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What is the Grapefruit League? A breakdown of spring training baseball in Florida

Dan Rorabaugh, Palm Beach Post
·5 min read
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The Major League Baseball season is officially underway as teams have descended to Florida to prepare for Opening Day at the end of March.

So what do grapefruits have to do with anything?

It's just what they call the games played in Florida during spring training. The Grapefruit League is not a spinoff baseball league like the XFL and USFL is to the NFL in football. Nor is it a collection of Minor League Baseball affiliates with ties to the big leagues, like the International League or the Florida State League. It's closer to basketball's Summer League, but if LeBron James and the biggest NBA stars took the court alongside players fighting for G-League positions and toured multiple arenas in Nevada or Utah for a month.

Every year, veterans, rookies and everyone in between play exhibition games across Florida for about five weeks, giving baseball fans a taste of the long season to come and bringing extra attention to cities like Fort Myers, Jupiter and Port St. Lucie.

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Here's what you need to know about Florida spring training and the Grapefruit League:

What does Grapefruit League mean?

The Grapefruit League refers to the Major League Baseball teams who go to Florida for spring training. The teams gather in the middle of February to get ready for the upcoming baseball season about a month and a half later. At the end of March, most of the players and staff will spread out across the nation to begin the regular season either at the MLB parks or their designated minor-league teams.

The games that are played serve more as a formality; the real intrigue comes not from the teams facing each other, but from the intrasquad competitions. Some players will use spring training to compete for a place in the starting lineup. Others will try to prove they're ready to be promoted higher up the minor-league system, or even make the big leagues. Players on new teams will use the time to get comfortable with their new teammates, and veterans recovering from injuries the previous season test their arms to make sure they can hit and pitch as usual.

The biggest winners of Grapefruit League games are the fans, who go on vacation from as far as Boston, New York and Minnesota to enjoy the Florida weather and get a closer and more relaxed look at their favorite players.

Which teams are in the Grapefruit League?

There are 15 teams who play in the Grapefruit League:

Where did Grapefruit League come from?

The term "Grapefruit League" is an homage to Florida's citrus industry.

Major-league teams began spring training in Florida in 1888, when the Washington Senators came south to Jacksonville. By 1914, enough teams had migrated their preseason camps to Florida that an informal circuit started forming.

Who came up with the term "Grapefruit League" isn't known for sure, but one theory comes from a stunt involving an aviation stunt in Daytona Beach in 1915. According to Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of history at the Tampa Bay History Center, a pilot named Ruth Law took a Brooklyn Dodgers player in a plane to throw a baseball to his manager on the field below.

"I guess at some point he realized that might kill the guy," Kite-Powell told WTSP in Tampa. "So instead of throwing a baseball, he threw a grapefruit. And the grapefruit hit the manager in the chest and exploded.

"The manager, for a few seconds, actually thought it was his chest that had exploded from the force of the baseball hitting him. And felt the juice, thought it was blood, screamed out, 'I'm dying! I'm dying!'"

What is the difference between the Grapefruit League and Cactus League?

MLB teams hold their spring training camps in two states. The teams getting ready in Florida play in the Grapefruit League. The rest play their games in Arizona, and that's the Cactus League.

Here are the 15 Cactus League teams and where they make their base camp:

Where does the Grapefruit League play?

Looking to catch a Grapefruit League game this season? Here's where to go:

When is Grapefruit League 2023?

The first Florida spring training game is the Boston Red Sox vs. Northeastern University on Friday, Feb. 24. The full Grapefruit League slate begins Saturday, Feb. 25 and continues through Tuesday, March 28. The MLB regular season begins Thursday, March 30.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: MLB spring training in Florida: What to know about Grapefruit League