These days on St. Patrick’s Day, Hot Springs is famous for its “World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” But on St. Patrick’s Day in 1918, the Spa City was famous for something much different — the home run that made baseball history, by one of the all-time greats, George Herman "Babe" Ruth.
Hot Springs hosted more than 300 major leaguers, including 137 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, for spring training between the late 1800s through the early 1940s. What initially attracted athletes to the city was the warm climate and the city’s thermal spring water, which supposedly cured a variety of ailments. Illegal gambling, bars, horse racing and other forms of adult entertainment also lured teams to the “Valley of the Vapors.”
Major league teams began holding spring training baseball games in Hot Springs in 1886, when businessman A.G. Spalding brought his Chicago White Stockings (now the Chicago Cubs) to the city to “boil out the winter,” according to The Sporting News. The White Stockings practiced on a hastily built field at what's now home to the Garland County Courthouse. When the White Stockings won the National League championship that year, several other clubs took note. As a result, more and more teams came to Hot Springs for spring training, and more fields were built, including Majestic Park and Whittington Park.
It was Whittington Park where the most baseball was played in Hot Springs. Built in 1894 and used until 1942, Whittington Park (later renamed Johnson Field) was the hub of spring training. Future hall of famers who played there include Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth. Today, Whittington Park is now the employee parking lot at a Weyerhaeuser Co. office.
On March 17, 1918, then Boston Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth was pitching in a game at Whittington Park, when the team needed someone to bat. Ruth wasn't considered much of a hitter, but walked up to home plate and launched the ball over the fence, out of the ballpark, across the street, over a wall, and into the farthest pond of the Arkansas Alligator Farm. The hit changed Ruth's career. He became known for being a power slugger and not just an average pitcher. Ruth went on to play for the New York Yankees and become arguably the most famous baseball player in history.
By all accounts, everyone knew that day that Ruth’s home run was special, but exactly how far Ruth’s home run traveled was unknown until 2011. Thanks to modern technology, it was determined the ball traveled about 573 feet.
The location of the Whittington Park home plate, where Ruth swatted his record-setting homer, was marked in the Weyerhaeuser parking lot. Eventually, as part of the Hot Spring Baseball Trail program, a marker was erected there too, as well as across the street at the alligator farm where the ball landed. And if you look behind the Whittington Park marker, pieces of the old concrete bleachers are still visible among the weeds and trees.
On Feb. 6, what would have been his 186th birthday, a bronze statue of Ruth was unveiled and dedicated at the main entrance to the city’s newly expanded Majestic Park baseball complex. Pennsylvania sculptor Chad Fisher created the statue, estimated to weigh 1,500 pounds. It's believed to be one of only three Ruth statues in existence, with the others at Camden Yards in Baltimore and Tokyo.
For a state that’s never been home to a major league team, it's amazing that Arkansas has played host not only to some of its most legendary players, but also to one of its most historic events.
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