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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2010 > January > 20
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Give me the quaint old spring ball parks
THE NEW state-of-the-art spring training stadiums mushrooming in Florida and Arizona are nifty, miniaturized versions of their big daddy major-league stadiums with their fancy grandstands, private boxes and big-league prices for hot dogs and beer.
Before they all die, permit me to take you back to the days when spring training was situated in small minor league parks that were quaint and sometimes decrepit and, well, fun places to be.
THE HOUSTON ASTROS used to train in Cocoa Beach, Fla., in a small, dilapidated park of crumbling concrete painted a putrid yellow. The players stayed in old military barracks. During one exhibition game, right in the middle of an inning, Cincinnati Reds center fielder Cesar Cedeno came running full-bore, non-stop from center field to the dugout. We all thought, “Well, maybe he has to go to the bathroom.”
Not so. Cedeno refused to return to the field. Why? “I saw a big snake out there and I am afraid of snakes and I’m not going back out there,” he said. And he didn’t.
Back in the days of The Big Red Machine, the Reds trained in Al Lopez Field in Tampa, where now stands the massive stadium housing the Tampa Bay Bucs. It was a small, dumpy place covered by a corrugated sheet metal roof that thumped loudly when foul balls bounced off it.
The press box was so bad most of us didn’t sit in it. Crowds were small back then and the left field bleachers down the third base line were usually empty. Four beat writers would sit on the wooden seats, take off our shirts, slather on suntan lotion and “work” out there.
Spring training was so casual that sometimes I would sit on the bullpen bench in front of those bleachers, where the relief pitchers sat. And I’d grab a glove between innings and play catch with the left fielder to warm him up. Once, with George Foster in left field, I grabbed a baseball and autographed it for him. After I threw it to him, he looked at my signature, turned and threw the ball far over the left field wall.
AN OLD PLACE in Sarasota was, uh, different. It was called Payne Park in downtown Sarasota and it is now a tennis facility on U.S. 301. The Boston Red Sox trained there and Ted Williams used the place.
The press box was so rickety and so close to 301 that when trucks rumbled by the press box swayed and rocked and those of us who didn’t get seasick thought certain the box would one day tumble onto 301 and we’d be crushed by a Peterbilt.
And old McKechnie Field in Bradenton wasn’t much better. They’ve done a marvelous refurbishing there, but not the press box. It is a meteorlogical miracle. It can be 80 degrees on the field, but up in the pressbox it will be freezing. And it remains that way to this day. Writers who don’t bring jackets or sweaters are shivering by the fourth inning. And they end up typing with numb fingers. How can this be? The windows are open and there is no air conditioning.
OLD CLEARWATER STADIUM in Clearwater was nearly a carbon copy of Al Lopez Field in Tampa, but it was located in a shady neighborhood. After one night game, broadcaster Chris Welsh was walking down a dark street toward his car (the parking lot was small) and he was mugged, robbed of his wallet and watch (at least that’s what he said and he sticks to that story).
But it was fun going to Clearwater because the outfield walls were covered with advertisements, as are most spring training parks. One had a beautiful ad for Hooters and a full length photo of one of the beautiful Hooters waitresses in her white shirt and short orange pants. The girl was Philadelphia catcher Darren Daulton’s wife, and as he looked toward the pitcher, there was his wife staring at him from the center field wall.
Winter Haven hasn’t changed much, either, even after a recent facelift. They always forget the press box, which is invaded every day by large black bugs the size of a finger-nail, crawling all over your laptop and notebooks. Once they captured a large black snake slithering under our feet.
And the visitor’s clubhouse is about the size of a walk-in closet. After players spread their equipment bags in front of their lockers, there is zero floor space in which to walk.
THE KANSAS CITY Royals tried an interesting experiment in central Florida. They not only built a stadium near an I-4 exit, the built an amusement park right next to it and called the entire complex Baseball City. As the Royals played, the ferris wheel turned and there were shouts from carnies on the midway. Nice concept. Never worked. First the amusement park folded, then the Royals moved to Arizona and Baseball City is no more - now an apartment complex.
NOW VERO BEACH was something else. It was home to the Los Angeles Dodgers forever. It was an old military base turned into vacation resort. It has a golf course, tennis courts, military housing remodeled into comfortable apartments for the players, a dining room for executives and the media that was upscale with a chef, a bar, white table cloths and real silverware. All free.
The stadium itself was as quaint as it gets. The seats had no roof and the dugouts had no roof. There were no outfield fences, just high banks of built up grassy knolls in the outfield. The press box was small and roofless and most of us sat on a grassy knoll down the right field line near the foul pole, hoping nobody hit one up the knoll so we’d have to scramble out of the way of the right fielder chasing the ball, spikes flashing.
I miss those places, where you not only could smell the hot dogs being grilled under the press boxes, but feel the heat from the grills, where you could sit in the stands and mix with the fans, where you could sit in the bullpen and mix with the players.
The new facilities are gorgeous, but it doesn’t feel like spring training any more.
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