|
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind
of America had better learn baseball.”
--Jacques Barzun
Floridians love baseball and the game reciprocates. It’s a relationship
dating back 100 years and shows no sign of waning. Aside from being played
feverishly across the sunshine state’s 58,000 plus square miles,
Florida sports two major league franchises and fourteen minor league
baseball clubs.
It hosts seventeen spring training sites - the most of any state – an
annual rite which began in 1888. The Florida Marlins, Miami’s 14-year-old
expansion team, has won baseball’s World Series twice: 1997 and
2003.
The game’s economic benefits are also considerable: Palm Beach County
alone reports that its total economic impact from baseball exceeds $52 million
annually, while the estimated total impact of the nine teams training in West
Central Florida surpasses $227 million. Florida and Baseball have been good
for one another, but it’s about more than business.
“People ask me what I do in winter when there's
no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait
for spring.”
--Rogers Hornsby
Christened La Florida by Spaniards, fittingly
during the spring of 1513, Florida has evolved into a baseball mecca,
with its playgrounds
producing
ballplayers in numbers approaching those of its Latin neighbors. Baseball
legends John Henry Lloyd, Al Lopez, Buck O’Neil, Bill White and
Lou Piniella were born in Florida, as were many others. They represent
baseball from the ground up, played locally at amateur levels and before
crowds of family and friends; anchoring a game to a place that it has
become synonymous with.
“I see great things in baseball. It’s
our game - America’s game.”
--Walt Whitman
It’s a century old love affair, one reflected
in this collection of photographs, many of which chronicle small towns,
colleges and schools, country outings, training camps and even prisons.
They capture baseball’s elite, the not so, hard scrabble affairs
and lavish exhibitions. These photographs reflect the coming of age of
a state and a game – our game.
|
