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    Warren Ballpark
    Warren Ballpark
    Warren Ballpark
    Ebook210 pages59 minutes

    Warren Ballpark

    By Mike Anderson

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    About this ebook

    If there is a place where the ghosts of baseball players come at night to relive their glory days, it is Warren Ballpark in the old copper-mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. Warren Ballpark has been in use as a sports facility since 1909 longer than any other ballpark in the United States. Some of the most colorful and notable figures in baseball history have stepped onto its field as barnstorming big leaguers or as minor-league players hoping to make their way up to the Big Show. Several players implicated in the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal played in an outlaw league at Warren Ballpark during the 1920s. In 1917, it was the holding facility for 1,500 striking copper miners rounded up during the Bisbee Deportation. It is also the site of one of the longest-running and most bitterly contested high school football rivalries in America, between the Bisbee Pumas and the Douglas Bulldogs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateFeb 25, 2013
    ISBN9781439642603
    Warren Ballpark
    Author

    Mike Anderson

    Mike Anderson is a senior employee of one of the world’s oldest private banks. He considers himself fortunate to have stumbled across this extraordinary true story and has been relentless in his pursuit of the tale of Britain’s only successful war crimes prosecution and the parallel lives of Ben-Zion Blustein and Anthony Sawoniuk. 

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      Book preview

      Warren Ballpark - Mike Anderson

      grateful.

      INTRODUCTION

      Bisbee’s Warren Ballpark is America’s oldest multisport facility. Located in the Mule Mountains of southeast Arizona, almost one mile above sea level, it continues to provide a venue for wholesome and healthy athletic entertainment and other community events. From its earliest days as a baseball field, Warren Ballpark, now 103 years old, hosted high school teams, town teams, semiprofessional teams, outlaw teams, minor league teams, and barnstorming major league teams.

      On November 7, 1913, the New York Giants and Chicago White Sox stopped to play an exhibition game during their trip by train and steamship around the world. That day, six future Hall of Famers and legendary Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe took the field to play for a Bisbee crowd. Other major league teams stopped here as well, including the Chicago Cubs, who were frequent visitors, the Cleveland Indians, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Philadelphia Athletics. On April 2, 1940, two of baseball’s most revered figures, Connie Mack and Honus Wagner, appeared on the field at Warren Ballpark.

      From 1926 through the 1927 season, the ballpark was the home field for the Bisbee Miners, a team in the outlaw Copper League. During those years, several members of the Chicago White Sox team who were banned from baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series played on visiting teams, including Buck Weaver, Chick Gandil, and Lefty Williams. Former New York Giants Hal Chase and Jimmie O’Connell, also banned from organized baseball for throwing games, played on visiting teams as well.

      As the only large outdoor community center in the Warren mining district, Warren Ballpark was in constant use. English immigrants used it to play soccer, rugby, and cricket; owners of traveling rodeos and Wild West shows rented it for their events; circuses and professional wrestling matches were staged there; and local theaters used it to show blockbuster feature films.

      In 1937, the original wooden stands, built in 1909, were demolished, and the grandstands used today were constructed. The first game played to dedicate the new ballpark was between the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox on April 6, 1937. The game was broadcast live to listeners in Chicago with the assistance of Bisbee’s KSUN radio station.

      In its 19 years as a minor league baseball venue, the ballpark was the starting point or way station for four major league managers, Tom Seaton (an ace major league hurler turned outlaw manager), and many talented major league players. In addition, from 1928 through 1955—except during the height of the Great Depression and during World War II—many fine players who spent substantial time in the minor leagues started their careers or spent several seasons on the rosters of the Bisbee Bees, Javelinas, Miners, or Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings, of the Arizona State and Arizona-Texas Leagues.

      For half a century after minor league baseball left Warren Ballpark, the field was used primarily for high school athletics. That time was well spent, as the five state baseball championships and four state football championships earned by the Pumas from then until today can readily attest. Even when the adult game had disappeared, Bisbee remained a great town for sports.

      The return of the Copper Kings as a minor league baseball team in 2003 brought initial excitement and subsequent disappointment after the team quickly folded. The onset of summer league semiprofessional ball in 2006 has been a source of entertainment and pride for our community every year since. The Copper Kings and now the Ironmen brought the tradition of adult baseball back to Bisbee.

      Warren Ballpark is also the home field for the Bisbee Pumas football team, which has played its home games there since 1909. The Puma varsity gridders have never failed to thrill local fans and have always been a keen source of hometown pride. To date, Bisbee has won four unofficial state football championships. The Bisbee-Douglas high school football rivalry, one of the longest-running and most frequently played in the nation, remains a must-attend annual event for fans of both communities.

      The influence of immigrants in Bisbee is reflected in the competitive sports that were played at Warren Ballpark in its first two decades. Entertainment and athletic events taking place there have continued to reflect the local economy and culture over the years.

      But Warren Ballpark has also had its more serious moments. From 1913 to 1916, American troops were bivouacked across the street from the ballpark to protect the Warren mining district from violence spilling across the nearby border with Mexico. In July 1917, the ballpark served as a detention facility for 1,500 striking miners rounded up by vigilantes during the event known as the Bisbee Deportation. The deportation, a key moment in the history of the American labor movement, remains a point of contention and controversy in Bisbee today.

      Still owned by the Bisbee Unified School District, Warren Ballpark remains in year-round use for sporting events, other school-related events, and community activities such as the Bisbee Blues Festival.

      Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, Ebbetts Field, Shibe Park, and Tiger Stadium are gone. They exist today only in memory, photographs, and museum artifacts. Warren Ballpark, nestled in a sedate neighborhood of a small Arizona copper-mining town, is a direct connection to those ballparks and to all of the long-vanished fields that were once a vital part of community life in hundreds of towns and cities across America.

      It is a living history museum, a ballpark still in use that gives us an insightful look into the world of sports and small-town community culture of decades gone by. If there really are ghosts of baseball players past who return each night to play out their glory days on a field of dreams, this is the place they return to: the real field of dreams.

      1

      NO PLACE FOR A

      BALLPARK

      A search for signs of Apache Indians led Army scouts to discover mineral traces in the Mule Mountains in 1877. By happy coincidence for those who filed the first mineral claims

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