The Complete Archive

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.

A little after one o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, July 28, 1926, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis rose in the banquet hall of the Cleveland Hotel to address the most influential citizens of the small town of Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Hub City of the Piedmont, well known as a railway hub and, increasingly, as one of the busiest textile mill centers in the United States.

Duncan Park stadium was constructed in 1926 and is listed on the U. S. Park Service's National Register of Historic Places. It is situated on land donated to the City of Spartanburg, South Carolina, by the family of Major David R. Duncan in 1923.