Hello Loyal Readers,

Michigan Radio just finished its fund-drive, so no audio today, sports fans.

Hope you enjoy this piece — even if you have to read it.

-John

 

If you think the divorce rate among U.S. couples is high, check out the recent rash of break-ups between major league baseball teams and their spring training sites.

Almost all of the major league baseball’s 30 teams have moved their spring training camps in the past three decades, and fully half of them now play in Arizona.  Stay-at-home stalwarts like the Cincinnati Reds trained in Tampa for 52 years before moving to Plant City in 1988, then to Sarasota a decade later, then finally to Goodyear, Arizona, in 2009.  Even the Los Angeles Dodgers, who created Dodgertown 62 years ago in Vero Beach to provide a safe haven for Jackie Robinson and other black players, also bolted for Arizona three years ago.

Baseball teams have been city-swapping their spring training sites like swingers in a – well, a bad movie about swingers, I guess.

In this permissive environment of town-swapping, the Tigers stand as a pillar of fidelity.  Except for three years during World War II, when they trained in Evansville, IN, the Tigers have been coming down to Lakeland every year since 1934.  That’s a total of 76 seasons, by far the longest marriage in the majors.

But why Lakeland?  Compared to tourist magnets like Tampa Bay, Sarasota and Ft. Lauderdale, Lakeland is a relatively small, inland town with few tourist attractions — hardly the most glamorous date at the Spring Training prom

But as many divorced couples know, looks don’t last.  Lakeland’s attributes may not be immediately obvious, but they have proven more valuable in the long run.  Lakeland has always given the Tigers everything they’ve asked for, often anticipating the teams’ needs without being asked.  The people of Lakeland have showered the organization with appreciation at every turn, including an annual barbeque they put on in the Tigers’ honor.  It should be pointed out that a mere “barbeque” done Lakeland style feeds over 1000 people and costs more than $40,000.

The rock-solid bond between the Tigers and their winter hosts is a direct result of the close relationship between former Tigers’ president Jim Campbell and Joker Marchant, who served officially as the director of Lakeland’s park and recreation department for 35 years, and unofficially as the “Boss Hog” of this city, getting things done that no one else would dare.

They’re both gone now, but the bond they created between the Tigers and this town is still thriving today.

LAKELAND GROWS ON YOU

Major league baseball teams started migrating to Florida during the Roaring Twenties, when a St. Petersburg businessman named Al Lang convinced some of his friends to bring their teams down to Florida for pre-season practice.  Before finally settling on Lakeland once and for all, the Tigers practiced in nine states and 14 cities,  including such far flung sites as Shreveport, San Antonio and Sacramento.

Lakeland’s early economy was built on railroad tracks, strawberry fields and seedless grapefruit.  When the Tigers arrived in 1934, Lakeland only had about 20,000 people, and not much to do.  For decades, that’s how things stayed.

Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell started visiting Lakeland in 1941.  “When we first started coming here the county was dry, so you didn’t have many good restaurants,” he told me  “The Elks Club was allowed to serve whiskey, and therefore was very popular.  Nothing happened here but morning, noon and night — and sometimes they skipped one of those.”

Lakeland still may not be on the travel agents’ short list of tourist destinations, but it’s population has grown the past two decades.  And it’s good enough for former Tiger stars Lou Whitaker and Chet Lemon to make their permanent homes here, along with approximately 12,000 other former Michiganders.

As one transplant said, “Lakeland grows on you.”

THE GRASS REALLY IS GREENER

As for the Tigers, they were smitten with Lakeland from the start.  They’ve never cared much about the number of restaurants or tourist attractions; they’ve only wanted what’s best for their baseball team.

Lakeland sits a half-an-hour from the Gulf of Mexico and an hour from the Atlantic, but right in the middle of the baseball action.  Tourists may love Ft. Lauderdale, but baseball players don’t, because it used to be the longest bus ride of the spring season.

By far the most important consideration for a major league club, however, is the quality of the facilities.  On that score, Lakeland has always ranked among the best in baseball — maybe the very best.

Tigertown, the Tigers minor league training complex, was up and running by 1953, followed by Joker Marchant stadium just a few yards away in 1966.  The Tigers were the first organization to combine the minor and major league facilities, a bold move at the time.  Most teams were reluctant to follow because there was less movement between the major and minor league rosters then, and also because the big league players preferred training separately.

The club and the city didn’t stop there, building a minor league clubhouse, indoor batting cages, a state-of-the-art weight room, a recreation building, a 190-room dormitory, administration building and cafeteria.  Most of the in the past seven years,

The facilities are impressive, but Lakeland’s support is more so.  It’s the Lakeland taxpayers, not the Tigers, who own the elaborate Tigertown facilities.  Lakeland devotes about 15-percent of its annual parks and recreation budget just to maintain the Tiger camp.  The city puts about ten-percent of their parks workers on Tigertown detail during spring training, and keeps half of them there after the Tigers migrate north.

