The modern approach to offseason training caught on. In the following years, Hot Springs became a true spring training hub. The Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Robins (later Dodgers) all trained there. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the last major league teams officially decamped from the area, heading farther south or west. Today, teams still train in the spring, travelling to towns in Florida or Arizona every February to work the kinks out.

Baseball legends became frequent Hot Springs visitors

Even after teams began holding spring training practices elsewhere, individual players still visited Hot Springs for conditioning before each season, usually at the behest of team management. According to the New York Daily News’ Marshall Hunt, as reported by Babe Ruth biographer Leigh Montville, Ruth generally did this if New York Yankees executive Ed Barrow “looked at him and said, ‘My God, you slob. Off to Hot Springs,’” whereupon “the Babe and [Hunt] would take off and go down there and play a lot of golf and take a lot of hikes.” That is, until management barred him from the area due to his excessive carousing (Ruth’s desire to travel to Hot Springs wasn’t hurt by the fact that one of the town’s other cherished traditions was gambling; players reliably flocked to nearby clubs and casinos, some frequented by notorious gangsters).

Several star players thought highly of Hot Springs’ restorative effects. Al Simmons, a Hall of Famer who spent most of his career with the Philadelphia Athletics, credited Hot Springs with saving his career. An article on Simmons’ acquisition by the Boston Bees in the winter of 1938 even featured a snippet of an interview conducted while Simmons was “sloshing around in a hot thermal bath.”

When players weren’t soaking in the springs or hitting the trails — the 1910 Athletics’ spring training regimen called for “a good deal of hiking,” according to a biography of Hall of Famer Eddie Collins — they were scrimmaging on the many baseball fields that popped up in and around Hot Springs National Park. In one (tough to corroborate) tale, Ruth hit a monstrous home run on a practice diamond that stood within a few hundred feet of the park’s circuitous modern boundaries. The ball supposedly traveled more than 570 feet on the fly — longer than any recorded home run in major league history — and landed in the middle of a neighboring alligator farm, which stands virtually unchanged to this day. The current owner has suggested that the ball was eaten by one of the alligators, though that specific alligator is “probably” no longer living at the farm (the incident occurred in either 1918 or 1920, depending on which story you believe).

In addition to Ruth and Simmons, legends like Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Stan Musial and Tris Speaker made frequent stops to train in Hot Springs, with some enjoying the area so much they returned after retirement or took on civic responsibilities (Wagner coached a nearby high school basketball team). For several years, a baseball school in Hot Springs even hosted stars like Dizzy Dean to teach local kids how to play. The sport and the town became so inextricably linked that a team called the “Hot Springs Bathers” played minor league ball in the South for decades.

Baseball tradition remains strong in Hot Springs

While Major League Baseball hasn’t had an official presence in Hot Springs in a long time, the national pastime is still a key part of the region’s lore (a “Historical Baseball Tour” and accompanying app guide visitors through the park and town).

In many ways, the national park that winds through Hot Springs — and through its baseball past — is an oddity, but in the year of the National Park Service’s centennial, it is worth saluting even those protected places that don’t conform to our usual idea of public lands. Hot Springs National Park preserves a unique chapter of American culture, and especially deserves recognition now, as baseball starts up again.