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Spring Training In St. Pete Through the Years

Photo by Fred Fox/STAFF

Actress Marilyn Monroe and ex-husband, former New York Yankee ball player Joe DiMaggio, happily walk the shores of the Gulf of Mexico as they enjoy a day together at Bellaire, Florida, March 29, 1961.

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By BOB CHICK Tribune correspondent

Published: February 24, 2008

Updated: 02/24/2008 12:11 am

ST. PETERSBURG - When the first pitch is thrown Saturday at Progress Energy Park for the Blue Jays-Rays game, it will mark the beginning of the end of an era.

An era that has seen larger-than-life figures such as Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel and dozens of Hall of Famers - and many more lesser major-league players - call St. Petersburg home for six weeks every spring.

It started with a visionary almost a century ago. St. Petersburg's Al Lang belongs in the league of the guy who planted the first orange tree in the state. Lang courted 13 of the first 16 major-league teams to train in Florida so they wouldn't migrate to Arizona or California.

St. Petersburg got more than its share. For 94 years, at least one team has trained in the city; for 40 years, there were two teams playing 30 exhibition games in the spring at a park later named in Lang's honor.

Those games start again next weekend. When the final out is recorded at the stadium once known as Al Lang Field on March 28 when the Reds and Rays play, the Grapefruit League will bid adieu to St. Petersburg. The Rays are moving their spring training base to Port Charlotte in 2009. The other teams that once trained here, including the Yankees, Mets and Cardinals, left a long time ago.

The Yankees became one of the greatest sports dynasties of all time while using St. Petersburg as their spring base. The Mets started their incredible worst-to-first trek to the World Series in St. Petersburg in the spring of '69. There are still many Cardinals fans in the area because of their spring ties here. And, of course, the Rays have held spring training here since their inception.

With the exception of the two world wars, St. Petersburg opened the door for the optimism that always springs eternal this time of the year.

The other day, Rays pitcher Scott Kazmir predicted a shot at the playoffs this year - after a 65-95 record in 2007. See what we mean?

In The Beginning

Al Lang scored his first success when he lured the St. Louis Browns to St. Petersburg in 1914, but the Browns should have arrived with an expiration date like a gallon of milk, sour from the first pitch.

The Browns gave Branch Rickey his initial managerial job, but he inherited a bunch caught in eight consecutive losing seasons. They improved from 57-96 in 1913 to 71-82 in 1914 before they left and the Philadelphia Phillies arrived.

St. Petersburg went from the cellar with the Browns to first place with the Phils; from 20-game loser Carl Weilman (10-20), worst in the league, to Grover Cleveland Alexander (31-10 in 1915), best in the league.

Philadelphia manager Pat Moran's agenda forced his team to walk the two miles from the Fifth Avenue Hotel that spring rather than hop a streetcar to the park. Rules were no dice in the clubhouse, a 10-cent limit per poker hand and two-a-day workouts.

Yankee Doodle

Lang sought out New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert in 1924 and sold him the company line. Baseball historian and writer Fred Lieb reported their conversation this way:

"St. Petersburg has been famous for its weather," Lang told Ruppert. "The sun shines nearly all the time and we have very little rain in March. And maybe even more important, your boys won't find the same temptations - jezebels and booze - that Manager Miller Huggins has had to contend with in New Orleans."

Lang had landed, measured and mounted baseball's biggest fish.

After finishing second to Washington and future Hall of Famers Walter Johnson (23-7) and Sam Rice (.334) after a first spring in St. Pete, Ruppert let loose.

"Lang," he said, "for your fine weather, bah! For your continuous sunshine, bah. And for having no temptations in your city, I also say bah. You also have your jezebels. When we trained in New Orleans, we finished first three times. When we train in your town one spring, everybody stamps over us."

Lang might have said when he came to St. Petersburg at age 30, he was given six months to live. He might have urged patience. He didn't. New York simply won 21 pennants and 16 world championships, and fielded a frightening lineup of Hall of Famers including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, in 33 years of training in St. Pete.

Hardest to Take

The answer to a baseball gimme is "Iron Horse," the nickname given to Lou Gehrig after he played in a then-record 2,130 consecutive games with the Yankees from 1925 to 1939. They are still seeking a universal nickname for Cal Ripken Jr., who broke that record with Baltimore many years later.

Another Gehrig story is no gimme and has been hidden for years.

Yankees trainer Ernie Painter and pitcher Herb Pennock were in the nearly empty clubhouse at Crescent Lake Field (later Miller Huggins, then Huggins-Stengel). It was an early spring day in 1939.

Gehrig, 36, began to slip into his game clothes.

