In 1921, a man named Dr. Marshall Terry — along with his wife Tootie McGregor-Terry — donated several acres of land east of downtown Fort Myers to Lee County with the stipulation that “all property shall be used as a park and public property.”
The manager and owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as “Connie Mack,” provided specifications and in 1923 the county began constructing what was called — and is still called today — Terry Park.
After two years of negotiations between Mack and a committee led by the owner of the Fort Myers Royal Palm Pharmacy, Richard Richards Sr., the Athletics began playing their spring training games in Fort Myers starting in 1925.
The Athletics spring trained at Terry Park until 1936 and won two World Series during that stretch, in 1929 and 1930. And, over the next five decades, the Cleveland Indians, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Kansas City Royals used the ballpark to play their pre-season exhibition games. The Royals left Terry Park in 1987.
But baseball remains a key ingredient of Fort Myers and Southwest Florida’s culture and economy. The Minnesota Twins moved their Spring Training here in 1991 and the Boston Red Sox started spring training here in 1993.
We recently took the show on the road to the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in downtown Fort Myers because they were marking the 100th anniversary of professional baseball in the City of Palms. They have an exhibit up in the museum there called “Fanatics: Thomas Edison, Connie Mack and Spring Training in Fort Myers” and on Feb. 20 Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson officially proclaimed that day to be “Spring Training Day in Fort Myers.”
Guests:
Kelly Schultz is a longtime staff member at the Edison/Ford Estates who also works for the Red Sox
Holly Shaffer is a longtime staff member at the Edison/Ford Estates and an “absolutely fanatical baseball historian”
Glenn Miller is a retired sports journalist and now adjunct journalism professor at Florida Gulf Coast University
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