By: Maxwell Brucks
It’s in the name, Spring Training, and to many sports fans worldwide, it signals the start of the spring season. Gone are the cold winter months without baseball, and ushered in is some of the most entertaining baseball a person can watch. Players have no names on the backs of their jerseys, aren’t allowed to swing the bat, and the best is games can end in ties.
Just like football has its preseason weeks, baseball just wanted to name theirs a little bit more fun. Spring Training is a month-long pre-season that helps get players back acquainted with baseball and lets other players fight for roster spots. Spring Training starts with pitchers and catchers reporting first before the rest of the team does. This is because pitchers need a little bit more of a warmup before throwing live pitches to hitters. When every player that was invited to Spring Training arrives, the teams will mostly start with live at-bats against one another. Pitchers and hitters from the same team will face off so pitchers can see hitters in the batter’s box and batters can see the ball being thrown from an arm, not a machine. The teams will then play about a month’s worth of games leading up to the regular season for players to get into game shape. These games don’t matter as teams prioritize development over on-field wins and losses. This is highlighted by the fact that Dodgers infielder Miguel Vargas went up to the plate with strict instructions to never swing the bat. Due to an injury in his hand, Vargas couldn’t swing, but the Dodgers still wanted him to see pitches at the plate. This meant every at bat was almost a guaranteed out. Spring Training games don’t matter a whole lot with wins and losses, but it does matter to the fans.
Spring Training is fun for the fans due to all the teams being so close to each other that fans can see multiple teams play without having to travel very far either. In my case, the two teams I support play in the same ballpark. The Marlins and Cardinals share a complex, so both teams play their “home” games at the same park. The two leagues that teams play in are called the Cactus League (Arizona) and the Grapefruit League (Florida). Each League has 15 teams, and those 15 teams will play each other until it is time to start the Regular Season. That marks, as McPherson catcher Brady Kaplan said, “the best day in all of the sports calendar” Opening Day.
