The Roar of the 20s in Two Centuries

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – From the Roaring 20s of the 20 Century to the Decade of the 20s in the 21st Century, Florida Spring Training Baseball continues to whet the appetite of baseball fans during the month of March.

During the Roaring 20s, Major League Baseball parks, like Yankee Stadium, were being built and stadiums like Ebbetts Field, Shibe Park and the Polo Grounds were fans favorites from April to October. Beginning in 1923, Florida Spring Training stadiums were constructed in Bradenton, Clearwater, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Fort Myers and West Palm Beach.

By 1928, the State of Florida was prospering with a booming population, arriving by automobiles, to live in newly built homes. Baseball was America’s pastime and 10 of the 16 Major League teams held their spring training in Florida. It was a prosperous time for the growth of Florida Spring Training Baseball, even during the Great Depression years, only to be interrupted by the World War II years of 1942-45.

This was the Florida Spring Training Baseball landscape in 1928.

Boston Braves – St. Petersburg (Waterfront Field, at the location of what would become Al Lang Field)
Boston Red Sox – Bradenton (McKechnie Field)
Brooklyn Robins – Clearwater (Clearwater Athletic Field)
Cincinnati Reds – Orlando (Tinker Field)
New York Yankees – St. Petersburg (Crescent Lake Park Field)
Philadelphia Athletics – Fort Myers (Terry Park)
Philadelphia Phillies – Winter Haven (Denison Field)
St. Louis Browns – West Palm Beach (Connie Mack Field)
St. Louis Cardinals – Avon Park (Columbus Cardinal Field)
Washington Senators – Tampa (Plant Field)

The Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Pirates did not hold spring training in Florida in 1928.

Fast forward to the 2020 season and Major League Baseball has expanded to 30 teams and 15 of them begin their seasons in Florida. The 13 host facilities, in 12 Florida cities, have all of the amenities and technological advances that have occurred over the last 90+ years.

Think about the State of Florida in 1928 and the locations of the 10 teams in nine Florida cities. Unlike today, cars were a relatively new invention and buses were not a well-used method of transportation for sports teams. For the Cincinnati Reds, based in Orlando, to play a game against the Washington Senators in Tampa, it wasn’t a trip down Interstate 4. A visit to the Philadelphia Athletics in Fort Myers did not involve an Interstate 75 exit.

For a trip across Tampa Bay from the south, players would take the makeshift buses of the time to Bradenton and go over the water on a ferry to St. Petersburg to another bus. After the games, the trip was repeated to get back home. And the 21st Century travel is tough?

Railway trains, a common regular-season method of travel, were also utilized as the Reds left Orlando for the inaugural game of Connie Mack Field, and the St. Louis Browns 1928 season opener in West Palm, on March 10.

At the stadium, which at the time sat on the current downtown location of the Kravis Center for Performing Arts, fans enjoyed their hot dogs, peanuts and cracker jack, without beer. During that time of Prohibition, it was not available at stadiums.

Those in attendance were treated to the talents of the Browns Heinie Manush, whose .378 regular season batting average, finished one point shy of the 1928 American League batting title behind Goose Goslin of the Washington Senators. The Reds starting lineup featured the likes of Hall of Famers High Pockets Kelly and Eppa Rixey.

The 1928 Florida Spring Training season also found Avon Park in the second of three years hosting the St. Louis Cardinals in the Highlands County town of 3,500.

A year earlier, Colonel Charles R. Head, an Avon Park resident, convinced his long-time personal friend, Sam Breadon, the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, to move his team to Avon Park for spring training. Head then encouraged the city to build a baseball field worthy of a professional baseball team and the Cardinals played in Avon Park from 1927-29, the city’s only experience of hosting a spring training team.

For a highlight of the season, the New York Yankees made the trip to Cardinal Field and Avon Park fans presented a 52-inch, 14-pound commemorative bat to Babe Ruth during a pre-game ceremony.

The Yankees dugout featured the Murderer’s Row of 1927 with Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and Bob Meusel. The local Cardinals fans showed their support for Sunny Jim Bottomley, who led the National League, in 1928, with 31 home runs and 136 RBI. With the additional talents of Frankie Frisch, Rabbit Maranville and Chick Hafey, the Cardinals would meet the Yankees again in the World Series later that year.

Apparently Breadon was very open to offers to move the Cardinals from place to place as the team was originally lured to the Sunshine State via Bradenton, by R.M. Beall, the founder of Beall’s Department Store in 1923. Following the three-year stint in Avon Park, the Cardinals returned to Bradenton in 1930.

During the Cardinals absence, in 1928 and 1929, the Boston Red Sox played at McKechnie Field, currently the third oldest ballpark in the United States, behind Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.

The Philadelphia Phillies became the first team to hold spring training at Winter Haven’s Denison Field, in 1928. In the late 1920s, the city was one of many in Florida targeting residents of major metropolitan cities to move to rural Central Florida.

Winter Haven’s population exploded to 7,000 and began a long tradition of spring training baseball that lasted into the next century.

The Phillies played in Winter Haven for 10 years and posted a winning record in only one of those seasons. Fans in Polk County enjoyed the talents of Hall of Famer and 1932 National League MVP Chuck Klein, and the likes of Pinky Whitney, Hap Collard and Spud Davis.

Remember the Brooklyn Robins?

Before they became the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team had a couple of other nicknames, including the Superbas and the Robins. It was the Brooklyn Robins that introduced Spring Training Baseball to Clearwater in 1923, where they stayed through 1932.

The Robins (later to become the Dodgers in 1932) played at Clearwater Athletic Field, a 2,000-seat facility with wooden grandstands, located adjacent to where Jack Russell Stadium hosted the Philadelphia Phillies from 1955 through 2003.

On the Robins roster for the first team to train in Clearwater featured three future Hall of Famers in Zack Wheat and pitchers Burleigh Grimes and Dazzy Vance.

The Robins had plenty of nearby teams to play against with the New York Yankees, at Crest Lake Park, and Boston Braves playing, at Waterfront Park in St. Petersburg and the Washington Senators playing at Plant Field, in Tampa.

Waterfront Park would later be designated as Al Lang Field in downtown St. Petersburg and Crest Lake Park still hosts high school and college games at its location north of downtown St. Petersburg.

An inter-city matchup between the Braves and Yankees was a treat for St. Petersburg baseball fans in 1928 as Rogers Hornsby led the National League with .387 batting average and had a .498 on base percentage with 188 hits and 107 walks for the Braves.

Then there was the star-studded lineup of the Yankees that won their second consecutive World Series in 1928. Babe Ruth led the American League (AL) with 54 home runs with Lou Gehrig finishing second with 27. Gehrig led the AL with 147 RBI and Ruth was second with 146.

The furthest south Spring Training site in 1928 was Fort Myers and Terry Park, in its fourth season of hosting the Philadelphia Athletics. During that time, Ft Myers could have been called “Fort Wilderness,” as the Tamiami Trail still had not been constructed.

As part of the deal to entice the Athletics to leave Montgomery, Alabama, the field and 1,500 seat grandstand was built from specs provided by Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Athletics. The Fort Myers fan base, that included Thomas Edison, got a pre-season peek at Lefty Grove, who led the league with 24 wins and 183 strikeouts, and the 1928 American League MVP Mickey Cochrane.

The teams and locations have changed between 1928 and 2020, but Florida Spring Training baseball is still the same. It’s a chance for Florida residents to enjoy a March afternoon watching baseball. It’s a chance for fans of the teams to venture south and escape the colder climate of the north and enjoy a day at the ballpark.

It’s baseball, and we love it; whether it be 1928 or 2020.