If there really is a "field of Dreams" – a place where the ghosts of baseball past gather each night to relive their glory days – it won't be found in an Iowa cornfield. If such a place capable of drawing the spirits of long-gone players back to Earth truly exists, it's tucked away in the mesquite and oak-covered Mule Mountains of southeast Arizona, in a town called Bisbee. 

Warren Ball Park, America's oldest surviving professional baseball stadium, has hosted many generations of ball players since its opening day in 1909 – from town teams to a variety of minor league teams, an outlaw league comprised in part by players implicated in the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919, Bisbee High School teams and now, the semi-pro Copper Kings. 

Like the mile-high historic former mining town of Bisbee in which it is nestled, Warren Ball Park serves as a living museum – an authentic representation of a slower, smaller-scale and simpler world – the small-town, pre-television America once captured in Norman Rockwell illustrations, where children could safely play outside after dark, where people knew and socialized with their neighbors, and where men tipped their hats to ladies. 

Baseball was certainly played in Bisbee and other locations in southeastern Arizona long before 1909. Soldiers at Forts Bowie in the 1860s and Fort Huachuca a few years later were likely the first young men to mark off space on the post parade ground for a ball game. As mining camps and other communities were founded, so were town teams. Baseball was a popular pastime in Tombstone, Bisbee, Benson and Willcox before the end of the 19^th Century. 

When the town site of Warren was platted a few miles south of Bisbee during the earliest years of the 1900s, a relatively flat piece of ground located in the southern part of the suburb was reserved as a place to build a ball park. The site may have been used for games even before Warren Ball Park opened in 1909. 

 The ball park was constructed for a cost of $3,600 by the Warren Company, a subsidiary of the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company, which was one of the three biggest copper producers in the area at the time. Its purpose was to provide recreation and entertainment for copper miners and other the townspeople who populated Bisbee during its glory years.  

Opening day was June 27, 1909, when the Bisbee Beautiful town team hosted a visiting squad from El Paso. From that day until the late 1920s, the park was used by town teams in loosely organized leagues subsidized by the copper companies, outside of what was then considered to be "organized" baseball. 

As a copper mining town Bisbee had its share (and more) of tension between labor and management. Baseball as a recreational and spectator pastime was encouraged and supported by the copper companies –the ball park was neutral ground, where white collar workers, bosses, merchants, muckers and drillers could all mingle, drink a little beer and root forget their differences as they rooted for the home team. 

That neutrality was shattered in July 1917, however, when more than 1,500 striking miners were rounded up at gunpoint and herded to Warren Ball Park. There they were given a choice – return to work or be deported. Most chose deportation. For them, Warren Ball Park would be the point of embarkation for a ride in boxcars to permanent banishment. The Deportation remains a controversial subject in Bisbee to this day. 

Outlaw baseball came to the southwest during the “Roaring ‘20s.” Two of those outlaw leagues – the Frontier and Copper Leagues – provided employment for several of baseball's finest players, who had been banished from playing in any officially-sanctioned league after being implicated in fixing games. 

"Prince Hal" Chase, formerly of the New York Giants, had been accused of throwing games in the early 20s. One of major league baseball's finest first basemen, Chase served as a player-manager for the Douglas Blues and was often seen on the diamond at Warren Ball Park. 

Two other star players banned from organized baseball for throwing games who found their way to Warren Ball Park on visiting teams were ex-White Sox Chick Gandil and Buck Weaver. Both had been members of the 1919 “Black Sox”, and had been accused of accepting bribes from gamblers to throw the World Series. 

Bisbee’s team wouldn’t sign any outlaw players and lost more games than they won, but the refusal to use those players may have helped Bisbee when organized baseball selected sites for Arizona’s first minor league teams in 1928. 

Other major league players made their way to Warren Ball Park under more honorable circumstances. Big-league teams regularly toured the country by railroad before or after the baseball season, picking up additional revenue playing exhibition games in front of crowds that would otherwise never have had the opportunity see a major league game. 

A post-season game played in 1913 between John "Mugsy" McGraw's New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox managed by Nixey Callahan featured future Hall of Famers Tris Speaker, Sam "Wahoo" Crawford and Ray Schalk. Also on the field that day were future Black Sox players Buck Weaver and Hal Chase, destined to be banished from baseball a few years later, would wind down their careers on the same field where they had played in 1913. 

Also on the field for the Giants that day was the legendary Jim Thorpe, a Native American recognized as one of the country's greatest all-time, all-around athletes. Thorpe, whose strength, speed, endurance and agility were legendary, blasted a home run over the outfield fence that day. 

Organized baseball – the teams that make up the network of major and minor leagues – came to Arizona (and to Bisbee) in 1928, with the creation of the major league-sanctioned Class D Arizona State League. One of the league’s charter teams was the Bisbee Bees, which played its first season against clubs in Phoenix, Tucson and Miami to a second place finish. The Bees continued to be competitive during the next three years, finishing first in 1929 and 1930. In 1930, the Bees were affiliated with the Chicago Cubs.  

With the addition of an El Paso team in 1931, the league was re-named the Arizona- Texas League. The Bisbee Bees continued to play in that league at Warren Ballpark through 1941, with a gap from 1933-1937, when the team was disbanded due to economic hard times during the Great Depression. 

Among their most notable players was Johnny Keane, first baseman for the 1931 Bees. Keane, who never played an inning in the majors, led all minor league players in batting in 1931, with a blistering .408 average. Keane managed a number of minor league teams in the Cardinal farm system, rising from Class D to AAA before reaching taking over the St. Louis cardinals in 1961. Under his leadership the Cardinals won the 1964 World Series. Keane also managed the 1965 New York Yankees. 

