| Marker Text |
West End Park, a baseball field with wooden grandstands, was an institution in Orange for nearly 80 years. The park was originally constructed to draw a professional baseball team to the city for spring training. Orange was the center of Orange County in the 1920s and underwent a shipbuilding boom during World War I, as the lumber mills were beginning to run out of native county timber. H.I. Lutcher Stark, a graduate of the University of Texas, formed the Orange Athletic Association to attract a professional baseball team. The St. Louis Cardinals took the field for their first practice on February 28, 1921. The practice was supposed to be private, but fans, young and old, came to catch a glimpse of some of the biggest names in baseball and hall of fame legends, such as Branch Rickey, Rogers Hornsby, Connie Mack and George “Specs” Toporcer. The first Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who is also in the Hall of Fame, visited the city and watched a game from the grandstands. Orange’s local businesses benefitted from the national attention brought on by the spring training camp and the Cardinals agreed to return for spring training in 1922. Though the cardinals did not return to Orange the following year, West End Park continued to be used for many years by local high schools, youth and adult baseball teams. The West Orange-cove Consolidated Independent School District, which owns the property, removed the last remaining dugouts and flattened the field in 2009. Even though it is no longer in use, the memories of thousands of orange locals that played on the same field as baseball legends remain. |
