As baseball season revs up, hit the road for 135 years of history in Tampa

As the baseball season moves from the prose of the regular season to the poetry of the playoffs, what better time for Florida fans to consider a road trip to drink in the sport’s distinguished history in the Sunshine State.

Time to head to the former home of Hall of Famer Al Lopez, now reborn as the Tampa Baseball Museum. It is an ode not only to him but also to the multitude of baseball greats rooted in his hometown.

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Whether you’re a diehard fan or just a casual watcher of the game, the museum has something for you.

Fortunately for lovers of the game, the museum taps into more than a century of baseball, including the likes of seven spring training teams, three minor league teams and, the Major League’s Tampa Bay Rays, who began playing in 1998.

The museum sits inside the childhood home of Lopez, Tampa’s first native son to play and manage in the Major Leagues, and the city’s first Hall of Fame inductee. About nine years ago, the wooden bungalow built in 1905 was moved roughly a mile to its current site, and was restored, said Chantal Ruilova Hevia, president and CEO of the Ybor City Museum Society.

The house, originally two stories, was typical of a cigar-worker’s home that was referred to as a casita or little house. The second story was removed long ago.

Who was Al Lopez and why is his childhood home a museum?

Lopez, the son of Spanish immigrants, grew up in Ybor City — the seventh of nine children. At age 16, he was working at the Ferlita Bakery delivering Cuban bread when he was drafted by the minor league team the Tampa Smokers in 1924. The bakery still stands in Ybor City and now is the Ybor City Museum State Park.

Lopez’s career as a player and manager spanned more than four decades. He ran the Chicago White Sox for 13 years and managed spring training games in a stadium named after him. Three stadium seats — one of which Lopez autographed — and a baseball diamond from Al Lopez Field sit at the front of the museum.

Historians trace the origins of baseball to ball-and-stick games played in Europe and imported to North America, where rules were honed into the base-rounding game eventually tagged sometime in the mid-1800s as the U.S.’s national pastime.

By the 1870s, Tampa was a small fishing village of about 700 people, and baseball was a bit of fun that played out informally on local fields. It was the city’s subtropical climate, pine forests and close proximity to Cuba that drew businessman Vicente Martinez-Ybor and other cigarmakers to the region to build their factories in the 1880s.

A town of cigars and 135 years of  baseball

When the Cubans arrived in Tampa to work in the cigar industry, they brought their love of baseball with them. They played and taught the game to their fellow workers and neighbors, who spoke Italian, Spanish and German.

“You had all these immigrants speaking different languages, but baseball was their universal language,” Hevia said.

The games were immensely popular with players and fans, who packed the parks and sun-soaked fields every Sunday to cheer their favorite teams, she said.

Ybor City became the cigar-making capital of the world at the turn of the 20th century and today is a National Historic Landmark District just northeast of downtown Tampa. But it also churned out plenty of great baseball players.

Eighty-nine signed baseballs hang on the museum wall, each player from Tampa or the reaches of Hillsborough County. Three more signed baseballs are due to arrive shortly, freshly autographed by players who recently made their Major League debuts.

They will join a collection that carries the signatures of Lou Piniella, Wade Boggs, Dwight Gooden, Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff, Steve Garvey and Tino Martinez.

The museum recognizes not only the players who grew up in the area, but also the healthy competition the region fostered.

Tampa friends Tony La Russa (Oakland As) and Lou Piniella (Cincinnati Reds) faced off as managers in the 1990 World Series. And high school teammates Tino Martinez (New York Yankees) and Luis Gonzalez (Arizona Diamondbacks) battled it out in the 2001 World Series with Gonzalez hitting in the winning run. Martinez was the first to call his friend the next day to congratulate him.

Museum nods to 'Negro League' and 'Girls League' too

The museum also honors the Tampa Giants and Tampa Rockets, the city’s Negro League teams from the early and mid-1900s, and standout players such as William “Benny” Felder, who was known as the best infielder in the Negro Leagues.

The city’s ties to women’s baseball share the spotlight.

Senaida “Shu Shu” Wirth was a Tampa native who learned the game in her hometown, and played for the South Bend Blue Sox of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the 1940s. The league was featured in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own,” starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis.

Tampa’s museum has just the right mix of memorabilia — such as autographed gloves, and two bats, one of which was autographed by Lou Piniella and his Yankees World Series winning teammates in 1977; the other, also signed by Piniella, features the signatures of the World Series Champion Cincinnati Reds players that he managed in 1990.

There’s also a hat signed by the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the most prominent teams in the Negro Leagues. The hat features the autograph of Sarasota native and player Buck O'Neil, who also was a coach and scout with the Chicago Cubs.

One of the more curious exhibits is a pair of game-worn cleats clogged with clay that belong to New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, the National League Rookie of the Year in 2019.

Alonso, who was born in Tampa and played high school ball in town, apologized for donating the dirty cleats, but Hevia said she didn’t mind because it makes them more interesting, and now they are fondly referred to as “Pete’s Cleats.”

Al Lopez died in 2005 at age 97 before ever seeing the museum, but Hevia figures he would have been proud of the place that honors his groundbreaking career.

“Look at all the children of immigrants he influenced,” she said. “I think these players looked at Lopez’s career and said, ‘If Al Lopez can do it, so can I.’”

If you go

Tampa Baseball Museum, 2003 N. 19th St.; 813-400-2353, tampabaseballmuseum.org

Ybor City Visitor Information Center, located in the Centro Ybor Complex, 1600 E. 8th Ave., Suite B104; 813-241-8838, ybor.org/VIC

Ybor City Museum State Park, 1818 E. Ninth Ave.; 813-247-6323, floridastateparks.org 

Columbia Restaurant, oldest continuously operated restaurant in Florida, 2117 E. 7th Ave; 813-248-4961, columbiarestaurant.com

La Segunda Bakery, 2512 N. 15th St.; 813-248-1531, lasegundabakery.com

Tampa Bay Visitors Center, 201 N. Franklin St., Suite 102; 813-223-2752, visittampabay.com

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Tampa Baseball Museum, Al Lopez' home: World Series warmup begins