Zoowee mama! A 2021 schedule release, Eric Byrnes making the call to the arm barn to handle copying duties, and a look back at when America’s favorite disk golfing musician Dalton Mauldin sang his own walkup song all accounts to just a taste of the content we pumped out this past week. With the offseason slower season roaring on, bringing us closer to the Banana Ball World Tour which kicks off in March of 2022, it’s a great time for another Sunday Stadium Spotlight (I would love to get “Sunday” into the story title too just for the alliteration but I think things get a little too crazy up there at that point). This week’s lucky winner: The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches, West Palm Beach, Florida. Stop number four.
The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches is the newest (and snazziest) stadium on the Banana Ball World Tour, with construction just barely being completed in time for spring training in 2017. Ground broke on the ballpark in November of 2015, and construction was sped up so that it could be ready for pitchers and catchers just 16 months later. The job still wasn’t complete though, with the new tenants, the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, having to play their first three spring training games on the road. On February, 28th of 2017 both teams got to share the field, with the Nationals getting to be the home team in the stadium’s grand opening.
Quick recap of the first baseball game played there:
1st Inning – Jeremy Guthrie struck out Marwin Gonzalez in the first at-bat.
Daniel Murphy doubled for the first hit, and Bryce Harper doubled, driving Murphy in for the first run scored.
4th inning – Carlos Beltran hit the first home run, and then Derek Norris hit the first ever Nationals home run.
Bottom of the 9th inning, 2 outs – Michael A. Taylor blasts a solo home run for a Nationals 4-3 walk-off win.
Pretty good ballgame to kickoff a stadium’s existence, with some serious names engraved in history!
It’s also safe to say The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches has treated the Astros and Nationals well. Both teams have gotten their first World Series wins in franchise history since the stadium’s completion, with Houston winning that first year in 2017 and the Nats taking down their spring training partner in the 2019 fall classic.
Our Lewis and Clark of the Banana Ball World Tour, Bill LeRoy and Kyle Luigs, (does that make Jesse Cole Sacagawea?), were both blown away by the stadium and its surrounding facilities.
“The shear size of the complex blew me away,” Kyle told me. ” There’s like a football field length of indoor batting cages, there’s the main field that’s incredibly nice, and then like four more immaculate fields that just don’t have all the bells and whistles of the main one.”
Kyle’s not exaggerating either, he’s actually underselling the bells and whistles. For each team separately, the complex boasts two major-league-size practice fields, four-minor-league-size practice fields, an agility field, a half field, batting cages, and pitching mounds.
This is part of what makes the World Tour so exciting for me as a baseball junkie, is the incredible differences each of these stadiums and their surroundings hold. We’ve got the first ballpark Jackie Robinson played a professional game at which is basically in the water in Daytona, a converted train depot right on the river in Montgomery, the oldest professional stadium still in use situated in a Birmingham neighborhood, and then on the other side of the coin here is one of the most pristine parks and surrounding amenities you can find in the continental United States. I’m excited for all of it, and somehow Kyle even has me dying just to get a feel for the dirt in West Palm Beach.
“It’s funny but we were amazed with how nice the infield dirt was,” Kyle said with a chuckle. “We were like bouncing on it. It looked like it was painted. It was just perfect. Then the ground’s crew let us fool around out there a little and Bill chopped a ball and left a mean divot and I thought we were dead but they were really nice about it. But it’s like you hit one ball wrong and you feel like you’ve ruined a masterpiece. The place is that incredible.”
You know the dirt really is that special when Bill couldn’t stop talking about it either, among other things.
“Baseball heaven. Those are the two best words to describe it,” Bill said. “Not a piece of grass is out of place. The dirt literally could not be more perfect, I mean I felt like I was floating out there on it.”
For Bill it was the powerful combination of the perfect field with a perfect environment that really blew him away.
“The overall vibes are impeccable,” Bill told me. “There are palm trees all over the place blowing on the wind, you’re on the beach, it’s just a place you really want to be you know.”
The Banana Ball World Tour will kick off on March 11th in Savannah, with stops in Daytona and Montgomery, before arriving in West Palm Beach on April 1st, (NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE, I REPEAT, NOT A JOKE). For more information, visit thesavannahbananas.com/worldtour.