2014hosting star players, shaping fan culture, and building its own legends.<\/p>\n
Many people already come to the St. Pete region in March for spring training, but there\u2019s more baseball lore to discover. Today, you can retrace some of that history as a traveler and enjoy some of the modern fruits that have grown from it.<\/p>\n
First Pitch: Crescent Lake and the Public Park Era<\/p>\n
Before teams practiced at an official ballpark in St. Pete, they literally played ball in a park; that is, before the city had purpose-built spring training facilities, baseball lived in its public spaces. <\/p>\n
In the early 20th century\u2014particularly the 1910s and 1920s\u2014major league teams and semi-pro clubs would train and scrimmage on open fields, using Florida\u2019s winter climate as a competitive advantage long before \u201cspring training\u201d became a formalized industry. These weren\u2019t ticketed stadium experiences; rather, they were public fields with grass worn down by repetition, temporary stands, and teams practicing in full view of everyday life. <\/p>\n
In St. Pete, there were many improvised diamonds scattered across the city\u2019s growing neighborhoods, but one of the earliest and most important of these was Huggins-Stengel Field at Crescent Lake Park. It is still a popular public park today. <\/p>\n
In his book, 100 Years of Baseball on St. Petersburg’s Waterfront: How the Game Helped Shape a City<\/a>, baseball historian Rick Vaughn recalls stories from these early days, revealing some of the challenges and charms of the era. For example, certain players were hesitant to go too deep into the outfield at Huggins-Stengel for fear that an alligator would come out of the lake.<\/p>\n The St Louis Cardinals play the Houston Astros in a spring game at Al Lang Stadium in St Petersburg, Florida, circa 1968. Today, the stadium has been repurposed into a professional soccer stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Rowdies.<\/p>\n Getty ImagesThe Golden Era of Spring Training<\/p>\n Today, Al Lang Stadium is the home of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, a professional soccer team, in downtown St. Pete. Just steps from the waterfront, it offers a beautiful view from its stands of a quiet harbor\u2014a view that competes with the game itself. <\/p>\n Flash back in time, and instead of watching soccer, you\u2019d be watching a spring training game featuring the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, New York Giants, or the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. <\/p>\n From 1922 through 2008, spring training games were played across four fields in St. Pete. First, it was Waterfront Park hosting games from 1922 to 1946. Then it was replaced by Al Lang Field (1947-1975), which later became the Al Lang Stadium we know today (1977-2008). In 1976, games were played at Campbell Park while Al Lang Stadium was replacing Al Lang Field. <\/p>\n These parks were home to some of baseball\u2019s most iconic franchises. The Yankees\u2014stocked with names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio\u2014were Al Lang Field\u2019s inaugural MLB tenant when it opened in 1947, playing spring-training games there until 1961. During that time, they shared Al Lang with several other clubs, and its use continued well into the modern era. The Cardinals, for example, trained in St Pete from 1938 to 1997, playing at all four fields. The Devil Rays were the last team to call Al Lang home, playing there from 1998 to 2008.<\/p>\n By the mid-20th century, spring training had turned St. Pete into a known baseball hub. Clubhouse staff, scouts, sportswriters, and traveling fans returned year after year, filling the same hotels, bars, and waterfront streets. Major League Umpire Richie Garcia once recalled that a night game in St. Petersburg could feel surprisingly close to Yankee Stadium\u2014not because of its scale or intensity, but because it was filled with baseball people.<\/p>\n Looking back, this era established the template for what we see today in the region\u2019s spring training scene. Within roughly an hour\u2019s drive, visitors can reach Grapefruit League parks for the Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, Rays, Orioles, Braves, Tigers, and Pirates, and it is as much of a tourism draw as ever, bringing fans and personnel to the area late-February through March. <\/p>\n The Tampa Bay Rays have been the city\u2019s MLB team since 1998, playing at Tropicana Field, or as it is locally called, \u201cThe Trop,\u201d in downtown St. Pete.<\/p>\n Tropicana Field is one of the best stadiums for away fans to visit due to the controlled climate, affordable tickets, and friendly home fans.