Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
When South Florida’s diamonds sparkled
In the 1970s and ’80s, spring training brought baseball’s best to the east coast
It was two years after “Where the Boys Are” put Fort Lauderdale on the map that the M&M boys came to town and made a bigger splash.
When the New York Yankees relocated their spring training base across the state from St. Petersburg in 1962, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and were the star attractions on the field and in another movie filmed in Fort Lauderdale, “Safe at Home.”
Joe DiMaggio was a special instructor that spring, staying at the team’s base at the oceanfront Yankee Clipper Hotel. After Marilyn Monroe was spotted with him in the lobby, the Wall Street Journal declared that “royalty had descended upon Fort Lauderdale.”
That was the dawn of what would become the heyday of spring training in South Florida, when the region was the epicenter of the baseball universe for six weeks every year. In the 1970s and ’80s as many as eight major league teams had spring training bases at various times between Miami and Cocoa Beach, and the Yankees kept Fort Lauderdale in the forefront.
“It was really a soap opera the whole time,” said Rex Hudler, an infielder who came to spring training for the first time with the Yankees in 1979. “Being with the Yankees there was always something going on. It was exciting. It was fun.
It kind of ruined it for every other team I played for after that because there wasn’t the excitement there.”
The opening of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches as spring training home of the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros this week marks a revival of spring training on the East Coast. Since the Baltimore Orioles left Fort Lauderdale for Sarasota after 2009 there had been no teams training on this side of the state south of Jupiter, where the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals share the Roger Dean Stadium complex.
Before the Marlins brought games that counted to the region in 1993, spring was the thing for baseball in South Florida.
The Orioles were in Miami, the Atlanta Braves and Montreal Expos — later to become the Nationals — were in West Palm Beach, and the Texas Rangers trained in Pompano Beach. Farther up the coast, Dodgertown was a spring gem in Vero Beach. The Astros were a natural for the Space Coast at Cocoa Beach from 1964-84; the New York Mets arrived at Port St. Lucie in 1988.
Fort Lauderdale was the focal point due to the presence of the Yankees (1962-95), whose exploits provided fodder in the daily battle for the back pages of New York newspapers.
The most famous — or infamous — moment occurred in the manager’s office at Fort Lauderdale Stadium.
That was where, on March 4, 1973, New York Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich held separate news conferences to announce a most unlikely trade. The two left-handers explained they had not only swapped wives, but essentially lives — kids and pets included.
Although nothing quite electrified headline writers on the tabloids like the original wife swap — “Deal of the century,” “Peterson, Kekich hurl change-ups” — it was a colorful era stoked by oversized egos and larger-than-life characters. Reggie Jackson was the “straw that stirred the drink.” Billy Martin always seemed to be making a managerial comeback or looking for a fight.
The energy level amped up whenever then-Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was present, holding court with Donald Trump-like bravado. Steinbrenner was the undisputed Boss, with guests that included Trump.
“It was great. There were so many New Yorkers down here, every spring training game at Fort Lauderdale stadium was packed and it was very hard to get a ticket,” said Harvey Greene, longtime Miami Dolphins media relations director who held that position with the Yankees from 1986-89. “Even so, it was such a relaxed atmosphere. The fans would come out and get autographs, and the players would gladly sign them.”
In those days it wasn’t unusual to encounter Yankees at any number of bars on the beach and near the ballpark, or at the race tracks.
Cindy House, now a bartender at the Sly Fox at Galt Ocean Mile, managed some popular bars that Rangers and Yankees players frequented during spring training.
“We’d see more Texas Rangers than anybody. It was amazing how much they would party,” House said. “The Texas Rangers really brightened up Pompano.”
The tone of the Yankees spring circus was established in 1962 when they moved into the new 8,000-seat Fort Lauderdale Stadium. Many players arrived a week early to take part in the filming of “Safe at Home,” a vehicle for Maris and Mantle.
But it wasn’t just the Yankees who kept baseball buzzing during the golden age of spring training on the Gold Coast.
The Orioles were an attraction at old Bobby Maduro Stadium in Miami, with a brash leader of their own in Earl Weaver and stars such as Jim Palmer and Eddie Murray and later Cal Ripken Jr. At Vero Beach, Tommy Lasorda preached the gospel of Dodger Blue.
In the late ’80s, West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium was a breeding ground of future Hall of Fame pitchers with the Braves’ trio of Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine and the Expos’ 6-foot-10 curiosity Randy Johnson.
Even Pompano’s nondescript Municipal Stadium, spring home of the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers from 1961-86, had its notable moments. Ted Williams began an inglorious four-year managerial career with the Senators there in 1969. Martin spent three combative springs with the Rangers before moving a few miles away to take the helm of the Yankees.
But the most legendary occurrence at the bandbox ballpark off U.S. 1 was in 1986 when rookie slugger Pete Incaviglia, in his first batting practice with the Rangers, hit a ball through the 1-inch plywood outfield wall near the 380-foot sign — against a 20-mph wind.
“I remember the stadium in Fort Lauderdale was beautiful; it was almost state of the art back then. With Steinbrenner, everything was always first class,” Hudler said. “The Pompano ballpark, wow, it just looked like a high school field, really.”
