The history of spring training is one of ongoing professionalization and standardization, which is a 13-syllable way of saying, “All eccentricities have been stomped out of it.” In the early days of spring training, teams lacked set destinations. There were no permanent Florida or Arizona complexes, the Dodger installation at Vero Beach not coming until mid-century. Depending on the year and where the manager felt like spending his spring, teams trained in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Catalina Island, California, the Dominican Republic. Ernest Hemingway figures in a number of spring training stories because the hard-drinking Papa frequently crossed paths with the hard-drinking Dodgers when they trained in Cuba during the 1940s. Most of the stories revolve around Hemingway and closer Hugh Casey getting drunk and beating the heck out of each other. As Papa wrote in The Sun Also Rises: “Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.” “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” Today, teams have expensive stadiums waiting for them, some appendages of theme parks. There are no more holdouts, no Rickey Hendersons who report late because they can’t be bothered to start on time. But for Dominicans with visa problems, punctuality is the rule. If the training season is used for anything more fun than training, it’s kept on the down low.