<\/p>\n Getty ImagesModern Day: A Visiting Fan\u2019s Paradise<\/p>\n St. Pete is a paradise for visiting baseball fans every spring because of its proximity to so many teams and their respective stadiums. But St. Pete also thrives during the regular season. The \u201cTrop\u201d is often treated poorly in stadium rankings due to its lack of history and flashy features. But, in my view, it\u2019s one of the most underrated parks to visit<\/a> as an opposing fan.<\/p>\n Tropicana Field is the league\u2019s only fixed-dome stadium, which means guaranteed climate control during the hot summer months and complete protection from rain, sun, and humidity. It\u2019s a guarantee that the game won\u2019t be delayed or postponed\u2014which is not something to overlook when you\u2019re shelling out cash on flights and hotels\u2014and that you won\u2019t bake in the sun.<\/p>\n While the Trop may not win any architectural awards, the stadium design does have its perks. It has the smallest seating capacity in Major League Baseball, meaning bad seats are hard to find, and despite having lesser seats, tickets are often available and comparatively affordable. <\/p>\n What\u2019s better: Rays fans are as chill as they come, with transplants and snowbirds sometimes rooting for both teams. The legendary local sport\u2019s bar next door, known as Ferg\u2019s, often hosts parties for visiting club fans. It\u2019s a stadium where you won\u2019t feel out of place or be heckled for wearing the opposing jersey. <\/p>\n The Trop also benefits from its surrounding area. It sits just a block from Central Avenue, the city\u2019s main drag for nightlife. Within a short walk, you\u2019ll find breweries, restaurants, and bars that turn a night game into a full evening out. Visitors staying downtown can walk to the Trop from Central Ave hotels or stay along the nearby waterfront for a broader St. Pete experience<\/a>. The St. Pete Pier, the Salvador Dali Museum, and the city\u2019s waterfront parks are all worth exploring, as are the St. Pete beaches and Fort De Soto Park.<\/p>\n Schrader’s Little Cooperstown in the St. Pete Museum of History has a large collection of signed balls as well as spring training history.<\/p>\n Wake and Wander MediaA Baseball City Hiding in Plain Sight<\/p>\n When walking along Central Avenue in the blocks surrounding the Trop, look down. There are historical markers in the shape of home plates on the sidewalks. Each commemorates a different moment in St. Pete baseball history. <\/p>\n Down by the main pier is the St. Petersburg Museum of History, and out front sits a statue of Babe Ruth. Inside, you\u2019ll find one of the largest collections of signed baseballs anywhere on the planet as part of Schrader’s Little Cooperstown<\/a>. <\/p>\n Some people think the ghost of Babe Ruth still makes an appearance<\/a> in the places he frequented, and there are several that are still standing: The Vinoy, the Don Cesar, and the Jungle Country Club, among others. You can visit the University of Tampa\u2019s Plant Field to see the plaque for the 587-foot homer Ruth hit there, considered to be one of the longest ever. <\/p>\n There\u2019s an even larger legend in St. Pete, where Ruth apparently hit another long homer in 1934 at Waterfront Park (near today\u2019s Al Lang Stadium) that broke the window of the old West Coast Inn (now the St. Pete Hilton). Rui Farias, Executive Director of the St. Pete Museum of History, says<\/a> the distance from home plate was more than 600 feet. <\/p>\n There are plans to put a historical marker at the site sometime this summer to honor the feat as well as the Babe\u2019s legacy in St. Pete\u2014which was, according to Farias, much larger than life.<\/p>\n “When the Yankees arrived for Spring Training in 1925 and Babe Ruth [got] off the train, it was like The Beatles arriving at JFK airport in 1964,” Farias told Fox13 Tampa.<\/p>\n Nearly a century later, crowds still gather every spring for meet-and-greets with MLB\u2019s biggest stars, and baseball remains woven into the fabric of St. Pete, scattered across parks, sidewalks, hotels, and waterfront streets\u2014hiding in plain sight for anyone willing to look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spring training baseball games used to be held in downtown St. Pete, Florida. getty St. Petersburg, Florida, hardly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[126076,28,30,29,77435,3818,199,15769,8125],"class_list":["post-300038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-babe-ruth","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-grapefruit-league","tag-mlb-spring-training","tag-st-petersburg","tag-tampa-bay-devil-rays","tag-tropicana-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}