Read Ultimate Baseball Road Trip Online
Authors: Josh Pahigian,Kevin O’Connell
The street spots on Central Avenue offer free two-hour parking until 11:00 p.m. but this isn’t much help for those wishing to watch a baseball game that begins at 7:00. Follow Central away from the dome, however, until you pass under the highway, and just past the intersection of 18th Street, the street spots are two-hour parking until only 6:00 p.m. after which they become unlimited. Just a short walk from the dome, this is an easy place to score free parking for those arriving at 4:00 or later.
Follow the bronze home-plate markers that begin outside Tropicana Field’s Gate 1 to Central Avenue and you’ll soon find yourself at Al Lang Field, the former Grapefruit League home of many teams, including the Rays.
The markers compose Baseball Boulevard, a walking tour that chronicles the history of baseball in St. Petersburg. The path is well landscaped, passing over a small river, past some old railroad tracks, and along a number of aromatic perennial beds. When the path led us into a tunnel underneath a bridge near the ballpark, we encountered a lone violinist playing a sad tune.
Chronologically, the tour begins with a plaque outside of Al Lang Field celebrating Lang’s efforts to lure the St. Louis Browns to the Sunshine State. On the way to the Trop, the plaques remember the contributions that some of the game’s brightest stars—players like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Tom Seaver, Cal Ripken, and Wade Boggs—have made to St. Pete over the years. They also commemorate the efforts of the civic and business leaders who helped make St. Petersburg a big league city.
On the west side of the Trop, local men and women who have excelled in a variety of sports receive their due. Boggs is honored with a plaque here, as well as Tampa Bay Bucs star Lee Roy Selmon and dozens of others.
Josh:
I’ve never heard of most of these folks.
Kevin:
Obviously you don’t follow Olympic swimming very closely.
Josh:
Olympic swimming?
Kevin:
Meghan got me into it.
Adding some color to the stroll from the parking lot to the Trop’s entrance, a thousand-foot (Josh walked it off) mosaic walkway depicts an underwater scene. Sponsored by a local electric company, the picture is made up of nearly two thousand little tiles (Kevin counted). We especially liked the sea turtles, dolphins and rays. The sand and beach blankets at the “water’s” edge are nice touches too.
Kevin:
Every city should have a walkway like this outside its gates.
Josh:
All they have at Fenway is a “mosaic” of fried peppers and onions that fall off people’s sausages.
Kevin:
That’s not a mosaic. That’s a health code violation.
Always dreamed of running your fingers through the red clay on the Rays’ infield? Rather than running out on the field and getting hauled away by security, visit Parking Lot 6A right outside the main entrance of the park. There, a bin of surplus dirt sits waiting for the grounds crew to put it into service. On one hand, it seems kind of bush league for a Major League team to have a big bin of dirt in plain view outside. On the other hand, what a thrill it was to touch the storied infield dirt of Tropicana Field.
Al Lang, Father of the Grapefruit League
In the early 1900s teams customarily brought their players to Southern states like Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas before the season to shed the weight they’d gained over the winter. But baseball was without a central spring training location.
In 1911, Lang, a Pittsburgh businessman, was stricken ill and told he didn’t have long to live. Though he was a relatively young man—in his mid-40s—Lang accepted this sad fate and moved to Florida to spend his last few months in the sun.
After settling in St. Pete, Lang experienced a remarkable recovery and soon became mayor of the small fishing village. In 1914 he lured the St. Louis Browns to town to prepare for the season. Robert L. Hedges, president of the Browns, was attracted to St. Pete because of its great sports fishing and the fact that it was a dry town and would offer limited temptation to his rough and tumble players.
Playing under the direction of another baseball visionary, manager Branch Rickey, the Browns lost to the Cubs 3–2 in their first Florida game.
By 1929, ten of the sixteen Major League teams had spring camps in Florida, including three—the Browns, Boston Braves, and Yankees—in St. Petersburg.
When St. Pete replaced aging Coffee Pot Park with a new ballpark in 1946, the park was named in honor of Lang. Al Lang Field would house the spring Yankees (1946–’50 and 1952–’61) and Cardinals (1946–’97) before the Rays (1998–2008) eventually became its tenant. The Rays have since moved their spring camp to Port Charlotte. But Al Lang Field still sees use as a recreational field. As for Lang? He enjoyed spring ball in St. Pete until the ripe old age of 89. And you probably thought the Fountain of Youth was a myth.
Mounted high above the concourse on the facade of the stadium, a larger-than-life Rays mannequin wears uniform number 98, symbolic of 1998 when the team joined the league. The plastic player reaches out to catch a fly ball with a horrified look on his face. If he hasn’t pooped his pants yet, it seems as if he will very soon.
Second Avenue, Waterfront
Located a short walk from Al Lang Field, the Pier has been a St. Petersburg landmark since 1899. At its foot, a small beach and scenic lawns offer ideal places to play catch or take in some rays. Those with more ambitious designs, meanwhile, can rent bicycles or fishing rods. Using fiddler crabs for bait, fishermen land pompano, amberjack, snook, flounder, and sea bass on either side of the Pier. The Pier Bait House, which is encircled by pelicans looking for a handout, rents rods and reels for a small fee. The tackle shop has been a fixture of the Pier since 1926.
Inside the inverted pyramid structure at the end of the Pier, a food court offers boardwalk staples like ice cream, corn dogs, and steak sandwiches, while a restaurant provides a slightly more formal dining experience. An assortment of tourist shops operate inside, for those road trippers looking for just the right souvenir to bring home to their honey, while a small aquarium upstairs offers those too lazy to find their fish the hard way glimpses of specimens.
