There’s no slowing the steady march of progress, if that’s what this is, moving Utah’s green cathedral out of Salt Lake City and into a pasture of land in South Jordan.
The ballpark itself, of course, will not be jacked up and moved, just the Bees, the Triple-A team, affiliated with the Major League’s Los Angeles Angels, that plays in it. And amid all the grins and giggles on the faces of those who own the team, the ones making the decision to build a new, modern stadium in Daybreak, there’s also sadness, beyond the effects the team’s move will have on the neighborhood that appropriately is named for the ballpark.
If there’s room for sentimentality in the march, which centers more specifically on the increased gain of money, then we should have at it here, since baseball, and every other kind of ball, is really moneyball. And maybe there’s some degree of sentimentality, if not satisfaction, in realizing that, too.
It’s always been that way.
On the plus side, will the LHM Company build a new ballpark in the ‘burbs big enough or expandable enough for, say, a future Major League team? Makes you wonder.
Baseball of one sort or another has been played at the corner of 1300 South and West Temple in Salt Lake City since 1928, with more than a few bits of drama mixed in along the way, inconveniences and happenings such as an arson fire back in the ‘40s, a monumental win streak by the Salt Lake Trappers back in the ‘80s, a couple of rebuilt and renamed ballparks, from Community Park to Derks Field to Franklin Quest Field to Franklin Covey Field to Spring Mobile Ballpark to Smith’s Ballpark.
A new cathedral might improve upon what the parks have offered on the old city corner, what with advances in technology and comfort, but one thing is certain — it will not have the same spectacular views of Mount Olympus over the outfield berms and walls, and it will not have the memories.
Babe Ruth will not have stepped to the plate at the new ballpark, whatever it will be called, along with a slew of other baseball legends who participated in one sort of exhibition or another on the old grounds. The ghosts will remain in place, not head south.
It’s likely that nobody around here remembers those exhibitions, but perhaps they do remember watching the Bees, the Gulls, and Trappers play, and when the new Franklin Quest Field was built, baseball was brimming with new life on the corner at that time. Salt Lake’s Triple-A team, then called the Buzz, led the Pacific Coast League in attendance in that initial season, 1994, and in subsequent years, people so switched on by what many considered the best facility in all of minor league baseball. As time went by, attendance tailed off, even if the baseball enjoyment didn’t.
I remember the team’s then-owner, Joe Buzas, an imperfect man, a crusty, old SOB — he would have loved that designation — who was passionate about his game, bounding around the park at its launch, yelling out to fans and ushers and whoever was on hand. When he spotted a vendor, he barked, “Hey, how ya doin’?” and “Are you hollerin’ tonight? Ya gotta holler!”
As he paced around, he said: “Can you hear that? I like to hear the buzz of the fans, the talk, the sounds before a game. Look at the old guy over there, the one walking around with a cap on. An old guy with a cap. That makes me feel good.”
He saw a few idle ushers and security guards: “Do some work. C’mon, what the hell’s going on around here?”
When my father, who passed away in 2001, showed up with me at the park one day, Buzas personally took him on a tour of the new stadium, end to end, once informed that my dad had worked on the grounds crew at a former iteration of the park when he was a kid, a half-century earlier.
The Buzz, the Stingers, the Bees played a lot of ball in that space, as did all the dusty teams before them. Major League outfits showed up on occasion. And the fans who at first packed the new version of the place, but then dwindled off, enjoyed a brand of ball that lacked the flash and panache of the majors, but that was a slice of Americana, still.
It rarely seemed as though those fans cared much about whether the home team would win as much as they cared about absorbing baseball at a purer level, whatever that is. Was it any less pure when Mike Trout stopped by to do rehab work at the park? Probably not.
Many Utahns have memories of their own at that field. Sweet. Some of the reflections might not have been all that fantastic, having had their car broken into or struggled to find parking. But memories of baseball persist.
I remember the day my favorite Major League team, the Philadelphia Phillies, moved out of the old Connie Mack Stadium to a new home at the freshly built Veterans’ Stadium, one of those multi-purpose getups that baseball purists hated, but that was roomy, convenient, and contemporary.
Shortstop Larry Bowa looked around at the new place, and, in wonder, said it was like moving into a palace.
Maybe it was. But a lot of fans missed the old park, even though it was cramped and run-down and in a rough part of north Philly.
There’s still a place in baseball for quaintness and sentimentality, I guess.
That’s why so many modern stadiums are built to look like they were constructed in 1920. And new memories, sentimentalities will be found in them. But it takes time. I remember wanting to go back to the site where the old Connie Mack was (it was named Shibe Park before that, built in 1909). Much of it had burned down after it was abandoned. It was used as a junkyard for a short time before being demolished. Ultimately, there was a plaque placed commemorating the site. An evangelist church has since been built there.
I don’t know what will happen here in Salt Lake City at the corner of 13th and West Temple now. There are ideas being explored, subsequent plans by city officials will be drawn up. But whatever comes next, memories should be preserved. For the better part of 100 years, that corner was Utah baseball’s home, a place of worship, a verdant cathedral.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
