King: A Box full of memories

• By SAM KING
• Published: May 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

You can close The Box — but you can’t shut the lid on its memories.

Alex Box Stadium memories will live on forever in the minds of those who spent days and/or nights, or even a few hours, therein.

Today, Alex Box Stadium is the home of the LSU Tigers, a place where the best college baseball teams in the nation have performed.
A week later, it will be history.

Will the last one out, please turn off the lights.

As has happened to Hopper’s, Steinberg’s, Goudchaux’s and a few others, Alex Box Stadium will be just another Baton Rouge landmark that has gone by the board.

The same is said of the 70-year-old stadium that is said of aging coaches and athletes: The game has passed them by.

As in everything else, or so it seems, The Box will be replaced by something bigger, better, more gaudy and more expensive, something with all sorts of gadgets, perks and extras.

It’s being replaced by something designed more for the PAYERS than the PLAYERS.

Alex Box Stadium, however, was something in its hey-day.

“It was a tremendous facility in its day,” recalled Leon McGraw, former prep coach and longtime major-league scout. “It was home to the Giants in spring training a couple of years and they played before packed houses.”

McGraw is one of a few locals that would have qualified as a baseball icon in Baton Rouge. Mel Didier, the late Tony John and Walker Cress are also in that number.

They were all around when Alex Box Stadium, became a reality, something almost unbelievable for those who nursed dreams of playing baseball.

Alex Box Stadium was something of a masterpiece of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) when the cement and steel structure was finished in 1938, just in time to be home to the New York Giants for the 1938 and 1939 spring trainings.