Cactus League Wins Fight For Survival

“The future of Cactus League Baseball is now in question. While the League has provided considerable enjoyment for thousands of baseball fans and has generated millions of dollars for local economies, Arizona teams are being recruited with extremely attractive proposals to relocate to Florida.” — Governor’s Special Task Force On Cactus League Baseball, Interim Report, October 7, 1988

 

Scottsdale Stadium, which was originally built in 1956 and rebuilt in 1991, has served as the home of major league spring training for more than a half-century. (Photo: Jacob Pomrenke)

 

What a difference a decade makes! Spring training baseball is now thriving in the Grand Canyon State, with the Cactus League having posted attendance of nearly 1 million fans during its March 1999 season.

The league’s journey from near calamity to survival and genuine prosperity now stands as a hallmark for how government, business and private citizens could cooperatively launch a rescue campaign.

While there are many facets of that successful endeavor, this repo11 will focus on how Arizona and one of its Cactus League host cities, Scottsdale, escaped the threat of spring baseball oblivion. State and local task forces pinpointed the challenge and specified the blueprint for survival.

Then-Governor Rose Mofford created the state panel in the late 1980s to save the springtime league, which was then about 40 years old. Eight of Major League Baseball’s franchises practiced here at that time, with the other 18 choosing the East Coast’s primary vacation mecca of Florida.

Joe Garagiola, Jr., general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who served as vice chairman of the Mofford task force, said in a recent interview that the Cactus League was in “pretty desperate trouble” at that time. He credits former baseball commission Fay Vincent with alerting Mofford to the Florida threat and telling her, according to Garagiola, “you have to decide whether you want to keep the league.”

Noting that the Cactus League had by then “evolved from a nice attraction for baseball fans in the 1950s and I 960s to a substantial industry for the state today,” the task force showcased the findings of a Datapol, Inc., report:

 

Spring Training Economic Impact

Team	City	Dollars
Chicago Cubs	Mesa	$37.5 million
Oakland A’s	Phoenix	$22.5 million
Milwaukee Brewers	Chandler	$22.0 million
Cleveland Indians	Tucson	$17.3 million
San Diego Padres	Yuma	$15.7 million
San Francisco Giants	Scottsdale	$15.1 million
Seattle Mariners	Tempe	$14.7 million
Total		$144.8 million

 

The report noted that—with the exception of the Chicago Cubs—these estimates did not include the teams’ spending. The study found that the Cubs spent $1.1 million while the California Angels spent $850,000 in Mesa, where they practiced for a portion of spring. The Angels, who played their home Cactus League games in Palm Springs, California, had an estimated economic impact there of $15.5 million.

“Although it would be nice to believe that the weather conditions, convenient travel, and cozy ballparks are enough to encourage a team to remain,” the task force concluded in its report, “the reality of the situation is that baseball is not just a sport—it is also a business. Business requirements for success are measured on the bottom line rather than in the bottom of the ninth. Spring training losses run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and all teams are actively exploring ways to offset the expenses.”

Various counties and cities in Florida were then offering attractive packages to lure Arizona teams. In fact, new complexes had already been built between 1985 and 1988 for five teams: Astros, Mets, Rangers, Reds and Royals.

In the opinion of the state task force, Florida was making “offers wrapped in land deals and stadium arrangements that make a move to Florida vi11ually 1isk free, (and) interested teams can almost name their terms if they wish to leave the Cactus League.”

The new-era model was in place: provide teams with extensive facilities that went far beyond the old days of small and quaint ballparks. Do so at little or no cost to the teams—often by means of public financing and free land. In the opinion of the state task force, Arizona could ill afford to lose any of its teams: “Even the representatives of the teams whose commitment to Arizona is the strongest expressed the fear that with a relatively few defections to Florida, the competitive posture of the league would be so weakened that the remaining teams would be forced to leave in order to have an adequate spring training.”

Garagiola said recently that there was a possibility of “critical mass” falling below a minimum number—thought at the time to be between four and six teams. He added that team wanted “meaningful competition” in improved facilities that would offer a better chance to prepare for the regular season. And despite five of the Cactus League’s teams being based in West Coast cities, Garagiola insisted it was possible those clubs could have re-located despite the extra distances from their hometowns.

At least one of the Cactus League communities was addressing the challenge separately and relied upon its own task force to develop a speedy response to a climate that called for emergency solutions. The Mayor’s Baseball Committee in Scottsdale recognized the need to replace its 5,500-seat stadium, which was then 33 years old.

