History of baseball opens at Mesa Historical Museum
The Mesa Historical Museum opened its new exhibit, “Play Ball: The Arizona Spring Training Experience,” to commemorate the history of baseball in Mesa.
The permanent exhibit, which opened on March 6, features the history of Spring Training, the birth of the Cactus League and the Cactus League Hall of Fame, as well as baseball memorabilia from the last hundred years of baseball in Mesa.
Mesa Historical Museum executive director Susan Ricci said that bringing back the baseball exhibit was an important aspect not only to the museum but the community.
“I love baseball, and I knew it was an important aspect of the museum to the city,” said Ricci. “And so it was just the logical thing to open up baseball again here in our current location and keep it here as a permanent part of the exhibits.”
Anita Peters, Museum Board President and longtime baseball fan, said the most exciting part is getting the opportunity to show the history of the game in Arizona.
“I am very passionate about the children of Mesa knowing their history because it’s so rich,” said Peters. There’s just so much to learn. And I’ve learned a lot just going through all the artifacts. So, so we’re starting from scratch, and we’re just kind of touching, you know, touching the basis, so to speak, and we’re going to go in-depth on a lot of those subjects in the years to come.”
Since 1952, the City of Mesa has been home to two major league baseball teams, the Oakland Athletics and Chicago Cubs. But the state’s baseball history goes back generations starting in the late 1800s.
Ricci said one of the fun challenges with a permanent exhibit like this is keeping the artifacts of not only on the teams that reside in Mesa but in the whole state.
“We evolve each year, and we create a brand new exhibit, so we can bring the same fans back,” said Ricci. “We will have different collections, different baseball artifacts for people to see. But we’ll also incorporate other areas. Not just Mesa, but there’s a strong baseball presence in Tucson, and a strong presence in Scottsdale, and so on. So we’re going to really work hard to find those really great stories.”
The museum will continue to adhere to precautions due to the coronavirus pandemic, which includes a mask requirement in the exhibit, a hand sanitizing station and a capacity limit in rooms. But Peters hopes people will leave their exhibit not just with knowledge about the game but its importance in the state.
“The history of baseball in Arizona is so rich. There’s so many different stories,” said Peters. “So that’s the biggest thing that I think I would like people to take from it is that they learned something. History is stories, and so I hope that they read the stories, and I hope that they come away learning something about spring training and say, wow, that was really interesting.”
