The World Baseball Classic gets underway Tuesday with exhibition games across both the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues; pool play begins later this week, running alongside spring training.
Baseball has a long history in Arizona — going beyond the Cactus League and the Arizona Diamondbacks. And, a new museum in Mesa aims to tell those stories.
The Arizona Baseball Museum is housed in the auditorium of the old Lehi School, which was built in 1939 as a WPA project; it also served as a community bomb shelter.
The Show spoke Susan Ricci there; she’s the executive director of the Mesa Historical Museum and Arizona Baseball Museum.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Why a baseball museum and why here?
SUSAN RICCI: First of all, the Mesa Historical Museum being housed in Mesa, and we have the A's and the Cubs, and this is the heart of the Cactus League, and Dwight Patterson and bringing the Cubs to Arizona and keeping them here. So a lot of baseball history here in Mesa, specific.
The other thing is that we used to have a baseball exhibit, a baseball presence for quite a few years. And for whatever reason, change of management and different directors came and went. And during that period, that transition period, baseball just fell by the wayside.
So, I came on six years ago, and I'm from the East Coast, so I grew up with the Mets and the Yankees. And I used to play softball in school, and I was a huge baseball fan. And my board chair at the time was also a big baseball fan. And her and I got to talking like, what happened to baseball? Why isn't it at our museum anymore? Let's bring it back.
BRODIE: I think for a lot of people, when they think about baseball in the Valley, obviously they think about the Diamondbacks, they think about the Cactus League. Maybe they think about, you know, stories they've heard about baseball being played in Japanese internment camps during World War II. But just looking around here, there's a lot more to it than that.
RICCI: Yes, we made a purposeful decision to call ourselves the Arizona Baseball Museum, because we wanted to tell stories about baseball throughout Arizona. And that means talking about the barnstorming days. That means talking about baseball being played out on the frontier and in the mining camps, in the mining towns. That was huge for baseball there, because they were looking for a pastime, something to do during their off time.
So there are so many stories. Our special exhibit that will rotate is "Diversity in Baseball." Right now, as you said, we have Japanese internment baseball. And then next year, we're working on an exhibit on Native Americans in baseball.
BRODIE: All right, so you alluded to this but, you know, I'm looking at an exhibit right here, a big poster board. Baseball seems like it was fairly popular even before Arizona was a state.
RICCI: It was. And, again, it goes back to the time on the frontier. I researched old newspaper articles, and they're so much fun to look back at these old articles in the late 1880s, 1890s, talking about baseball being played at the fort. Baseball just being played out there because they received instructions that, you know, keep physically fit. You're in the military, you have to keep physically fit. And what else would you do? I mean, you're out there. This is your, this is where you've been assigned your post. And not a lot to do, I would imagine, not allowed to do out there.
So, they just started playing baseball because baseball was starting to become popular in the U.S. anyway, and so eventually it made its way out here, and that's how the game started getting around Arizona.
BRODIE: So based on your research and what you found in putting these together do you have a sense of when baseball really became pretty popular here in Arizona?
RICCI: I don't know if you can put a date on when it became popular. Because don't forget, too, we didn't have a huge population. So I think as the population grew, the popularity of baseball grew with it. We have a lot of vintage photos from Mesa teams, and that was starting in like 1915, 1920s.
But it looked like a lot of local businesses sponsored teams. So behind me you can see we just found this in our collection. Didn't even know we had it. It's an O.S. Stapley baseball jersey and uniform. And it was because the O.S. Stapley store, which was in downtown Mesa, sponsored a team.
And then we have another, a sweatshirt which was kind of the uniform then. It looks like it was hand painted, and it says Oasis Lunch on it. And I'm sure that's not the name of the team, but that was the name of the business that sponsored them. So I think as these businesses root here in Mesa, baseball was just second nature to sponsor a team, and that was their recreation.
BRODIE: So are there particular artifacts in here — I know it's like asking a parent to pick their favorite child. But are there particular artifacts in here that you're extremely excited about?
RICCI: OK, I am very excited because, as I said, growing up on the East Coast and being a Yankee fan. ...
BRODIE: I'm also a Yankee fan. So let's see it.
RICCI: Oh, OK. So being a Yankee fan, one of the thrills is that Joe DiMaggio — some baseball fans know this — but maybe not everybody knows it. But in his last season, the Yankees and the Giants swapped spring training sites. So Joe DiMaggio was actually here in Arizona in 1951. And that had to have been such a thrill for people here in Arizona to see him play. And that was his last season.
And so we have some memorabilia, as you may or may not know. The Buckhorn Baths, very famous iconic landmark here in Mesa. And they were famous for their hot spring and for hosting tons of baseball players during the '40s and the '50s — and even in the '60s, most specifically Giants and Cubs. But other players stayed.
So we have this really cool picture of Joe DiMaggio holding this big roasted, barbecue meat because the Buckhorn had barbecues, community barbecues every year. And somehow Joe DiMaggio got in with Ted and Alice Sliger. And we also found this treasure trove of autograph baseballs. And if you look in the case, we have Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle. How and why they ended up at the Buckhorn, I can't tell you. But that was a great find.
And then this other baseball that I love, I was looking at it and it's signed Ed Ford, but it was Whitey Ford, whose real name was Edward Ford. So we have Whitey Ford's baseball.
And so these are real treasures for me personally. But we have others like that. We found a Ted Williams ball when he was, after he was done playing. And we also found Ty Cobb in his later years. So we have some real great pieces of memorabilia here.
BRODIE: And that really spans the generations, right? I mean, Ty Cobb who played in the early part of the 20th century, to DiMaggio who is sort of World War II era, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra after. I see it looks like a Rick Monday jersey over there. I know you have some more recent stuff with the Diamondbacks over here. Really, sort of, spans the generations.
RICCI: Yeah, we have a mixture. We have ... recent ball players and, and old time baseball players because our fan base that our visitors, it's a mix. Right? So we want to have a little bit of everything.
BRODIE: So obviously the Diamondbacks are the team here. Now can we look at some of the stuff you have relative to them?
RICCI: Absolutely. One of our favorite things is we have — It was a custom made world champion 2001 Diamondbacks cape worn by Baxter, the mascot —
BRODIE: That is very sequined.
RICCI: It's very blingy. And it was made by this wonderful lady, Jenny McKenzie, and it was worn in celebration at the ballpark. And so we were able to borrow this and keep this on display. This is definitely a showpiece. Everybody loves talking about it. I can tell you it is extremely heavy. If people could put it on, it's quite, quite heavy.
We also have a Diamondbacks World Series ring on loan from us from Bobby Freeman. If you ever go out to the ballpark and you hear the organ music, he's the guy behind the keyboard. We did an exhibit on him and he has also joined our board of directors.
BRODIE: What do you hope that visitors to this museum take away from it?
RICCI: What I really loved when I observed some people looking around I want them to say I didn't know that that's the best thing you can get as a director of a museum whether it's history museum or the baseball museum. You want people to leave thinking to themselves, that was cool or I can't wait to tell so and so about this place.
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