Augusta and Macon, Georgia; West Baden Springs, Indiana; and, most recently, Redondo Beach, California. But players and fans alike recalled the two sessions the team had spent in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1909 and 1910, with the most fondness.
Hot Springs was, well,
Hot Springs,
a resort town renowned not only for its forty restorative 147-degree mineral baths, which had earned it the nickname "the National Spa," but for everything that came with it—fine hotels, sumptuous restaurants, the splendor of the nearby Ouachita Mountains ... and casinos, dance halls, dogfights, painted ladies, quack doctors, and cures for the Hot Springs strain of "malaria" that the savvy recognized as venereal disease. Decades before Las Vegas was anything more than a spot on a map of the Nevada desert, Hot Springs, Arkansas, was the gambling and vice capital of the United States.
Corruption allowed it to happen as local officials gladly accepted bribes to look the other way. The result was an exciting yet violent place where, as Tim Murnane once noted, "shooting people was a regular and popular pastime with the best citizens." In March 1899, in fact, Jimmy McAleer had been in town for spring training and witnessed the infamous "Hot Springs Gunfight," when the police department and the county sheriff's department, each of which backed a different gambling faction, shot it out on the streets in one of the most notorious episodes in Arkansas history. McAleer told Murnane that when he left his hotel after the shootout, "he saw seven dead men laid out on the sidewalk."
As soon as McAleer took command he began to formalize his plans for the spring, securing time at one of several ballparks, making reservations at the Hotel Eastman, and lining up exhibition games with the other teams training in town. Although McAleer had not returned to Hot Springs since the gunfight, now that he was in charge of the Red Sox he felt that the benefits of training in the resort city far outweighed any potential distractions. In fact, the distractions, along with the relatively mild weather and the baths, were the main reason why several major league teams chose to work out there. In 1912 the Sox were joined by three National League teams, the Pirates, the Phillies, and Brooklyn. Spring training was no exercise in incarceration but more an excuse to break out after the confinements of winter around hearth and home and work the kinks out of muscles gone soft. Besides, it was easier to entice contract holdouts to give in if they knew they were going to Hot Springs for a month as opposed to a place like Macon or Augusta. A happy club presumably worked harder, and there was plenty to keep the players happy in Hot Springs, from the notorious dance hall and bordello known as the Black Orchid to the local opera house, the Oaklawn racetrack, and the tourist traps, like the alligator farm and ostrich ranch, that flanked Majestic Park, where the Red Sox planned to train. Just about every player on the team would return with a "bouquet" of ostrich feathers from one of the three hundred birds on the ranch and a staged photograph posing on a stuffed alligator, the least dangerous of the 1,500 reptiles that roamed the site.
After a winter spent away from the ballpark, most Sox players were looking forward to such distractions and the excitement they entailed. Charley Hall, Duffy Lewis, and Ray Collins had all married, while Hugh Bradley and the other members of the Red Sox Quartet had toured New England. Bill Carrigan had gone home to Lewiston, Maine, and looked after his business interests, which included a cigar store, and built the strength back up in his broken leg.
A number of players wrote to
Boston Post
writer Paul Shannon detailing their winter activities. Larry Gardner was in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, "leading the customary country life," farming and hunting. From New Rochelle, New York, Charlie Wagner admitted that in 1911 "my wing was never right ... but my arm feels all
Hot Springs was, well,
Hot Springs,
a resort town renowned not only for its forty restorative 147-degree mineral baths, which had earned it the nickname "the National Spa," but for everything that came with it—fine hotels, sumptuous restaurants, the splendor of the nearby Ouachita Mountains ... and casinos, dance halls, dogfights, painted ladies, quack doctors, and cures for the Hot Springs strain of "malaria" that the savvy recognized as venereal disease. Decades before Las Vegas was anything more than a spot on a map of the Nevada desert, Hot Springs, Arkansas, was the gambling and vice capital of the United States.
Corruption allowed it to happen as local officials gladly accepted bribes to look the other way. The result was an exciting yet violent place where, as Tim Murnane once noted, "shooting people was a regular and popular pastime with the best citizens." In March 1899, in fact, Jimmy McAleer had been in town for spring training and witnessed the infamous "Hot Springs Gunfight," when the police department and the county sheriff's department, each of which backed a different gambling faction, shot it out on the streets in one of the most notorious episodes in Arkansas history. McAleer told Murnane that when he left his hotel after the shootout, "he saw seven dead men laid out on the sidewalk."
As soon as McAleer took command he began to formalize his plans for the spring, securing time at one of several ballparks, making reservations at the Hotel Eastman, and lining up exhibition games with the other teams training in town. Although McAleer had not returned to Hot Springs since the gunfight, now that he was in charge of the Red Sox he felt that the benefits of training in the resort city far outweighed any potential distractions. In fact, the distractions, along with the relatively mild weather and the baths, were the main reason why several major league teams chose to work out there. In 1912 the Sox were joined by three National League teams, the Pirates, the Phillies, and Brooklyn. Spring training was no exercise in incarceration but more an excuse to break out after the confinements of winter around hearth and home and work the kinks out of muscles gone soft. Besides, it was easier to entice contract holdouts to give in if they knew they were going to Hot Springs for a month as opposed to a place like Macon or Augusta. A happy club presumably worked harder, and there was plenty to keep the players happy in Hot Springs, from the notorious dance hall and bordello known as the Black Orchid to the local opera house, the Oaklawn racetrack, and the tourist traps, like the alligator farm and ostrich ranch, that flanked Majestic Park, where the Red Sox planned to train. Just about every player on the team would return with a "bouquet" of ostrich feathers from one of the three hundred birds on the ranch and a staged photograph posing on a stuffed alligator, the least dangerous of the 1,500 reptiles that roamed the site.
After a winter spent away from the ballpark, most Sox players were looking forward to such distractions and the excitement they entailed. Charley Hall, Duffy Lewis, and Ray Collins had all married, while Hugh Bradley and the other members of the Red Sox Quartet had toured New England. Bill Carrigan had gone home to Lewiston, Maine, and looked after his business interests, which included a cigar store, and built the strength back up in his broken leg.
A number of players wrote to
Boston Post
writer Paul Shannon detailing their winter activities. Larry Gardner was in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, "leading the customary country life," farming and hunting. From New Rochelle, New York, Charlie Wagner admitted that in 1911 "my wing was never right ... but my arm feels all
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