Article features HS baseball history

Hot Springs may no longer play host to Major League Baseball spring training, but its rich baseball history still draws national attention this time of year.

History.com, the official website of the History Channel, featured the Spa City's spring training legacy with the March 1 installment of its History in the Headlines, "Hot Springs, Grapefruits and the Babe: A History of Spring Training."

The piece focuses on four stories about the origin of spring training, and two of the four are Hot Springs-centric.

"It's wonderful that Hot Springs' colorful history as the birthplace of spring baseball is being spread around the country and world by the History Channel," Steve Arrison, CEO of Visit Hot Springs, said Friday.

Visit Hot Springs, in association with five baseball historians, in 2012 opened the Hot Springs Historic Baseball Trail, which has entry points at Oaklawn Park, Hill Wheatley Plaza and the Arkansas Alligator Farm. The trail consists of 29 cast-aluminum plaques that mark the spots where the sport's legends played ball or relaxed while enjoying Hot Springs' many attractions.

"Our Historic Baseball Trail continues to bring that colorful history to visitors from every state and many foreign countries. We owe a debt of gratitude to our five great baseball historians -- Bill Jenkinson, Tim Reid, Don Duren, Mike Dugan, and Mark Blaeuer -- for helping discover and publicize our baseball roots," Arrison said.

At No. 3, History.com recounts the now-famous tale of how "Baseball's first 500-foot home run was hit in spring training," referring to Ruth knocking a ball 573 feet from Whittington Park into a "gator-infested pond" across the street at the Arkansas Alligator Farm.

Dugan, of Hot Springs, a member of the Brooks Robinson-George Kell Chapter of Society for American Baseball Research, and Bill Jenkinson, primary historical consultant for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum in Baltimore, Md., helped Visit Hot Springs research Ruth's March 17, 1918, home run.

Jenkinson later enlisted the help of two of his friends, Dr. Roy Kerr, an expert on 19th century baseball history who has published two biographies on 19th century players, and Tim Reid, a baseball historian and technician who has produced videos on baseball, to help identify key locations for the baseball trail.

Dugan and other baseball historians maintain that Hot Springs was the birthplace of spring training. Cap Anson, the manager and Hall of Fame player for the Chicago White Stockings, which later became the Chicago Cubs, brought the team to Hot Springs in 1886 to "boil out" the winter; it was the first time that a major league team had gone south for spring training, according to Dugan.

That bit of baseball history lands Hot Springs at No. 1 on History.com's list. "The first spring training was a spa compared to today's version" recounts how Anson and A.G. Spalding, owner of the Chicago White Stockings, "decided to hold their spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a resort town known for its spalike thermal waters. Not only did the Arkansas weather make it easier to play baseball during the late winter months, but Spalding and Anson viewed the springs as a perfect tool to help their players recuperate (particularly those fond of the Hot Springs night life) and get in shape for the season."

As the site notes, "Baseball in Hot Springs would not last forever. Although teams still sent their pitchers and catchers to the town for pre-spring training until the early 1940s, most major league teams had stopped using it as their official training site by the 1920s, after finding better weather (along with space for training facilities) in Arizona, Florida and California."

The original article is available at http://www.goo.gl/8DHIgz.

Local on 03/06/2017

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