Spring Training is held in warm-weather, "Sun Belt" locations, so that players can practice and play without worrying about the nasty Winter weather in the Northeast and the Midwest. An exception was during World War II, when gasoline rationing (to save it for the troops) led to travel restrictions. This canceled the 1945 All-Star Game.
It also led to teams staying close to home for Spring Training, in spite of the cold. The Yankees played in Atlantic City; the New York Giants in Lakewood; the Philadelphia Athletics in Frederick, Maryland; and so on.
Top 10 American Regional Sports Quirks
1. Florida and Arizona: Spring Training. No other sport has regional sites for its preseason training camps. They're relatively close to their team's usual home base, and preseason games are nearly always at the site that one team or the other uses for its major league games.
Florida became the location of choice, a.k.a. the Grapefruit League, when the most successful teams in each League, the Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals, set up shop in St. Petersburg. Arizona, a.k.a. the Cactus League, was born when Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley built a ballfield near his Biltmore Hotel outside Phoenix.
2. Maryland and Virginia: Lacrosse. In 1878, the Baltimore Athletic Club went to a track meet in Newport, Rhode Island, and saw people playing lacrosse. They got hooked on the sport, invented by indigenous Canadians, and brought the game back to Charm City. In 1882, the city's Johns Hopkins University started a team, and it caught on in the rest of Maryland, and spread to Virginia.
What I can't figure out is why the sport is so popular in the Chesapeake region, but not in the rest of the country. It's a grass sport that moves a ball forward toward a goal, like football and soccer; has sticks like hockey; is aggressive like football and hockey; and is higher-scoring than either hockey or soccer.
When I was at East Brunswick High School in the 1980s, out of 34 high schools in Middlesex County, only 3 had a lacrosse team, all boys: St. Joseph's of Metuchen and Wardlaw-Hartridge Academy of Edison, both very preppy schools, so, if you were to guess which schools in the County would have such a team, you'd guess them; and Edison High, which you wouldn't have expected. By the end of the 20th Century, most schools in the County had a boys' lacrosse team, and some had girls' teams, and EB's were both good.
But New Jersey, New York, and pretty much everywhere else hasn't embraced the sport the way the Chesapeake region has. Even Delaware, which is on the Delmarva Peninsula, and Washington, D.C. (admittedly, a mostly-black and poor school district), haven't taken to the sport the way Maryland and Virginia have.
3. Miami and Connecticut: Jai alai. A sport native to the Basque region of northern Spain and southern France, it gained popularity in Latin American countries, and in the heavily-Hispanic city of Miami. So that explains that.
But why Connecticut? There were jai alai venues, known as frontons, in Bridgeport, Milford and Hartford starting in the 1960s. The growth of gambling, including in Atlantic City and at the Connecticut casinos of Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods, doomed those, and also hurt the ones in Florida. By 2001, the sport was done in the Nutmeg State.
4. Florida: Dog racing. Specifically, greyhounds. This was big enough in the 1970s to be featured on an episode of The Odd Couple. However, it became regarded as animal cruelty, and has been phased out in recent years.
In 2018, Florida passed a bill shutting down the dog tracks by 2021. Presuming the process is completed, the only States where it will still be legal are Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas and West Virginia.
5. Portland, Oregon: Soccer. True, soccer is popular all over the country, and all over the world. But, for whatever reason, Portland likes it better than most places. Until Atlanta United came in, the Portland Timbers seemed to lead Major League Soccer in attendance every year. And the Portland Thorns continue to lead the National Women's Soccer League in attendance.
6. Hawaii: Triathlon. The "Ironman Triathlon" is hosted at Kailua-Kona on the "Big Island" of Hawaii. It consists of 3 different kinds of races that are too long for most people: First a 2.4-mile swim, then a 112-mile bicycle ride, and finally a traditional marathon run of 26.2 miles. To do either of the 1st 2 is difficult, to do the last is really inadvisable, and to do all three is freakin' insane.
For comparison's sake: My longest swim has been maybe a quarter-mile, my longest bike ride has been 75 miles, and I may have once done enough walking in a day to add up to a half-marathon, although the longest run I've ever done is 10 kilometers -- about 6.2 miles, or 1/4 of a marathon.
I don't know why this competition caught on in Hawaii, and not in the hot beach States of California or Florida. Then again...
7. California and Hawaii: Surfing. Surfing competitions just don't happen on the East Coast, not even in Florida. There's a reason that only places in California (their home State) and Hawaii are mentioned by the Beach Boys in their signature song, the 1963 hit "Surfin' U.S.A."
8. New England: Candlepin Bowling. Unlike most bowling pins, which are considerably wider at the bottom, candlepins are only slightly tapered at each end, so that, from a distance, they look like the same width throughout.
In addition, the balls are smaller than in traditional bowling, and don't have finger holes. And you're allowed 3 balls per frame instead of the usual 2, because the shape of the pins makes them harder to knock down. And the pins that do get knocked down remain on the "field" within a frame.
Like basketball, volleyball, and the American version of tennis, candlepin bowling was invented in Massachusetts in the late 19th Century -- in this case, in 1880 in Worcester. It spread throughout New England, and with the rise of television, New England stations broadcast tournaments. It became popular in every New England State except Connecticut, and also in Atlantic Canada (the Maritime Provinces, except for Newfoundland). But I don't know why it didn't spread to the rest of North America, the way standard bowling did.
There's also duckpin bowling, where the pins are the same shape as standard bowling, but half the height, and the balls are small with no fingerholes like in candlepin.
9. Boston and Detroit: College Hockey Tournaments. Since 1952, first at the old Boston Garden, and since 1996 at the building now known as the TD Garden, Boston has hosted the Beanpot Tournament, between the hockey teams of Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University and Northeastern University.
Detroit also has an annual college hockey tournament, the Great Lakes Invitational. Every year, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Michigan Tech, and a 4th invitee compete in it. It is usually held at the home of the Detroit Red Wings: Olympia Stadium starting with the tournament's inception in 1965, at Joe Louis Arena when it opened in 1979, and at Little Caesars Arena in 2018. The one exception was the 2017 tournament, which was moved to Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, to coincide with the 2018 NHL Winter Classic (and thus, there was not GLI in calendar year 2017).
It's not clear what other cities could host such a tournament. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul could, but don't. Minnesota's obsession is hockey at the high school level first, then collegiate, then pro. New York couldn't do it, unless they wanted to go a bit farther afield, and include Columbia (in New York City), Army (a bit Upstate), Princeton (in nearby New Jersey) and Yale (and New Haven is twice as far from Manhattan as Princeton is).
10. Alaska: The Midnight Sun Game. There are collegiate baseball leagues -- leagues for college-age players that are sponsored, but amateur, so the players can continue to play college baseball -- all over the country, most notably on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and in Alaska.
But the Alaska Baseball League is played so far north, they can start a game at the 3,500-seat Growden Memorial Park in Fairbanks at about 10:30 PM, and complete it at 1:30 AM, and the Sun will still be out.
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