Hot Springs’ Historic Link to The King of Clout Is Featured In YouTube Video Posted on Anniversary of Babe Ruth’s Death | Hot Springs National Park Arkansas

HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK, Arkansas — Hot Springs’ historical link to baseball immortal Babe Ruth and other legendary players is the subject of a video posted Monday to YouTube on the anniversary of Ruth’s death in 1948.

Created by Tim Reid of Boca Raton, Fla., one of the internationally known baseball historians to researched Hot Springs’ role as The Birthplace of Major League Baseball Springs Training, “Take Me Out to Those Ball Fields (Of Old Hot Springs)” had garnered hundreds of views by midday Monday, according to Reid.

The video is available at https://youtu.be/G1XOUNgLq5k

Set to the tune of the classic song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the video, commissioned by The Committee to Commemorate Babe Ruth, features dozens of images of Hot Springs as the site of early- to mid-20th Century baseball spring training. It features legendary players at Majestic Park and the Arkansas Alligator Farm as well as scenes of downtown Hot Springs, Oaklawn Park race track, players climbing Hot Springs Mountain, the old Southern Club, the Ohio Club and others. It traces Ruth’s historic 500-foot-plus home run that flew from the home plate at the old Whittington Park ball field, across Whittington and into the Alligator Farm’s pond.

Reid said his video was “inspired by the unparalleled baseball history of Hot Springs, and all the spectacular work Visit Hot Springs has done to preserve and celebrate that history.”

“I adapted the lyrics and music of the 1908 classic, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” as a tribute to the ‘The Birthplace of Spring Training,’” Reid said.

“Familiar with their outstanding musical recordings on YouTube, where they have over 50,000 subscribers and receive millions of views from around the world, I asked Rosalind Beall and her husband Jesse Finch, of Beall & Finch, to record the song with lyrics linking Babe Ruth and Hot Springs, and to create and perform in a music video.

“Rosalind, who sings and plays banjo on this recording, is originally from Kansas City and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. She studied on a Fulbright Scholarship in Brussels, Belgium, and now lives in The Netherlands with her husband, Jesse.

“The newsreel within the video featuring shots of Babe interspersed with scenes from Hot Springs was created by my son, Tim Reid III, with artwork by my son, Paul Reid.”

“Tim Reid has scored another home run for Hot Springs with this wonderful video, in addition to his untiring work researching Hot Springs’ place in baseball history,” said Steve Arrison, CEO of Visit Hot Springs. “Tim’s collaboration with Bill Jenkinson of Willow Grove, Pa.; Don Duren of Plano, Texas; Mark Blauer of Pearcy, Ark., and the late Mike Dugan of Hot Springs, has created a lasting legacy that has brought and will continue to bring crowd of baseball fans to our city to share this wonderful place.”

For more information call Steve Arrison at 501-321-2027.

###