Baseball’s annual spring training ritual dates all the way back to the 19th century, so it’s not surprising to find several long-standing affiliations between specific organizations and locations. For the Philadelphia Phillies, their long-standing home has been the town of Clearwater, and they'll be heading back there again next week. But a trip through the team’s spring training history shows numerous relocations before they finally settled down in their permanent winter home.
The Phillies are credited with being one of the first teams to ever venture to the Sunshine State, training for a couple of weeks in Jacksonville in 1889. In the years following, the Phillies’ winter wanderings spanned 20 different towns across 10 different states from 1900 to 1946. Many of these were in warmer climates, but a few notable spots closer to home included Hershey, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware due to travel restrictions during World War II.
After the Phillies returned to Florida to train in Miami Beach in 1946, they signed a one-year contract to move to Clearwater for 1947. The rest, they say, is history.
Phillies tightly bound to Clearwater through their spring training history
From this humble start, the team agreed to stay on for 10 more years (despite losing their first-ever game in Clearwater 13-1). They spent several years training and playing at the broken-down and plainly named Athletic Field before Jack Russell Stadium was built and opened in 1955. Interestingly, the team had it constructed to replicate the dimensions exactly at Connie Mack Stadium back home. Some time later, the Phillies also acquired a parcel of land from the city of Clearwater to build the Carpenter Complex, which was completed in 1967.
Jack Russell Stadium would last all the way through 2003, ceding way to the brand-new Bright House Networks Field, which the team built right next to the Carpenter Complex. In a great bit of symmetry, the Phillies were able to christen their new spring home in 2004 just a few weeks before imploding Veterans Stadium and opening Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
I had the privilege of attending the first two games at the new Florida park, and the Phillies won the inaugural game there on March 4, 2004 by a 5-1 score over the Yankees. The attendance was announced as a Clearwater record 8,205 fans watching baseball in the February sun.
According to my scorecard for the game, Marlon Byrd collected the first hit and Jimmy Rollins popped the first home run at the place. The first pitch? That would be the man, the myth, the legend: Vicente Padilla.
Program and scorecard from the first game at the @phillies new spring training home in 2004. I'll discuss in an upcoming piece for ThatBallsOuttaHere. @FS_TBOH pic.twitter.com/lnNA2Fnnr4
— Kevin Lagowski (@BigLagowski) February 3, 2026
It was great to see the Phillies back in (exhibition) action, as the last time we saw them they were walking off the field at the Vet for the final time some five months earlier. The second game at the new spring park didn’t go so well, a forgettable loss to the Reds (foreshadowing the Phillies’ CBP-opening loss to Cincinnati just over a month later).
But of course the game results hardly matter in the Grapefruit League. The trip was memorable, win or lose, worth it just to be a part of ringing in a new era of Phillies history. And of course, the Phillies already had a championship core in place at the time and saw it pay off a few years later.
The spring home of the Phillies was renamed Spectrum Field in 2017 and then attained its current moniker of BayCare Ballpark in 2021. All the while, it’s aged quite well as thousands of Delaware Valley residents make the trip south every year and locals enjoy the games of the organization’s Single-A affiliate Clearwater Threshers during the regular season.
The park’s most notable features are its left field tiki-hut pavilion and the grass berm beyond the outfield wall that can accommodate up to 1,500 fans. It’s become an iconic look and popular hangout for Phillies fans over the years, well known to snowbirds and travelers alike.
After the 2004 trip, I didn’t return to Clearwater for spring training games for two decades, finally making it back last year to see the Phillies win a very long, walk-filled game over the Red Sox. Again, the final result wasn’t important, but I’ll carry the memory of walking into a building for the first time in over 20 years and having what felt like an all-new experience. Physical changes to the place plus an aging brain will do that, I suppose.
Personally I hope I can get back there again before another 20 years elapse. Some make it a ritual every year, and with good reason. In all of baseball, the Phillies’ long-standing ties to a specific Florida town are surpassed only by the Detroit Tigers, who have called Lakeland their training home for just one year longer than the Phillies have been in theirs. The Phillies and Clearwater (aka “Clearwooder”) just go together, and there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight.