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Re: SPRING TRAINING 2013!

290 by seagull
The Arizona Republic 02/17/2013 Page : T02
A Gannett Newspaper 117th Year, No.117 Copyright 2006 The Arizona Republic February 17, 2013 6:10


ARIZONA EXPLAINED
Tolerance lured spring training

Arizona had a lot to offer as a
place for baseball teams to hold
spring training: abundant sunshine,
dry weather and hungry fans. But
what cinched the deal, back in 1947,
was the thought that the state would
be more racially tolerant than Florida.
Bill Veeck, then the new owner of
the Cleveland Indians, started the
exodus from Florida’s Grapefruit
League and began training his team
in Arizona. In his autobiography,
Veeck wrote that he decided to leave
the Sunshine State after a brush
with segregation there.
The incident happened a few
years previously, when Veeck was
co-owner of the then-minor-league
Milwaukee Brewers, which trained
in Ocala. Veeck wrote in his book,
“Veeck as in Wreck,” that he had
inadvertently sat in the segregated
“Jim Crow” section of the stands,
which was near the clubhouse. He
started chatting with some Black
men.
“Within a few minutes, a sheriff
came running over to tell me I
couldn’t sit there,” Veeck wrote.
Veeck said he argued with the sheriff,
who then called the mayor, who
told Veeck he would force him to sit
elsewhere. Veeck said that if he was
forced to move, he’d take his baseball
team out of the city and let everybody
in the country know why.
The mayor backed down.
Veeck sold the Brewers in 1945
and planned on retiring to his Lazy
Vee Ranch near Tucson. But he reacquired
the baseball itch and purchased
the Indians in June 1946. The
following spring, he decided to junk
tradition and move the team’s training
home to Tucson. He persuaded
the then-New York Giants to join the
Indians in the groundbreaking move
from Florida; the Giants would train
in Phoenix.
Veeck wrote that he knew he was
going to try to sign a Black player to
his team that year. That July, he
signed Larry Doby, who would become
the second African-American
player in the major leagues and the
first in the American League.
But Veeck didn’t talk about those
plans when he moved to Arizona,
and stories from the time made it
seem as if the teams had left Florida
because they preferred Arizona’s
weather.
The Giants landed in Phoenix on
Feb. 7, 1947, and immediately headed
for the Buckhorn Mineral Baths,
east of Mesa. Players were “having
excess poundage melted away in
mineral baths and slapped and
pounded off by masseurs,” an Arizona
Republic story read.
Horace Stoneham, president of
the Giants, said, “There’s definitely
an exodus from Florida, and when
the other clubs find out what this
climate will do to our team, they’ll
become interested in having Arizona
as a training site.”
A Republic editorial predicted,
“By 1950, with other clubs following
the Giant-Indian lead, Arizona will
be the winter home of baseball.”
Doby tested Arizona’s tolerance
in March 1948 when he visited Tucson.
Veeck wrote that he discovered
that “the bleachers weren’t segregated,
but the hotel was.” It took a
year, Veeck wrote, before the hotel
agreed to let Doby stay with his
teammates.
But fans were welcoming. A Republic
story about Doby’s first appearance
in Tucson said this: “Larry
Doby, Cleveland’s negro player, was
given loud ovations on both of his
trips to the plate.”
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