Deciding on a Location
Back in the winter of 2024 the chapter decided to pursue a project of putting together a trolley tour of the spring training sites that existed in Pinellas County. First, we would need to do some research. SABR’s Spring Training Research Committee seemed like a good place to start. The committee compiled two databases to search either by the team’s home city or the spring training host city. The earliest site in the county was St. Pete. Branch Rickey, fresh out of college coaching and now the newly minted manager of the St. Louis Browns made St. Petersburg the choice for 1914. Branch Rickey, fresh out of college coaching and now the newly minted manager of the St. Lois Browns, made St. Pete the choice for 1914.
It was great news for St. Pete which wished to utilize the free advertising a professional baseball territory could provide for a growing tourism industry. St. Louis being the farthest big-league city to the west likely had the largest territorial reach. While the Browns were not very good, neither were the St. Louis Cardinals in those days. Which St. Louis team they attracted was sort of a wash.
St. Pete was to that point and would be for many years later a one ballpark town. The ballpark they were using in 1913, Guava Park, was really kind of out of town. It was on the Gulfport rail line a good three miles from the town center. Scoff at that if you wish, but 1914 was not a year flooded with automobiles, nor paved roads.
The railway company offered to bring the park up to big league standards and apparently had reached some sort of a deal with some members of the group in charge of bringing spring training baseball to town. They just didn’t have agreement with enough of them. When that possibility was discarded, three other sites were being considered. Public opinion measured the desirability of a ballpark location by its distance from the city center. That spot was considered to be the post office. One site was north of town, the other two were adjoining properties south of town.
Of the two southern sites, one offered 20 acres of usable land and the other offered 10. The 10 acre lot also offered five years of free use. A potential problem was that it was located further south of the other by the width of Tangerine Ave. That spot didn’t garner significant committee support, so now they were down to two.
The northern property was a wooded area just above the city limits controlled by the Snell-Hamlet Investment Company. The terms offered were a lease for 6 years at no cost and the company would clear and level the property at their expense. It is described as two blocks of undeveloped land. It was a reasonable amount of space for ballparks in that time period.
The southern property that offered 20 acres was already clear of trees and relatively level and dry. The catch? The committee would have to agree to purchase the property at $18,000 with payments over six years. The offer was the first year free, then $3,000 down with $3,000 yearly payments plus 8 percent interest over the next five years. The Kerr property was originally the preferred site when Browns president Hedges visited and signed the agreement to train here in July. In the end, although maybe a better fit, the committee voted not to get into the real estate business (even though many of them were individual).
The property selected was adjacent to Coffee Pot Bayou. The official name was Sunshine Ballpark. I have yet to come across any primary source materials that list it as anything other than the Coffee Pot Ballpark. More to come in the next installment …