Adjacent to the community’s Old Town district, Scottsdale Stadium had hosted five major league clubs over the years:

• 1956-1958: Baltimore Orioles
• 1959-1965: Boston Red Sox
• 1967-1978: Chicago Cubs
• 1978-1981: Oakland A’s
• 1982-present: San Francisco Giants

Determined to continue its relationship with the Giants, the committee recommended a new facility that would be financed by $7 million in general obligation bonds. A po11ion of the funds would also be directed to upgrading minor league facilities about two miles away at Indian School Park.

The committee’s final report vividly demonstrated just how far communities had to go to satisfy the demands of teams in this Arizona versus Florida competition and the new era of millionaire ballplayers. Describing a portion of the new facilities that would be required, the committee—after consulting with the Giants—proposed the following as part of its specifications and requirements:

“Major league air conditioned, carpeted clubhouse—to house at least 54 players; separate coaches’ room for at least 12 coaches including lockers and stools; separate manager’s office with toilet paper and shower including locker and stool; training room with adequate space for counters, cabinets and rubdown tables; trainer’s office with cabinets, sinks and trainers’ lockers and stools; sauna room and adjacent workout/exercise room in equal size to training room, adequate storage room for clubhouse manager with room and shelving; sinks, cabinets and equipment racks for storage/laundry, etc.: shower room with at least 12 shower heads and bathroom with adequate facilities: video-conference room near coaches’ room seating 14; adequate lockers and stools and code compliant fire extinguishers; physician’s office with sink and cabinets; clubhouseman’s office; kitchen and snack area with double sink, shelving and cabinets: custodian areas.”

In November 1989, voters approved the bonds. Immediately after the end of the 1991 spring season, the old ballpark was razed and the state-of-the-art stadium (designed by HOK Architects of Camden Yards acclaim) was built in time for use the following March. The minor league complex was also improved in line with the committee’s recommendations.

Meantime, other communities followed through on some of the recommendations of the state task force that had suggested a tax program, low- or no-interest loans for spring training ventures and other state funds for individual cities to reimburse specific costs for recruiting new franchises.

In the ensuing ten years, public-private partnerships and tax initiatives have stabilized the Cactus League. Now there are ten teams—including the one represented by the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks—and brand new or refurbished facilities everywhere.

The Cleveland Indians did depart for Florida but the expansion Colorado Rockies filled the void in Tucson. That community also built a two-team complex to host the Diamondbacks and Chicago White Sox, who left Florida.

With some teams agreeing to long-term deals of up to 20 years, communities took these actions:

• The Phoenix suburb of Peoria built a dual-team setup for the Padres and Mariners.
• Tempe upgraded its Diablo Stadium for the Angels.
• Mesa built a new Hohokam Park on the same site for the Cubs.
• The Brewers departed Chandler for new facilities in a Phoenix neighborhood known as Maryvale.
• Phoenix’s Municipal Stadium got a facelift to preserve its relationship with the Athletics while the city also improved the nearby Papago Park complex for the A’s minor leaguers.

Some of these began operation by the 1994 season and all suffered the consequences of the heart-wrenching players’ strike that year. Attendance plummeted in ’95 when Cactus League games initially featured replacements before concluding an abbreviated second phase after the strike was settled.

As the spring training decade concluded last March, the Cactus League celebrated attendance of 980,000—its fans back, its teams apparently content and its revenues on a healthy upward trend.

Now there’s even the possibility of adding two more clubs as the Dodgers and Blue Jays pursue talks to move to a joint facility in the Phoenix area. And there’s speculation the league could welcome the city of Las Vegas as a host community.

“I don’t know that we need a lot more teams to be successful,” Garagiola said. “I think that maybe we’re close to the equilibrium point.”

As to the stability of the league at the close of this decade and century, Garagiola believes vigilance is required: “For the future, cities and counties need to continue to have a close relationship with teams so the day doesn’t come when communities fall asleep at the switch. I think the lesson Arizona has learned is that the league is an important asset and has real value. It was taken for granted but I don’t think we’re going to do that again.”

However grand it may be to celebrate the league’s survival and the post-strike renewal of baseball, the character of the Cactus League has substantially changed—for better or worse. Spring training, in the words of Arizona Republic writer Les Polk, has lost “some of its cozy, laid-back appeal” with the disappearance of rickety wooden bleachers, chain-link fences and cheap tickets.

In a piece published this past March, Polk quoted Marcel Lachemann, minor league director for the Angels, about the days gone by: “It’s changed a lot. Spring training now brings in revenue. It wasn’t a moneymaker back then. Society in general was more relaxed. Nowadays you don’t know who’s got a gun or not.”

TOM GIRARD lives in Scottsdale and has written numerous articles about baseball and a wide variety of other subjects for national publications.