Left Field Sports -- Arizona, Florida Host To Cruel Annual Ritual

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Arizona, Florida Host To Cruel Annual Ritual

VERO BEACH, FL - The cruelty that is Baseball Spring Training is underway again in cities throughout Arizona and Florida. As much of the rest of the country toils through bitter cold and snow during the months of February and March, Florida and Arizona's sunshine plays host to the annual ritual of building up the hopes of young men and the destroying them unmercifully.

Each spring hundreds of young hopeful ballplayers are brought to the training camps of every Major League Baseball team with the false promise of making the team. Here in Vero Beach the Dodgers have invited dozens of young men with dreams of playing major league baseball. Over the coming weeks the team will conduct a slow yet clear process of slowly crushing and defeating those player's pie-in-the-sky hopes.

And what may be even more astonishing then the teams sadistic treatment of these players is that it takes place in front of thousand of voyeuristic onlookers. Not only do the teams make this an annual event, but many, otherwise disinterested, spectators arrive and turn their voyeuristic fetish it an annual vacation excursion.

The almost tropical surroundings add an almost surreal quality to the gross Spring Training affair of crushing the burgeoning dreams of young men from colleges, high schools and minor league teams throughout North America.

"We love coming here every year, the sunshine and spring training are really something I would not miss," explained Devon Morris of Evanston, Illinois who was planning on taking in several different teams hazing rituals throughout Arizona. This will be his eleventh consecutive spring spent watching young men get their hopes raised and then crushed by Major League Baseball. Seemingly without any shame he continued, "We especially enjoy seeing the young fellas that they bring in and the way they progress throughout the spring."

Major League Baseball defends the whole concept, noting that often many of these young men do actually make the teams. But the harsh reality is that many come with no real chance of ever accomplishing the one thing they have been working their whole life for, to be a Major League Baseball player. They are sent home emotionally ruined , disillusioned and embarrassed, the scars of which will take years to heal.