Baseball City, Davenport, Fla.

Baseball City

Exterior of Baseball City Stadium, Aug-2001.

A view of the seating bowl two hours before a Gulf Coast League game.

Quick Facts:

Location: US 27 just south of I-4, north of Davenport, Fla.
Opened: 1988
Demolished: 2003
Home teams: Spring training, Kansas City Royals (1988-2002); Baseball City Royals, Florida State League (1988-92); Gulf Coast League Royals (2001-02)
Capacity: 8,000

Baseball City was built in the late 1980s both as a spring training complex and to host various amateur tournaments. It was part of a larger complex known as Boardwalk and Baseball that had replaced a previous attraction, Circus World, on the same site. Boardwalk and Baseball, which retained a lot of the amusement rides of its predecessor, was unable to gain footing due to the presence of Disney World and the poor reputation that Circus World had, and as a result the complex, with the exception of this stadium and a few adjacent ball fields, closed in early 1990.

By 2001, much of the traffic that used to frequent Baseball City had moved several miles up I-4, to Disney’s Wide World of Sports, a part of Walt Disney World. The Florida State League team here was sold prior to the 1993 season and relocated to Daytona Beach. The Kansas City Royals continued to hold spring training here until 2002, but then they relocated to a new complex in Arizona for 2003. By the fall of 2003, the complex was being bulldozed for yet another shopping mall.

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