Boardwalk and Baseball: 20th anniversary of its closure.

When Anheiser Busch purchased the Sea World parks, Cypress Gardens, Sesame Place, and Boardwalk & Baseball, they decided to shutter B&B back in 1989. I found a website with alot of photos of this park. Looked pretty nice.

Boardwalk and Baseball

We lived in Florida for a few years when I was a kid and I loved both Circus World and Boardwalk and Baseball. It was fun! :)

I moved to Florida in November 1989 to work at B&B. I was there that "weird" day.

The park had its biggest crowd I had seen since I started there. (Yes. 1500 was a good crowd for that park!). There was an orchard fire across the highway and THAT is what we thought was the reason for closing as the thick smoke neared us. Why else would they kick that many people out in the middle of the day?

An hour or so later, the Busch big wigs suddenly appeared and told us the park was closing. They did give us 90 days of work, which I think was required. It did give me a chance to work at Sea World and learn the whale/dolphin hand signals. ;)

After that, I moved on to Disney for a few months (while I still "fit the suit"). Came back to Chicago and continued on with 6 Flags a few more, very successful years.

B&B was such a beautifully landscaped park! The walkways were incredible! The rides, well, not so much. But, still fun!

To bad all the glory Dick Howard and A-B initially spoke of for this park never happened. This was the rumored location of the talked-about Arrow/Vekoma 10-Looper back then.

My only visit to the park was in 1989, I remember really liking the park since it combined rides and baseball, which at the time were 2 of my favorite things.

The only coaster I went on was the Zamperla Dragon since I was only 7 at the time but I remember they had some really cool kiddie rides some of which weren't the typical rides you saw at Dorney, Hershey and Great Adventure. 1 I specifically remember was some Dune Buggies ride.

The other thing I remember and still have is the make your own baseball card where you put on a baseball jersey and hat of the team you wanted, they took your picture and put in on a baseball card with all your "stats" on the back.

My uncle was a member of an investment group that almost bought B&B. He is a huge baseball nut and owns more baseball trading cards than any person I ever met. The deal fell through, obviously. There is now housing and shopping the area formerly known as Boardwalk and Baseball.