Home›Places›Orlando, FL›Tinker Field
Historic place

Tinker Field

287 S Tampa Ave, Orlando, FL

A spring training ballpark where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the pitcher's mound in 1964, torn down so the Citrus Bowl next door could grow.

📅 1923–2015🏛️ StadiumDemolished
Open on the mapSlide back to 1923

The story

The ground was first used for baseball in 1914, and the first known stadium on the site went up in 1923, an all-wood grandstand seating 1,500. It was named for Hall of Famer Joe Tinker. The Cincinnati Reds trained here from 1923 to 1933, the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1934 and 1935, and the Washington Senators and later the Minnesota Twins from 1936 to 1990. The Orlando Rays played here from 1963 to 1999.

On March 6, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to thousands of people from the pitcher's mound. The field's Wikipedia article calls it his only public speech in Orlando. The field was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. In January 2014 the city announced the grandstands would come down, because expanding the Citrus Bowl next door would shorten right field too much for the field to be usable. Council approved demolition in March 2015 and the grandstands came down that spring. Sources differ on whether that was April or June 2015.

What's There Now

Tinker Field History Plaza, opened in May 2018, memorializes civil rights and baseball in Orlando.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

The Twins and Senators trained here for 55 seasons, 1936 to 1990.
The field sat directly west of the Citrus Bowl, and that stadium's rebuild is what ended it.
The National Register listing uses a different address, 1610 W. Church St.

Nearby history

Orlando Stadium / Tangerine Bowl (Camping World Stadium)

1 Citrus Bowl Place · 216 m away
Opened in late 1936 as Orlando Stadium with 8,900 seats, then rebuilt so many times that its 2014 reconstruction demolis

Goff's Drive-In

212 S Orange Blossom Trl · 728 m away
A walk-up ice cream stand in Parramore that served Black and white customers at the same window and kept going through a

Chastain's Restaurant

23 N Orange Blossom Trl · 847 m away
A truck-stop-style breakfast spot with a glass radio booth in the parking lot, closed after one last breakfast on Septem

Parliament House

410 N Orange Blossom Trl · 1.2 km away
A 1962 motor inn that became Orlando's best-known gay resort in 1975, and closed in November 2020 when the owners could

Orlando Drive-In Theatre

1001 S Orange Blossom Trail · 1.3 km away
The area's first drive-in opened on February 7, 1940, with Vivacious Lady and a Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Orlando Arena / Amway Arena

600 W Amelia St · 2.1 km away
The Magic's first home, a $110 million public-money arena that locals called the O-Rena, imploded in 2012.

Know something about Tinker Field? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?

Add it on the map
Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Field