To call Municipal Stadium cozy is an understatement. It seated only 4,500. But it epitomized the appeal of spring training, with most ballparks providing intimate settings that enabled fans to get much closer to the players than during the regular season.
Most quaint and accessible was the Dodgers’ Holman Stadium, where the dugouts had no roof and the players had to walk through the crowd to pass from the clubhouse to the field, separated only by ropes to create a narrow alley.
Dodgertown was unlike any other spring complex in baseball with housing and restaurants for the players on the campus, which also had a golf course and other recreation facilities. The streets had names such as Sandy Koufax Lane, Jackie Robinson Avenue, Pee Wee Reese Boulevard and Duke Snider Drive. It was common to encounter some of their namesakes.
They didn’t name a street after Darryl Strawberry, but it was there in the Sandy Koufax Room in 1991, on his first day as a Dodger after eight controversy-laden seasons with the Mets, that the mercurial slugger faced a large media gathering to discuss his newfound status as a born-again Christian.
Wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, Strawberry declared, “I live in this world, but I’m no longer a part of it. I don’t go back to the things out there, all the sin. I’m in a new Pompano Beach Municipal Stadium, 1981 world now.”
Such grandiose drama was more commonplace with the Yankees during the “Bronx Zoo” era of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
It was 40 years ago at a Banana Boat bar where some Yankees were unwinding after a spring workout that a Sport magazine writer quoted Jackson saying, “This team, it all flows from me. I’m the straw that stirs the drink,” stirring an uproar within the team. (The Hall of Fame outfielder, now 70, continues to deny he said it.)
At Fort Lauderdale Stadium, a big attraction was the opportunity to see and mingle with many Yankee greats from the past.
“One nice thing about Yankees spring training is George [Steinbrenner] would bring back so many great Yankees players,” Greene said. “You’d walk into the clubhouse and Mickey Mantle is in uniform, Catfish Hunter is sitting in another part of the clubhouse telling stories and Whitey Ford is outside throwing easy batting practice.
“It was like old-timers day every day.”
Hudler recalls being a star-struck young player trying to make the Yankees when Ford walked up and squirted sunscreen on the palm of his hand.
“He said, ‘Hey kid, use some of this. Skin like yours and mine, we need it.’ I’ll never forget how he cared for me,” Hudler said.
After the Yankees left, Ford, now 88, has remained a goodwill ambassador for the team in bars near his condo on Galt Ocean Mile. John Gangloff, chef/manager at Oceans Grille, had a chance to tell Ford that he was his father’s idol. The next time Bill Gangloff was visiting from Buffalo, N.Y., the Hall of Fame pitcher not only came to the bar to have a beer with him, he invited him up to his condo.
“He showed him memorabilia and they shot the bull for like an hour. It was my dad’s best experience of his life. How special is that?” Gangloff said. “It’s a shame they let the Yankees leave and go to Tampa. It broke my heart.”
Spring training in South Florida lost much of its luster when the Yankees moved to Tampa in 1996, though the Orioles took their place at Fort Lauderdale Stadium through 2009.
The exodus from the region was sparked by cities in other parts of Florida and Arizona offering lucrative deals for teams to relocate to new and more spacious ballparks.
Though spring training has a different feel now, it remains more popular than ever and a major economic benefit to the two states that host it. In 2016, the 15 teams based in Florida set an attendance record for the 100-year history of what is known as the Grapefruit League, according to the Florida Sports Foundation.
With an average crowd of 7,096 for 215 games played in the state, it was the first time attendance averaged more than 7,000 per game. Not surprisingly, the Yankees were the top draw with an average of 10,053 at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa.
The arrival of the Astros and Nationals creates a new spring training hub in northern Palm Beach County with the Marlins and Cardinals 12 miles away in Jupiter. The Mets are about 30 miles north of there.
The modern ballparks don’t have quite the intimate appeal of those in the past. Last spring the Marlins upset some fans by blocking access to what had been a popular hangout for autograph seekers near the entrance to the players’ parking lot.
But many players and manager Don Mattingly will often accommodate requests to sign by the wall along the left-field line at Roger Dean Stadium. The late Jose Fernandez often lingered there enjoying the interaction with the crowd.
“Sure, you’re missing the ambience of what the old parks used to have,” said Hudler, now a broadcaster for the Kansas City Royals. “But that’s just the way it is, you’ve got to change with the times. Our game of baseball continues to evolve.”
Nonetheless, spring training has retained some of the quaint aspects of baseball at its most laidback time. In Jupiter, you’ll often see Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells behind the batting cage chatting with players and coaches.
Every morning a dozen Japanese media members engage in the ritual of lining up to photograph the arrival of Ichiro Suzuki in a different T-shirt bearing a message for the amusement of fans back in his homeland.
One day last spring, home run champion Barry Bonds, who was beginning a stint as Marlins hitting coach, couldn’t resist engaging in an impromptu hitting contest on a back field with some of the team’s top batters. Another day, during a nondescript exhibition game, fans were treated to Giancarlo Stanton hitting a tape-measure home run over the Marlins’ building in left field.
So it still happens every spring. Baseball’s warmup in South Florida will just be a bit farther north than in memorable days of the past.