"He didn't or couldn't lift his leg high enough and stumbled against the lockers," Painter said. "He was lying there like a helpless puppy. We dared not help him up. He finally crawled to his feet ...

"There was a tear in his eye."

Gehrig played eight regular-season games in 1939 and retired with baseball's most famous words during a ceremony that July 4: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Gehrig had been given a year to live by his physician and nearly stretched it to two before death claimed him. Creeping paralysis is one way to describe amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Today it's called Lou Gehrig's disease.

DiMaggio-Monroe

They were America's Couple and they were all over Pinellas County in 1952. Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were spotted at the Tides Bath Club on North Redington Beach and seen together at Huggins Field near downtown St. Petersburg.

The romance emerged after a blind date in the star-studded Villa Nova Restaurant in Los Angeles. It appeared to be a publicity stunt at first sight. She wasn't sure if he played baseball or football. No one talks shop on a first date.

Late in 1952, Monroe showed her best wave to 100,000 soldiers stationed in Korea during the war, then dropped her best sentence as she prepared to return home: "Now I'm flying back to the most important thing in my life - Joe. I want to start a family. A family comes before a career."

A nation swooned.

They plotted a quiet marriage - City Hall in San Francisco. Quiet meant a circus of 500.

They divorced Oct. 4, 1954 - 181 days of marriage, or 260,000 minutes, as one writer put it.

Casey And The Mets

In March 1972, two teenage Australian ballplayers were invited to work out with the Mets at the Payson complex in St. Petersburg. They were asked by a reporter if their countrymen thought baseball was a silly game.

They simply said "no."

Casey Stengel, who once managed the Mets and other teams, came along a little later to fill in the blanks.

Immediately, he dodged the answer, as he did so well, and started his filibuster about Manager John McGraw and the 1924 World Series, followed by comments about motion pictures, World War I and memories of an exhibition game in Ireland.

"This guy yelled from the stands," Stengel demonstrated, cupping his hands over his mouth, "'How about a four-rounder.'"

Remarks about Tampa and spring training were up next, which immediately led to cigars and other subjects, before Stengel's thoughts returned to England and cricket. "Everyone in those days wore shoes too short," he said with his usual sincerity. "No one ever got measured. You come off the farm and just slip into a pair."

Stengel, who managed the Yankees to 10 pennants and seven world championships in 12 seasons, all while training in St. Petersburg, spoke 24 minutes and never answered whether Australians thought baseball was a silly game.

Carlton Speaks

Steve Carlton was 14-9 in 1967, a World Series champion with St. Louis, with plenty to say.

In 1974, after thinking about it for two seasons, he stopped talking to the media for the remainder of a 24-year career that ended in 1988 and a place in the Hall of Fame.

Catch him early and it was different, especially while the Cards were training in St. Petersburg. In February 1968, Cardinals minor-league pitching instructor Barney Schultz said if he had to pick the next big winner in the major leagues, it would have to be Carlton.

As his brief career was discussed that morning, Carlton didn't overflow with confidence. "I wasn't very good," he said of his high school days at North Miami. "When you're that age, you don't know too much about what you are doing. You simply throw the ball."

Florida Southern and Rollins showed interest. He enrolled at Miami-Dade Junior College, which won its second of four national titles that year, but he never pitched a game for the JuCo team after Cards scout John Buick offered a tryout. Even later, Carlton wasn't sure he made the right move: "I'll never know what kind of bonus I could have picked up if I went to Miami-Dade. Chances are, I would have gotten more than the $5,000."

The Cardinals - and Phillies later - got the first four-time Cy Young recipient, a 329-game winner (second-most among left-handers, behind Warren Spahn) and a pitcher ranked fourth in strikeouts (second among lefties, behind Randy Johnson).

Al Lang Revisited

After a phone call to his home, Lang invited a photographer and reporter for the late St. Petersburg Independent to join him at his home and help celebrate his 88th birthday.

Lang dressed in his Sunday best, including a dress shirt and tie. The Independent provided a cake, complete with candles.

Take a deep breath and let her rip, it was said. He did.

The guy with the camera rushed back to the newspaper office and into the lab to develop the film and print the picture. The reporter was right behind.

Within minutes, laughter erupted around the sports desk. City desk reporters circled around.

Lang's cooperation was above and beyond. He took this seriously, leaned over the cake and let out a mighty gust of air. His tie caught fire, his eyes bulged. The reporter snuffed out the flames before harm was done.

It's not sure whether cake was served afterward.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Bob Chick, who has covered spring training in the Tampa Bay area for more than 40 years, was a Tribune sports writer for 15 years and is a former sports editor of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent.

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