Thanks for the response. The reason why I had that blur event was so that the value entered would be saved to the model, so when I was clicking (originally a h:graphicImage) the value entered would have been already saved to the model. I did not know of the execute option. This code does what I originally wanted to achieve:
<div id="createTeams" style="display:none">
<h:panelGrid id ="teamsGrid" columns = '2' border='1' >
<f:facet name="header">
<h:outputText value="Team"/>
<h:outputText value="Actions"/>
</f:facet>
<ui:fragment rendered="#{leagueCreator.numberOfTeams == 0}">
<h:outputText value ="You currently do not have any team for this league"/>
</ui:fragment>
<ui:fragment rendered="#{leagueCreator.numberOfTeams > 0}">
<ui:repeat value="#{leagueCreator.teams}" var="team">
<h:outputText value="#{team.name}"/>
<h:outputText value="delete action and edit action"/>
</ui:repeat>
</ui:fragment>
</h:panelGrid>
<h:inputText id="teamToAdd" value="#{leagueCreator.teamToAdd}" />
<h:commandButton id ="addTeamToLeague" value="add">
<f:ajax event="click" execute="@this teamToAdd" render="teamsGrid teamErrorMessage teamToAdd" listener="#{leagueCreator.addTeam}"/>
</h:commandButton>
<h:outputText id="teamErrorMessage" value="#{leagueCreator.teamErrorMessage}" />
</div>
[Message sent by forum member 'capitanu' (goprean_at_yahoo.com)]
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=368722