In 1937, after baseball returned to Bisbee, the Bees became a farm team for the Cincinnati Reds. The following year they became an affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. The Bees returned to the Cubs organization in 1939, and remained affiliated with Chicago through the 1941 season. 

Playing for the Bees during their final season in 1941 was Clarence Maddern, the only Bsbee-born player to actually make it to the major leagues. He led the Arizona-Texas League in RBIs in 1941. Obtained by the Cubs organization from Bisbee in 1941, Maddern’s baseball career was interrupted by three years military service (1943-45) as an infantryman, which included combat in Europe. After his discharge, he returned to baseball and worked his way through the minors until he debuted with the Cubs in 1946. He ended his playing career in 1951, after being traded to the Cleveland Indians. 

Organized baseball was put on hold in Bisbee during the War years, and didn't return until 1947, when the Class C Bisbee Yanks took the field at Warren Ball Park. As a farm team for the New York Yankees, the Yanks were managed by Charlie Metro. Metro had bounced around the major leagues in the 1940s before taking on the job as skipper of the Bisbee team. He later worked as a scout, coach and manager for a number of big league teams, including the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Dodgers and Detroit Tigers. Metro may be best known for inventing the batting tee. 

The Yanks lasted only a year and were replaced by the Bisbee-Douglas Miners, affiliated with the St. Louis Browns of the American League in 1948. The Miners played their home games in both cities that year. 

In 1949, the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings replaced the Miners. The Copper Kings played at both Warren Ball Park and Copper King Stadium in Douglas, from 1947-1950 in the Arizona-Texas League, in the Southwest International League during 1951, again in the Arizona-Texas League from 1952-54 and finally in 1955, in the Arizona-Mexico League. From 1950-1951 the Copper Kings were connected with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization. 

It was during the late 40s that Copper Kings catcher Cliff Courtney (known as “Scrap Iron” for his willingness to battle opposing players) and an already-volatile Billy Martin of the Phoenix Senators began their on and off-field feud that would carry on for years, whenever their teams met. Courtney played briefly for the Yankees in 1951 before being traded to the St. Louis Browns. He later played for the Baltimore Orioles, the White Sox and the Kansas City Athletics. 

Another Copper Kings player who made his mark in the major leagues was Earl Wilson. A 22-game winner for the 1968 Detroit Tigers and starting pitcher in game three for the Tigers in the World Series that year, Wilson started his career as a catcher with the 1953 Copper Kings. In 1962, while with the Boston Red Sox, he pitched a no-hit, no-run game in which he also hit the game-winning home run. 

For a good part of the 50s the Bisbee Douglas Copper Kings were managed by Syd Cohen, a former pitcher for the Washington Senators. Cohen played for the Bisbee Bees in 1930, hitting a blistering .356 that year. In the majors, Cohen earned the distinction of being the last man to strike out Babe Ruth while the Bambino played for the Yankees – and was also the last pitcher Ruth hit a home off in his career. 

Cohen, who spoke Spanish fluently, is also known for adopting the persona of “Pablo Garcia” while playing for the Nogales, Sonora Internationals of the Arizona-Texas League in 1931. He did so to placate hometown fans who were upset at the predominance of gringos on a Mexican team. Cohen was the brother of big-leaguer Andy Cohen. 

The Copper Kings played their final games in Bisbee in 1955, becoming the Douglas Copper Kings for the last three years of their existence. 

From 1955 until 2003, Warren Ball Park was regularly used for high school games. Then, in 2003, Bob Lipp brought professional baseball back when he resurrected the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings as one of four professional non-affiliated teams playing in the also resurrected Arizona-Mexico League. Although the Copper Kings posted a winning season and drew large, enthusiastic crowds, the league folded mid-season. 

Three years later the Bisbee Kings, one of seven teams participating in the semi-pro Border Baseball Series, called Warren Ballpark home. Under the direction of Field Manager Butch Hammett (who also led the 2003 Copper Kings) the Kings posted a 15-4 season. 

2007 saw the Copper Kings reborn, this time as a semi-pro team owned by Bisbee businessmen Frank Barco and Tom Mosier. Playing in the four-team Centennial League, the Copper Kings, again managed by Butch Hammett, played teams from San Luis, Tucson, Casa Grande and Phoenix, posting a 18-12 record. 

This year’s Copper Kings will be facing tougher competition in a tougher league. Bisbee joined the 6-team Southwest Pacific League, comprised of the Lake Havasu Heat, the Casa Grande Cotton Kings, the Phoenix Garden of Gears, the San Luis Bandidos and the Tucson Nationals. That competition will be stiff is a no-brainer: the Lake Havasu Heat won the National Baseball Congress 2007 World Series Championship in Wichita Kansas, rising to the top of a 42 team field representing the top teams in semi-pro leagues from all over the nation. 

As a team playing in the Pacific Southwest League, the Copper Kings will have an opportunity to qualify for a berth at the 2008 NBC World Series in Wichita. 

A few of the players who have appeared in past National Baseball Congress World Series include Leroy “Satchel” Paige, Ralph Houk, Whitey Herzog, Don Sutton, Billy Martin, Ozzie Smith, Joe Carter, Mark McGwire, Dave Winfield, Tom Seaver, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. 

Almost a century has passed since “play ball” was shouted for the first time at Warren Ball Park. Since then, thousands of players, men and boys, have taken the field and a multitude of fans have cheered on their teams, win or lose. The players no longer wear baggy flannel uniforms and tiny “pancake” fielding gloves, the fans no longer sport derby hats and straw boaters, but the thrill of watching a well-turned double play or a close play at the plate remains just as it was when street cars brought the crowds out to watch the Old Ball Game. 

Douglas' Copper King Stadium
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