That’s why, when the Tigers’ minor league director needs a couple bulletin boards hung on his office wall, it’s two guys from the parks department who come in and do the work.  It’s also why, just seconds after a half-dozen Tigers finish a twenty-minute bunting drill, two other city workers have already made the basepaths as smooth as felt on a pool table, as if no one had played there.

Because of the Lakeland staff’s excellent work, the Tigers are one of the few major league teams that can afford to leave their whole grounds crew back home.

The facilities, they say, are the best in baseball.

IT’S ABOUT TWO PEOPLE

For as much as the people of Lakeland give the Tigers, they get quite a bit back.  Their $500,000 annual investment is more than matched by an estimated $19 million the Tigers and their fans pump back into the local economy each year.

“It’s really pretty easy to explain,” says Bill Tinsley, who worked for Joker Marchant for two decades before succeeding his former boss.  “It’s about two very stable organizations: the Tigers and the Lakeland Parks department.  And it’s about two unusual people: Jim Campbell and Joker Marchant.”

Tiger fans will remember Jim Campbell, but probably know Joker Marchant only for the stadium named in his honor.  He was born Marcus Thigpen Marchant in tiny Phoenix City, Alabama in 1908, and accepted a football scholarship to Lakeland’s Florida Southern College, back when that school had a football team.  He stayed on to become the director of parks and recreation for 31 years, including the years Jim Campbell worked for the Tigers.

Among Marchant’s old friends, estimates of his height range from 5-7 to 6-0.  When pressed, most conclude that he was probably a small guy who had an aura of bigness about him, especially since he wore a big white Stetson wherever he went.  Marchant had a taut body, leathery skin and a deep Southern drawl.  He always drove a pick-up truck, never a sedan, and kept working until his body just couldn’t do it anymore.

His only indulgence was leaving work every day at 5 p.m. to go home and watch re-runs of “Gunsmoke.”  Then he’d hop back in his pick-up truck and work some more.

“Joker knew everybody and everybody knew him,” Harwell said.  “He didn’t stand on ceremony.  He got things done.”

And he wasn’t about to let petty little things like politicians, rules or budgets get in his way.

“He always figured it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Tinsley said. “If we needed something, he’d go out and buy it, then try to figure out how to pay for it.

“A few decades ago he installed our first playground equipment, despite not having any money in the budget for it.  Then he went to the commission and said, ‘We need to pay $2500 for playground equipment.  Now, we don’t have to keep it — but I just drove by that playground on the way to this meeting and saw 50 kids playing on it, and I don’t want to be the one tell those kids we gotta send it back.'”

“Of course, they paid for it,” Tinsley said, chuckling at the memory.  “Joker was a tough guy to supervise, but a great guy to work for. He never asked us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, and he would never, ever, let you down.  Joker Marchant’s word was his bond, and Campbell was the same way.  Joker had more pull than any elected official in town.”

As a result, Marchant could open his department’s books for the Tigers — a practice the city follows to this day — and not worry about his superiors’ disapproval.  This way Campbell could work directly with Marchant, instead of going through a bunch of political committees, and still be confident whatever they decided would be carried out.

“You want to know how they made Tigertown?” Tinsley asked.  “Campbell and Joker walked out to the middle of a field, drove a stake in the ground and said, ‘Here’s Tigertown.’  And that was that.”

These two men, as different on the surface as they could be, shared a deep devotion to their work, a penchant for details and the ability to judge someone’s character in a five minute meeting.  Despite their differences, they both saw in the other a kindred spirit.

“We had a minor-league pitcher in the mid-80’s,” the Tigers’ former director of minor league operations Dave Miller recalled, “and he came to spring training with a boa constrictor, a huge one.  I went to Joker and said, ‘What’re we going to do with this?’  He said, ‘We have an extra room in the cafeteria, so let’s put him in there.’

“Campbell hears about this, of course, and he’s hotter’n a firecracker.  He’s givin’ me the business up one side and down the other, every expletive in the book and he even threatens to fire me.  Finally I said, sort of meekly, ‘Joker said it was ok.'”  At that, Campbell stared at Miller, bulged his eyes, pursed his lips and simply walked away.  “That’s how close those two were.”

“My best memory of those two guys is just them eating breakfast together every morning in the old cafeteria, pretty happy with the lives they had lead,” Tinsley says.  “Here was a guy from big city Ohio and the other from small town Alabama, but they had bonded more closely than any two other guys I’d seen.”

Almost as close as the devoted couple they left behind: Lakeland and the Tigers.

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