Jackie Robinson Ballpark ready for Daytona Tortugas' home opener
The gates to Jackie Robinson Ballpark swing open today, welcoming fans to the Daytona Tortugas’ home opener and the start of the team’s ninth season, the 82nd summer of minor league play on City Island.
The low-A team will play a six-game stand against the Palm Beach Cardinals.
The Tortugas’ 2024 season started on the road, and the team will return home with a 2-1 win-loss record against the St. Lucie Mets. A promising start, but everyone’s an optimist in April.
Returning fans who glance upward will immediately notice something different — the field lights. They are smaller yet brighter than the old lights, angular rather than bowl-shaped. They can even change colors and flash on and off to celebrate a home run, something fans hope to see a lot of this season.
The new LED lights are only the most noticeable of the first round of improvements to the park that the team and Daytona Beach agreed to in November.
Fans who pay an extra $3 to sit in the shaded grandstand area ($14 versus $11 in the general-admission bleachers for adults) may notice its new, refurbished metal roof. Thunderstorms, hurricanes, salty breezes, flyballs and rust did a number on the old roof. New seating will be installed soon. Over the weekend, workers were welding and electricians were wiring to get it ready for the big day.
Under the new 20-year lease agreement with Daytona Beach, the city will spend $17 million on upgrades to Jackie Robinson Ballpark over the next two years or so. Phase two will cost $11.6 million.
These are upgrades the team and city promised to undertake in their push to convince Major League Baseball to keep the franchise operating here after 2021’s dramatic reorganization that eliminated 42 minor league teams.
The facility may be old ― the oldest operating in the minor leagues ― but that also worked in its favor during the reorganization. Baseball traditionalists and sports historians across the nation complained that it would be a sacrilege to let the ballpark where Jackie Robinson, wearing a Montreal Royals uniform, played the first racially integrated pro baseball game in 1946, a spring training exhibition match, go dark.
Jackie Robinson Ballpark may be listed on the National Register of Historic Places but it is no museum. It has continually upgraded to meet the demands of professional baseball. In 2019, for example, the city invested in a modern artificial turf field that allows the playing surface to shake off the frequent thunderstorms of the late season.
Despite all these changes, the ballpark’s regular fans regularly gush about the place's old-time feel: its intimate scale and familiar layout, even the hook-and-panel, hand-operated green scoreboard.
It is a place where minor league baseball has been played since the 1920 home opener when downtown merchants closed their shops early and the Daytona Islanders took to this field to play against the Orlando Caps. A place where longtime local returning ballpark regulars might refer to the general admission bleachers as “the new section” because it was built in 1973.
And there will be new sections to come, but that is for another home opener day.
There are 119 games ahead, 66 at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, give or take some rainouts and hurricane cancellations, in a season that will stretch until Sept. 8.
The gates open at 5:30 p.m., and the first pitch will be thrown at 6:35 p.m. The calendar may say something different, but summer will arrive with the first shout of “play ball!”
Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mlanewrites@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Jackie Robinson Ballpark ready for Daytona Tortugas' home opener