Tampa offers more in the way of nightlife than St. Petersburg and far more gentlemen’s clubs for those who are into that sort of thing. Nonetheless, we found a number of fun places to eat and drink in both cities. As for watering holes near the Trop, the choices are limited, so you might consider tailgating. Perhaps one day the Rays will start drawing thirty thousand a night and bars and restaurants will spring up in the streets around the dome, but we don’t foresee that happening any time soon.
Bern’s Steak House
1208 S. Howard Ave.
This Tampa restaurant is famous for its red meat and fine wine. The steak is aged eight weeks, and the wine cellar houses more than half a million bottles, representing some six thousand varieties. Bern’s isn’t cheap, but if you’re looking to treat yourself, have at it. Attire is business casual to semiformal. Otherwise they’ll seat you in the lounge.
Josh:
We prefer to sit at the bar anyway.
Kevin:
A Mariners jersey and flip flops are business casual where I come from.
9th Avenue and surrounding streets
www.ybor.org/index.cfm?section=vs
The area of Tampa known as Ybor City is a National Historic Landmark District that was once recognized as the Cigar Capital of the World. A romp through Ybor (pronounced
ee-bore
) today brings one back to a long past era. Wrought-iron balconies combine with spherical streetlights, brick walkways, and the enchanting architecture of old cigar factories to paint a portrait of a decadent time in Tampa history. Ybor was built by immigrants from Spain, Cuba, Italy, Romania, and Germany. This heritage is still reflected in the district’s cultural and culinary offerings. Don’t worry: Even though today’s Ybor is known predominantly as an entertainment district, it still features hand-rolled stogies. We especially recommend
The Columbia
(2117 E. Seventh Ave.), which is the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States, and the
Green Iguana Bar & Grill
(1708 E. Seventh Ave.).
Ferg’s Sports Bar & Grill
1320 Central Ave.
Across the street from a police station and right near the Trop, Ferg’s is the only real option for those seeking a hopping place to eat and drink before the game. The expansive building features an upstairs nightclub with blaring DJ music as well as a covered patio with large electric fans that provide a welcome breeze. We settled onto a pair of barstools on the patio where beer bottles sat in buckets of ice waiting to be plucked, TVs showed games from around the league, and young ladies in tight pants mingled with big-bellied guys chowing on cheap wings and burgers.
1850 Central Ave.
If you take our tip and park for free on the corner of Central and 18th, this will be a convenient stop for a beer. Trust us, it looks better on the inside than it does from the street. Housed in an old theater, it is a solid choice for those who want a pregame libation or who want to watch the West Coast games after the Rays call it a night. Tiered seating gives everyone a good view of the big-screen TVs above the old stage. In the lobby, a wall displays classic ballpark pictures painted on mirrors. These include Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Tropicana Field, Fenway Park, and Tiger Stadium. All right, maybe they’re not all classics. We found it hilarious to see the Trop arranged as the centerpiece of these hallowed yards.
2424 Tyrone Blvd.
This is one of six sports-themed restaurants named after the retired Tampa Bay Buccaneer who died in September of 2011 from a massive stroke. The defensive lineman became the first Buc to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1995, after being enshrined in the College Football Hall in 1988. He was much beloved in these parts, and though it’s small consolation for the fans who loved him, his family-friendly restaurant lives on, serving soul food and Southern barbecue.
10490 Gandy Blvd.
St. Petersburg is home to the oldest continuously operated greyhound track in the world. The slender pooches have been running at Derby Lane since 1925, which according to our estimation equals more than six hundred dog years. During spring training the track was a favorite haunt of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back in the game’s glory days. In 2001, actors George Clooney and Brad Pitt spent three days at Derby Lane filming part of
Ocean’s 11
.
Although the field resides beneath a roof, a bit of natural light penetrates through the lid in the hour before sunset to make the environment feel a bit less artificial. As for the AstroTurf, not only does it provide a playing surface that more closely resembles real grass in the way it affects the game, but its color is a truer shade of green than those fluorescent rugs that used to appear throughout the cookie-cutter addled game we knew back in the 1970s and ’80s. The outfield fences are attractive dark green. The seats are a pleasant light blue. The outfield dimensions are not too deep and not too shallow.
Our only major complaint regarding the field layout involves the positioning of the bullpens, which are parallel to the foul lines in right (home) and left (visitors). Really, these are not pens. They are merely practice mounds in foul territory. Now, we’re willing to cut teams some slack in cities like Chicago—where the Cubs and their opponents have no choice but to warm up down the lines because of space considerations—but in St. Pete this is inexcusable. The Trop includes two separate field-view restaurant areas deeper down the lines that would seem ideally suited to house a couple of legitimate bullpens after some renovating. Relief pitchers deserve a space all their own and it’s not like the Trop has any shortage of restaurants. Hopefully, the Rays will rethink their pen placement before some outfielder breaks an ankle while chasing a popup along one of the foul lines.
Just how seriously should players and fans take the threat of the roof supports interfering with the game? Well, the mini foul poles that extend off the three outfield-most catwalks should give them some indication. Follow the regular foul poles up toward the ceiling and you’ll see the yellow markers. This must be the only baseball field in the history of the world with eight foul poles.
Because balls frequently clang off or disappear into the catwalks, we thought we owed it to you to include the local ground rules in these pages. Thus, you’ll know why the umpires are sending a batter back to the plate or are waving him around the bases when a ball strikes a catwalk during your visit.
Here are the official Catwalk Ground Rules, which were modified prior to the 2011 season. As you will see, the rules no longer allow for balls to be caught off the catwalks for outs and they no longer stipulate that ground rule doubles may result from “ring” interference: