Grover Cleveland Land was a visionary.
In 1921 The Arizona Republican asked the question the former catcher had put to several major league clubs:
“Why not bring one of the big league teams to Phoenix for spring training?”
Land, a Kentucky native who spent the last 40 years of his life as a Phoenix resident, was encouraged by a report that Connie Mack had announced that his Philadelphia Athletics would no longer train in Lake Charles, Louisiana; according to The Associated Press Mack said “certain things happened at the Louisiana resort last March that handicapped” the team.
Grover Land
Land, the former catcher for the Cleveland Naps and the Brooklyn Tip-Tops, said:
“I have played ball in every section of the country, and I have yet to find a climate more suited for baseball training than I find right here in Phoenix…Major league managers have been sending their players to Texas and other southern states for many years and I can safely state that there is not one manager entirely satisfied with the present training camp sites. Fully one-third of the training period is hampered by rain and storms and by the time the training season is ended the players are just beginning to round into shape.”
He said he understood that “local boosters” had made some effort to bring teams to Arizona in the past—the Chicago White Sox, Cubs, and Pittsburgh Pirates had played spring exhibition games in the state several times since 1909—but Land said he would “make an effort to induce one of my manager friends to come down here…I am certain that if one of the managers could be induced to come here for a few weeks Phoenix would have no difficulty getting on the sport pages.”
He said the local chamber of commerce was getting behind the push, and that he had “already written to one of the major league managers and I have been corresponding with several sports writers in the east,’ to make the case for Phoenix.
“If the local fans get behind the move and convince Connie Mack that they want his team here next spring I have every confidence that the Philadelphia Athletics will do their 1922 training in Phoenix.”
Land was a bit overconfident in regard to Philadelphia; Mack chose to take the Athletics to Eagle Pass, Texas in the spring of 1922.
No team would train in Arizona until 1929—the Detroit Tigers came to the state for one season—but chose California the following year.
The Detroit Tigers in Arizona, 1929
But Land, who died in 1958, lived long enough to see his adopted home become the spring training location for four clubs.
Baseball History Daily 
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