OPINION

REX NELSON: The ballpark in August

I hope to be at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock tonight, in my usual seat behind home plate watching the Arkansas Travelers play baseball. It's late August, kids are back in school and the weeknight crowds are smaller at Dickey-Stephens than they were earlier in the summer.

It's at this time of year that I find myself at the ballpark even more often. Late August is when I realize that I haven't attended as many games as I had intended. It's when the clock begins ticking loudly toward the end of another season. It's when I admit that summer is winding down, my sons are back in college, the sun is setting earlier and my early September birthday is approaching, making me another year older.

The pace of the game gives one time to think about such things. Even though Dickey-Stephens isn't an old park, history hangs heavily here because the Travelers are such a historic franchise. The tradition of professional baseball in central Arkansas dates back more than 120 years, and the Travelers have played on only three fields during the decades. The Travelers are one of the few teams in professional sports in which the fans were able to buy ownership shares, and they were also the first professional team to be named after an entire state. That occurred in 1957 when the name was changed from the Little Rock Travelers to the Arkansas Travelers.

The Travelers also are among only a handful of minor league baseball teams to have a museum. That's because most minor league teams don't have the rich tradition of the Travelers. It's truly a franchise that's unique in the annals of professional sports. The Dickey-Stephens museum contains artifacts ranging from the team's 1901 charter into the Southern Association to all team photos from its years as an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals (1966-2000) and the Los Angeles Angels (2001-16). The Travelers are in their first year as an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners.

Visitors to the museum can learn about team officials, players and fans--Ray Winder, Judge William Kavanaugh, Bill Valentine, Jim Elder, Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Bunning, Travis Jackson, O.C. Otey and even superfan Walter "Hookslide" Bradshaw.

There are baseballs, game equipment, uniforms and photos of the team's first two homes--Kavanaugh Field and Ray Winder Field. Through the years, people have donated items ranging from Western Union telegrams to player contracts, baseball cards and game tickets. Considering the instability that infects so many other professional sports teams, it's amazing that for parts of three centuries this team has had just one nickname and played on only three fields.

The Travelers first played in the Southern League in 1895, competing against Atlanta, Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville, Evansville, Montgomery and New Orleans. The club posted a 25-47 record that season. After the Southern League folded, professional baseball was absent in Little Rock for five years. The Travelers returned in 1901 with the formation of the Southern Association and finished second, just one game behind Nashville. They finished second again in 1902.

The first championship didn't come until 1920 when the Travelers concluded the season with an 88-59 record. Their final season at Kava-naugh Field (located where Little Rock Central High School's Quigley-Cox Stadium now stands) was in 1931. The Travelers attracted 113,758 fans that year, their second-highest attendance since the 1920 title. Land near the Arkansas State Hospital was given to the Travelers by the city of Little Rock in 1932, and Travelers Field became the team's home. In 1966, the stadium was renamed for Winder, who had started as a ticket taker in 1915 and risen to the rank of general manager. Winder spent more than five decades with the team.

Winder had to use extreme tactics from time to time to keep professional baseball in Arkansas. After attracting fewer than 68,000 fans during a 77-game home schedule in 1958, the Travelers moved to Shreveport for the 1959 season. Winder continued to work for an Arkansas team, and the Little Rock club returned to the Southern Association in 1960 following the purchase of the New Orleans Pelicans.

Minor league baseball teams have become a hot commodity in recent years. It's not the big leagues, but it's big business with teams regularly being sold for millions of dollars. Thanks to a decision Winder made 57 years ago, fans of the Travelers don't have to worry about their club being sold and moved outside of Arkansas.

Winder formed the Arkansas Travelers Baseball Club Inc. in 1960 and led a public stock drive to buy the New Orleans franchise. Each share of stock in the Travelers was worth $5. The price of that stock has never changed, and all dividends go back to the club. There are more than 2,000 stockholders, and the Travelers don't accept public requests for stock ownership. In other words, it would be almost impossible for an outside entity to buy the team. In that sense, Winder knew exactly what he was doing.

The Southern Association was on its last legs in the early 1960s, however, and Winder had to scramble again. The Travelers were scheduled to play in the Class AAA American Association in 1963, but that league folded prior to the start of the season. Arkansas played instead in the Class AAA International League in 1963 and in the Class AAA Pacific Coast League in 1964-65. The move to the Class AA Texas League in 1966 brought stability. It's the league in which the Travelers still play.

------------v------------

Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial on 08/23/2017

Upcoming Events