West Palm Beach, FL

Park # 50

What I Remember

I remember that West Palm Beach lived up to its name, at least the first part of it. There were palm trees everywhere around Municipal Stadium in West Palm and lots of other landscaping too. The park was in a neighborhood and with the beautifully manicured hedges around the field it almost resembled a botanical garden as much as a baseball field.

I also remember Willy P Bananas (get it..WPB?) Willy was an enormously energetic gorilla mascot who was one of our favorites that year.

Finally I remember Rob Rabenecker, the GM of the team, being one of the nicest people we met that year and I was reminded of that fact last summer when he took my call out of the blue and agreed to be on my short-lived Low Mileage Tour podcast. Rob is long since out of baseball and runs a Chick-Fil-A franchise these days but it was a fun conversation and we reminisced for some time about what running a Florida State league team that doubled as a spring training home was all about.

The Games

West Palm Beach Expos 5 Dunedin Blue Jays 1

We also got a nice feature in the Expos game story the next day.

The Box: (Click the arrows to see more images)

The Trip:

The Video: