Baseball
The Cardinals in Avon Park, 1927–1929
Three springs when the World Series champions trained on Museum Avenue's doorstep
For three springs, Avon Park was a big-league town. The St. Louis Cardinals, reigning World Series champions of 1926, trained here from 1927 through 1929, and the exhibition games they drew turned a citrus town of a few thousand into a stop on the Grapefruit League circuit.
1927: Frisch arrives
The Cardinals’ first camp opened in the spring after the trade that sent their player-manager Rogers Hornsby to the New York Giants. Second baseman Frankie Frisch, who came the other way, took his first workouts as a Cardinal in Avon Park. Shortstop Tommy Thevenow, the hero of the 1926 Series, reported once his contract was settled in mid-March. That March the club signed a three-year agreement with the town and a lease on the park.
1928: the Yankees come to town
The 1928 roster was anchored by first baseman Jim Bottomley and pitchers Flint Rhem and Grover Cleveland Alexander. On 8 March, Cardinal Field hosted the official Grapefruit League opener, the Cardinals beating Bucky Harris’s Washington Senators 6 to 5. Then, on Friday afternoon, 16 March 1928, the New York Yankees came. More than five thousand people watched the Cardinals beat the reigning champions 8 to 3, and Babe Ruth was presented with a commemorative bat by the town’s boosters. That bat, fifty-two inches long, is in the Baseball Museum today.
1929: Southworth’s camp
Under new manager Billy Southworth, more than forty major and minor leaguers trained daily at Cardinal Field. The exhibition opponents that spring included Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics on 7 March, the Senators on 14 March, and the Philadelphia Phillies on 21 March, a game remembered for a grand slam by Chick Hafey.
Reading further
The archive’s report on the Cardinals’ spring training sets out each season with its sources, from the Tampa and Washington newspapers of the day to the Florida Grapefruit League’s own history, and the finding on Babe Ruth’s 1928 game and the commemorative bat follows the bat. Cardinal Field has its own report. Where the sources disagree, the archive says so; this article follows them.