Sports & Entertainment: Baseball

On March 17, 1920, Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees played the Cincinnati Reds on the the baseball diamond of the Royal Poinciana Hotel. The game led to the Yankees’ consideration of Palm Beach for a five-year spring training contract, but the team chose St. Petersburg, FL instead.

Municipal Field, opened in 1924 in West Palm Beach, was called Wright Field by the time the St. Louis Browns trained there from 1928 to 1936. Although the Browns only had two winning seasons during those years, famous players visited occasionally. Black patrons were required to enter by a separate gate and sit in a small section in the right-field corner. Wright Field, later renamed Connie Mack Field, became the parking garage for the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

In the 1920s, Society Ball was organized in Palm Beach by Lawrence C. Fuller of Philadelphia and his friends, where donations were collected during games, which by the 1930s went exclusively to the Palm Beach Police retirement fund. The teams in 1930 were named the New York Police, wearing police uniforms, and the Philadelphia Convicts, who wore prison attire.

The players included Woolworth Donahue, Edward F. Hutton, Walter P. Chrysler, and a New York judge and police commissioner.

During the 1920s and ‘30s, The Breakers hotel and the Royal Poinciana (until it closed) continued their tradition of hiring baseball players from the Negro Leagues to entertain their guests. The players also worked in the hotels as waiters and busboys. Several times a week, the two teams would play well-attended games on the diamond at County Road and what is now Royal Poinciana Way.