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. Some have been casually forgotten and some have been deliberately swept under the rug, and we will visit many of these in future posts to this blog.

To start this process of commemoration, however, we need to establish a basic timeline, a who’s-who-and-when-were-they which will provide a context for what follows and a relative calendar of which teams and personalities took the field in what order. Once we have established this basic overview, we can begin to flesh it out and fill in our scorecard.

Predecessors
Baseball of course was played in Spartanburg before Duncan Park stadium was built in 1926. No doubt some veterans of the Civil War who returned to the city after their service was concluded brought a knowledge of the game home with them. There was a baseball diamond at Wofford Park on the campus where Major Duncan’s father had taught. There was another at the Fairgrounds on Howard Street, and the institution which became Spartanburg High School had a team. Ad hoc fields surely sprang up in pastures around the county, and vacant lots and dusty streets within the city limits were also prime locations. As Major League Baseball became America’s pastime and the Daily Herald and Spartanburg Journal and Carolina Spartan began to carry game summaries and box scores, interest expanded.

Quasi-professional baseball was played from early in the twentieth century. The SALLY League Pioneers (“Sally” for “South Atlantic League”) played here in 1919-1921, and a team called The Spartans, also in the SALLY League, played in the city from 1922. Newt Whitmire’s semipro Black team The Sluggers scheduled games as early as 1911. During these years the teams played at Wofford, at the Fairgrounds, and elsewhere, sometimes even on textile mill fields against mill employees who were hired for their baseball skills in the popular and highly competitive Textile Leagues.

Tenants of Beautiful Duncan Park
The official home teams of historic Duncan Park stadium, in roughly chronological and occasionally overlapping order, were the following:

• The Spartanburg Spartans, 1926-1940. The Spartans were a semipro team during most of their existence, but they became an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians near the end. Their best known player, also their manager, was the popular Mike Kelly, but the Spartans also fielded some forty future Major Leaguers, including Hal Wagner, twice an All-Star; Debs Garms, the 1940 National League batting champion; and Joe Guyon,who grew up on the White Earth Indian Reservation, was the Clemson College baseball coach from 1828 to 1931, and is also a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
• The Spartanburg Sluggers, 1926-1961 or thereabout. The Sluggers, like many similar Black teams in North and South Carolina and throughout the South, were a semipro/barnstorming/exhibition team that competed against other southern teams and occasionally Negro League professional teams and fellow barnstormers like Jackie Robinson’s All-Stars. Owned by Big Newt and his son Little Newt Whitmire, their best player was their legendary pitcher, “Lefty” Bob Branson.
• American Legion Post 28, 1933-today. Founded by Athletic Director Mike Burgin and Coach Sarge Hughes, the Legion team is the longest-tenured of all teams that have played at Duncan Park. Their former players include MLB veterans Wayne and his son Steven Tolleson; Terry Hughes, drafted by the Chicago Cubs; and Textile League greats like Ty Wood.
• The Spartanburg Peaches, 1946-1955. Owned by local businessmen R. E. Littlejohn and G. Leo Hughes, the Peaches were a Minor League affiliate of the St. Louis Browns and the Cleveland Indians and boasted fabled right fielder Rocky Colavito as a popular mainstay. Other prominent Peaches were player/manager Kerby Farrell, infielder Billy Moran, and pitchers Al Aber and Spud Chandler. 
• The Spartanburg Phillies, 1963-1994. The Phillies graduated more than 150 future MLB players, including HOFers Ryne Sandberg and Scott Rolen. Renowned NBA executive Pat Williams got his start as GM of the Phillies, and the 1966 Phillies have been named one of the 100 greatest Minor League teams of all time. MLB players who were Spartanburg Phillies include Larry Bowa, Denny Doyle, Andre Thornton, Ozzie Virgil, Andy Ashby, Mike Maddux, and Columbia, SC, native Jerry Martin.
• University of South Carolina Spartanburg/Upstate Rifles/Spartans, 1991-93 and 1995-2003. The Spartans left when their own modern stadium was completed.
• The Spartanburg Alley Cats, 1995. One of four teams in the ill-fated Atlantic Coast League, the Alley Cats’ season lasted just fifteen games.
• The Wofford College Terriers, 1996-2003. The Southern Conference Terriers departed when their on-campus Russell C. King Field was constructed.
• The Spartanburg Crickets, 2001-2005. Members of the Southern Collegiate Baseball League, the Crickets were owned by local businessman Steve Cunningham.
• The Spartanburg Stingers, 2003-2006. Another collegiate wooden bat league team, the Stingers also migrated elsewhere early in the 21st century, in their case out to the USC Spartanburg stadium.
• The Spartanburg High School Vikings, 2008-current. Spartanburg County School District Seven’s partnership with the City of Spartanburg resulted in the salvation of Duncan Park stadium and its subsequent restoration and renovation.
• The Spartanburgers, 2021. Playing in the Coastal Plain League, the same league as the Savannah Bananas and the Macon Bacon, the ‘Burgers could not make a go of it in a stadium whose grandstand was still mostly closed to the public.

Youth teams have played on the smaller fields at Duncan Park, and at times professional teams like the New York Yankees have played at the senior field on their way back home from Spring Training. Negro League teams like the Homestead Grays and Philadelphia Stars have also barnstormed here. Future Beautiful Duncan Park blog posts will flesh out the stories of these teams and add anecdotes, rumors, tall tales, fables, and cock-and-bull yarns associated with each.