Baseball Game, Activities To Honor 50th Anniversary

By Kurt Helin
Editor

On April 11, 1958, the baseball team from Poly High School stepped out on the new baseball stadium in Recreation Park and took on Huntington Beach High School.

The games had started on the field, although it would be another month before the stadium was officially dedicated. On May 10, 1958, it officially became Blair Field.

Saturday night, Long Beach State takes on UC Santa Barbara on a night when that 50-year anniversary of Blair Field will be celebrated.

The night will include plenty of pre-game activities for children, trivia and other contests during the game, and fireworks when the game ends. The first pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m.

While Long Beach State will be the tenant for the 50th Anniversary game, the local high school baseball players have benefited the most from Blair Field.

“In its early years it was used some as a football stadium, but it has been primarily baseball over the years,” said Phil Hester, the director of Long Beach’s Parks, Recreation and Marine Department. “It’s been home to the Moore League, American Legion, Connie Mack, and the Area Code Games that bring the best players in the region to Long Beach.”

Blair Field is named after Frank Blair, the long time sports editor of the Long Beach Press-Telegram from the 1940s and ’50s who had pushed for a new ballpark in the city. Although the dedication took place after he died, the field was named in his honor.

To this day, the youth teams in the area still benefit the most from Blair’s vision.

“ It gets used every day,” Hester said of the stadium. “We do have a few maintenance days scheduled in to give the field a rest, but from now through September it will get used for two games a day almost every day. Much of that is Connie Mack and American Legion.”

Some professional teams have called Blair home as well.

In the spring of 1966, the Chicago Cubs used Blair Field as their spring training facility. An All-Star exhibition game took place here in 1958, featuring former Long Beach Poly player Rocky Bridges.

In more recent years, three minor league baseball teams have called Blair Field home. The Long Beach Armada, will start another season of play there next month.

Long Beach State, the tenant maybe most associated with Blair Field today, made the stadium its home in 1993. That was right after $1.4 million in renovations to the stadium.

“We redid the whole stadium as it relates to the turf and the irrigation,” Hester said. “Plus we redid a lot of the seats and the locker rooms.”

Then in 1999, more seats with backs were added for Long Beach State. And the improvements at the field continue,

Tuesday night, the City Council approved a contract with Datatronics to upgrade the scoreboard at Blair Field.

“We’re keeping the old look of the scoreboard but all the interior operations will be replaced by state-of-the-art electronics and computers and video replay ability,” Hester said.

The cost of the work is expected to be about $447,765. The money to pay for it comes from three sources. First, Long Beach State sold sponsorship for the board. Second, the Long Beach Armada pitched in some money as part of a five-year contract. Finally, Partners of Parks (the nonprofit foundation supporting parks in the city) is donating $150,000, Hester said.

That scoreboard will be a highlight for the next 50 years of up-and-coming baseball players who walk onto Blair Field.