McKechnie Field in Bradenton, Florida, is the oldest active major-league spring-training facility in the country. Opened in the spring of 1923 with Commissioner Keneshaw Mountain Landis in attendance, it has played host to six different major-league teams, with the Pittsburgh Pirates calling it home since 1969. The New York Giants traveled to Sarasota in 1924 as the first of five teams to venture to its confines. These two cities, both situated on the Gulf Coast of Florida, boast nearly a century of baseball history and have seen the game's all-time greats.

Raymond Sinibaldi has lived in Sarasota County since 1986 and taught history in Bradenton for 21 years. A Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) member and baseball historian, as well as the coauthor of Images of Baseball: Fenway Park in 2012, Sinibaldi has tapped the Manatee County Library, the Sarasota History Center, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Public Library, and the Baseball Hall of Fame to tell this remarkable story.