By Stuart Rosebrook

On February 10, 2026, 160 years since the first known Arizona baseball team was organized in Prescott, pitchers and catchers will report to their Cactus League clubhouses in the Salt River Valley.  Arizona’s Major League Baseball spring training tradition dates from 1929, when the Detroit Tigers were the first MLB team to choose Arizona for their regular season tune-up. The Detroit nine played on a “scratch” diamond of gravel and sand at Phoenix’s Riverside Park, near Central Avenue and the Salt River. The state also hosted the six-team Arizona State League, a D-Class minor circuit.

Two decades earlier, the Chicago White Sox, en-route home from their spring home in San Francisco, stopped in Yuma to play a local team, the first recorded game between a major league squad and an Arizona ball club in territorial history. The White Sox beat the local Yuma’s 11-1 (or 8-1 or 9-1 depending on the source) on March 30, 1909, before a capacity crowd, but since that rowdy day on the Colorado River, Arizona and MLB have cultivated a profitable, fun spring training relationship, benefiting residents and winter visitors.