2026 will be a banner year for Duncan Park Stadium!

Beginning this week the Spartanburg County Headquarters Library will host “100 Years of Duncan Park Stadium,” a new exhibition curated by Brad Steinecke, the Assistant Director of Local History in the Kennedy Room. This 19-panel display features a couple of cases containing memorabilia and ephemera from the Library’s archive of items commemorating the history of this grand old stadium. The exhibition is located on the lower level of the Library in the AT&T Exhibition Gallery and will be on display January 20—March 4, 2026.

The Library’s display is prelude to the City’s celebration this summer of the 100th anniversary of the construction of Duncan Park Stadium. Opening to fans on July 8, 1926, the old ballpark is today one of the dozen oldest stadiums in the country. Over the years it has hosted Minor League, Negro League, semipro and independent league, American Legion, college, and high school teams. Maintained now by the City of Spartanburg and Spartanburg County School District Seven, it remains home to American Legion Post 28, Spartanburg High School, and Palmetto League baseball.

To celebrate the stadium’s centennial, the Friends of Duncan Park is working with the City, School District Seven, Post 28, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, the Hub City Spartanburgers, and other local groups to sponsor a variety of anniversary events. These will include a unique program of activities by the Spartanburgers, a Texas Rangers affiliate that exhibits a special appreciation for local baseball history under General Manager Tyson Jeffers and Gameday Promotions and Programming Manager Wyatt Sutton.

For news of upcoming Duncan Park Centennial events, follow the posts of BeautifulDuncanPark.com and the websites of the Spartanburgers (https://www.facebook.com/hubcityspartanburgers/), the Friends of Duncan Park (https://duncanparksc.org/about), the City of Spartanburg (https://www.cityofspartanburg.org/), Spartanburg County School District Seven (www.spartanburg7.org), Spartanburg County Public Libraries (https://www.spartanburglibraries.org/), and local media.

From February 27th through March 2nd Duncan Park Stadium will be one of four sites hosting the 2026 Steve Sanders Preseason High School Baseball Tournament. The tournament is a popular annual event which draws teams, parents, and baseball fans from across Spartanburg County and beyond. The four host sites will be Spartanburg High School at Duncan Park (the Bill Metcalf Bracket), Boiling Springs High School (the Eddie Cole Bracket), Chesnee Park (the Dean Jones Bracket), and Byrnes High School (the Jim Everhart Bracket).

The Spartanburg County Preseason Tournament began in 1983 as the countywide Jim Everhart Tournament, featuring the 9 high school teams in Spartanburg County. In 1996 the tournament was renamed in Honor of Steve Sanders, the long time Spartanburg Herald Journal sports writer. The 2026 tournament includes 14 teams: 6 public high schools from Spartanburg County, 7 from neighboring counties, and St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville.

For additional information about site locations, bracket schedules, and participating teams, contact Ben Waddle, Broome High School Baseball Coach, at bwaddle@spartanburg3.org. A special feature of this year’s tournament is that I will appear at the Duncan Park site to talk with fans about the history of the old stadium and to sign copies of my book about the ballpark, Duncan Park: Stories of a Classic American Ballpark, published by the Hub City Press in 2023, which will be available for purchase. The book was a winner of the SABR Research Award.

A vision for the Future of Duncan Park Stadium. Ever since the closing of Duncan Park Stadium amid rumors of its impending destruction in 2006, various groups and organizations have explored not only the preservation of the ballpark but also the creation of a comprehensive plan for the continuing utilization of the facility as a center of community pride and an embodiment of the City’s regard for its past history and that of its neighborhoods and the people who live in them.

The agreement between the City and School District Seven in 2008 and subsequent repairs and improvements to the locker rooms, storage, and dugouts helped to allay citizens’ concerns somewhat, as did the brief tenure of the Coastal Plain League Spartanburgers. New concerns arose with the announcement that the Class A Hub City Spartanburgers, an affiliate of the Texas Rangers, would arrive in 2025 and play in Fifth Third Park, a spanking new, state-of-the-art stadium downtown. What would happen now to Duncan Park?

Fortunately the new Spartanburgers have proven to be good stewards of Spartanburg’s baseball history and supporters of efforts to stabilize the  structure, utilization, and fiscal base of its historic predecessor. At the same time a newly revitalized Friends of Duncan Park has emerged to spearhead efforts to create a future for Duncan Park that is worthy of its legacy.

During the last three or four years the Friends has gone about its business in a professional and thoughtful way. Residents of Spartanburg have witnessed the fruits of this process in volunteers’ clean-up of storm damage, the removal of non-indigenous invasive plant species, support for the Harry Dallara Foundation’s renovation of the two youth ballfields, the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the opening of the park, the re-opening of the lake and construction of a new dock for fishing and kayaking, the paving of walking and bike paths, and the creation of popular pickleball courts.

The Friends organization has also reached out to leaders of community efforts to restore and stabilize other old ballparks around the country. Among these have been Rickwood Field in Birmingham—the oldest professional stadium in the country—Hamtramck Field in Detroit; Hinchcliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey; and others. In extended ZOOM meetings and conference calls members of Friends committees have talked with Gerald Watkins, the President and Executive Director of The Friends of Rickwood; Gary Gillette, The Founder and Chair of Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium; and Dr. Layton Revel, the Founder and Director of The Center for Negro League Baseball Research in Texas and Co-Founder of the Negro Southern League Museum in Birmingham.

Dr. Revel has lent a significant part of his collection of Negro League memorabilia, including 1700+ baseballs signed by Negro League Players, for display at the Negro Southern League Museum. He has also consulted on the construction of a number of ballpark museums, and the Friends of Duncan Park is actively working to bring him to Spartanburg this spring to consult on long term plans for the future of Duncan Park Stadium. More about these promising undertakings will appear in future posts of this blog.