If there is a place where the ghosts of baseball players come at night to relive their glory days, it is Warren Ballpark in the old copper-mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. Warren Ballpark has been in use as a sports facility since 1909—longer than any other ballpark in the United States. Some of the most colorful and notable figures in baseball history have stepped onto its field as barnstorming big leaguers or as minor-league players hoping to make their way up to the "Big Show." Several players implicated in the infamous 1919 "Black Sox" scandal played in an "outlaw" league at Warren Ballpark during the 1920s. In 1917, it was the holding facility for 1,500 striking copper miners rounded up during the Bisbee Deportation. It is also the site of one of the longest-running and most bitterly contested high school football rivalries in America, between the Bisbee Pumas and the Douglas Bulldogs.
Author Mike Anderson is the historian and founding member of the Friends of Warren Ballpark in Bisbee. He is also the captain of the Bisbee Black Sox vintage baseball club.