Spring training’s birthplace

LITTLE ROCK — Tens of thousands of people have traveled to Florida and Arizona in recent weeks for baseball’s spring training. With the start of the regular season almost upon us, most Arkansans remain unaware that spring training’s birthplace is in this state.

Finally, the folks in Hot Springs are capitalizing on that history. Steve Arrison, the always innovative head of the Hot Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau, had been curious why so many photos of Babe Ruth at various Hot Springs attractions kept showing up. With the help of a dedicated group of baseball historians, Arrison learned just how important Hot Springs was to the sport in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Last spring, baseball historian Bill Jenkinson came to Hot Springs to authenticate the distance of a home run Ruth once hit at Whittington Park. Jenkinson, a Philadelphia native, has served as a consultant to Major League Baseball, the Society for American Baseball Research, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Babe Ruth Museum and ESPN. In 2007, he wrote the book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs. He confirmed that Ruth hit the first 500-foot plus home run at Hot Springs.

According to Jenkinson, the ball soared 573 feet as it left the park and went across Whittington Avenue into the famed Arkansas Alligator Farm, part of the Hot Springs tourism scene since 1902.

Mike Dugan, who hails from an old Garland County family with a rich Irish-American history, has studied the city’s baseball heritage for years. Don Duren of Texas has written well-researched books on Hot Springs baseball. Others such as Mark Blaeuer of Hot Springs and Tim Reid of Florida have contributed hundreds of hours of research.

A.G. Spalding and Cap Anson brought the Chicago White Stockings (the team that would become the Cubs) to Hot Springs to train in the spring of 1886. The team used a field on Ouachita Avenue behind thecurrent site of the Garland County Courthouse. Soon, Hot Springs became a mecca for baseball players and managers.

The historians documented more than 300 players, managers, owners and baseball writers who spent time in the city. Arrison believes that 134 of the 297 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame made spring visits at one time or another.

“We need to let Americans know about the people, places and events that made Hot Springs a key element in the growth of the nation’s pastime,” Arrison says. “What we decided to do was gather as many names as could be historically authenticated and try to locate the places where these legends played or relaxed in Hot Springs.” Twenty-six cast-aluminum

plaques are being placed across the

city to tell the Hot Springs baseball

story. The place where Ruth hit that long run and the site of the hotel where Ruth flipped a coin with his manager to determine his salary are among the plaque locations. Thecity’s importance to Negro League baseball also will be celebrated. There will be a digital tour that allows visitors to use their mobile phones for additional information.

As far back as 1993, Little

Rock native Jay Jennings was chronicling the history of baseball in Hot Springs. He wrote an article for Sports Illustrated titled “When Baseball Sprang for Hot Springs.”

“Hot Springs has drawn media attention as the boyhood home of President Bill Clinton, but few people know that it also played a crucial role in the early years of baseball,” Jennings wrote. “It was the place where spring training came of age. From 1886 to the 1920s, Hot Springs was baseball’smost popular preseason training spot. Though National Association teams began traveling south as early as 1869 when the New York Mutuals visited New Orleans to play exhibition games, manager Cap Anson is widely credited with creating the first organized spring training camp, for his 1886 Chicago White Stockings, in Hot Springs.”

Jennings noted that the surrounding Ouachita Mountains “proved challenging for the long runs on which he liked to lead his players. Afterward they could relieve any aches and pains-or sweat off winter weight-by ‘boiling out’ in one of the 17 bathhouses in town. The cost of a regular three-week series of 21 baths was only $3.” Jennings said that though major leaguers could still be found in Hot Springs through the 1920s, “the influx of players eventually slowed to a trickle, and the big league game quietly faded away. The town’s memory of its baseball heritage faded too.”

Things had begun to decline in 1913-14 due to a major fire, the increased popularity of Florida as a training site and Hot Springs’ reputation as a place where players had a little too muchfun. A Sporting Life headline told of “red lights and wide open policy” in Hot Springs. Owners and managers decided they had rather send their players to places with fewer distractions. Jennings said choosing Hot Springs in those days was like “setting up camp in Las Vegas today.”

Jennings ended his Sports Illustrated article by stating that the “fading history deserves to be remembered for the images it evokes: an irascible Cap Anson arguing over gate receipts; an aging Walter Johnson scaling a hill to play catch; Babe Ruth swaddled in towels on a bathhouse bench. When baseball left Hot Springs, it gained a more temperate climate and smoother fields, but it left behind a glamorous and exciting past.”

Now, Hot Springs is set to properly honor this part of its colorful history. -

Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.