{"id":162435,"date":"2026-02-20T11:28:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/162435\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T11:28:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:28:22","slug":"friday-flashback-to-boardwalk-and-baseball-orlando-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/162435\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Flashback to Boardwalk and Baseball \u2013 Orlando Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Baseball Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams was at bat when the Boardwalk and Baseball theme park opened south of Orlando in Haines City on April 4, 1987.<\/p>\n<p>Williams hit a ceremonial baseball to cut the ribbon for the park, which attempted to blend America\u2019s favorite pastime with a mile-long boardwalk, midway games and 30 thrill rides.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHardcourt Brace Jovanovich created the park out of the foundering Circus World, bought 11 months ago for $18 million,\u201d the Sentinel\u2019s opening day report said. \u201cThe publishing and\u00a0 entertainment company, which also owns Sea World, then paid $22 million for improvements, including a log flume ride and a stadium where the Kansas City Royals will play spring training games beginning in 1988.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Sentinel\u2019s story said it was an unseasonably cold and blustery day but about 5,000 came to the new theme park, which featured a Baseball Hall of Fame display from Cooperstown. Admission back then was $16.95 for adults and $12.95 for children under 4 feet tall.<\/p>\n<p>In November 1989, Anheuser-Busch bought the theme park along with five others from HBJ for $1.1 billion, then closed Boardwalk and Baseball in January 1990. The Royals would continue to use the baseball stadium and training fields before leaving in 2002.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"Baseball legend Ted Williams inspects a larger-than-life picture of himself in the Baseball Hall of Fame exhibit at Boardwalk and Baseball in Haines City on April 4, 1987. (Orlando Sentinel file)\" width=\"1207\" height=\"905\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/tos-l-boardwalk-and-baseball2_257350346.jpg\" data-attachment-id=\"14949214\" \/>Baseball legend Ted Williams inspects a larger-than-life picture of himself in the Baseball Hall of Fame exhibit at Boardwalk and Baseball in Haines City on April 4, 1987. (Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baseball Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams was at bat when the Boardwalk and Baseball theme park opened south of Orlando&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[53370,114,266,115,139,141,140,53371,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-162435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-flashbacks","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-orlando-sentinel-150","16":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}