The Complete Archive

One of the absolute coolest items of memorabilia from the tenure of The Spartanburg Sluggers at Duncan Park Stadium is a colorful handmade poster announcing “BaseBall,” a game between the Sluggers and the Greensboro Red Birds on “Monday Nite May 26th at Duncan Park.” The heavy stock on which the image is painted is dark green; the lettering is partly pink-orange-ish, partly yellow, and something like red for the name of the opposing team.

The original Friends of Duncan Park organization was formed in 2005 by a concerned group of citizens in response to the deterioration and potential loss of Duncan Park Stadium, the grand old lady just off Union Street which at that point had proudly stood for 80 years as a beloved local landmark.

Bob Wellman wasn’t the first manager of the Spartanburg Phillies. When the Phillies arrived in 1963, their first skipper was Lou Kahn (66W-58L), followed the next year by Dick Teed (47-80) and by Moose Johnson in 1965 (55-67). Wellman arrived in 1966, his 11th year as a Minor League manager after having played for 15 years in Minor League Baseball and parts of 2 seasons—1948 and 1950—for the Philadelphia Athletics in the Big Time.

And was he even Bob Branson? Newspaper accounts from the 1930s and ‘40s spell his surname variously as Branson, Brunson, and Brinson, and there is a better than even chance that there are other spellings out there that I have not encountered. Such is the ill-informed fate of many former Negro League and independent Black semipro ballplayers, and that is who Bob Branson—and yes, it is in fact Branson—was.

Black baseball was a prominent feature of the history of Duncan Park Stadium from its very beginning. The stadium opened in the summer of 1926, and even then there had been a Black team called the Spartanburg Sluggers playing in the Hub City since at least August 8, 1911.

There’s much minutiae involved in a Minor League Baseball game that many fans never notice and most never think about. At Duncan Park Stadium one of its most important components was the cadre of ballpark employees that ensured the dependable operation of the facilities. Among these was a core group of local educators who supplemented their meager teacher salaries by working at the ballpark during their summer break and who were responsible as teachers for what one of them called “the scoreboard that was most grammatically correct” of any Minor League scoreboard.

One of the surprising but familiar games played early on at Duncan Park stadium was that between the New York Yankees and the Binghamton Triplets on April 14, 1937, during spring training. The Yankees had won the 1936 World Series and five different World Series titles since 1923, and their lineup featured Lou Gehrig, Joe Dimaggio, Bill Dickey, Tony Lazzeri, Lefty Grove, and Red Ruffing.

The Spartanburg Herald predicted a “Big Crowd.” Remembering the packed stands of the previous summer when more than 50,000 fans had attended the Little World Series of American Legion Baseball in the same venue, most locals agreed. The New York Yankees were coming to town, and as a bonus their Minor League team the Binghamton Triplets was going to train in the Hub City during March and April.

The grand old lady known as Duncan Park stadium has endured a long chronology of celebrations and disasters, surprises and disappointments, outrages and tributes, heroes and villains, champions and also-rans since her gates were first opened and her turnstiles began to spin. Current residents of Spartanburg, South Carolina, know some of these, but no one today knows them all.