Last pitch: Salt Lake Bees close the gate to Smith’s Ballpark after 31 years

As the sun sets on a summer evening, illuminating the majestic Wasatch Mountains in a pinkish-purple hue beyond the outfield wall at Smith’s Ballpark in Salt Lake City, there’s no more picturesque view in baseball.
Hired a week into the first season the stadium opened in 1994, public address announcer Jeff Reeves has had a window to that backdrop from his seat behind the mix in the press box for more than 2,100 games.
“The ambience of our mountains, looking out at our mountains from our press box, I’ve had the view for so many years. It’s hard to convey how much of a special experience every day I come. I cannot tell you what a great feeling it gives me. I get to go where I want to go every day,” he said in his deep bass voice, which he says scares children.
Along with being a feast for the eyes, the ballpark overwhelms the olfactory nerve.
“There is a certain aroma when you walk in here. It’s a special place. The stale aroma of the popcorn mixed with the ambience of the sport is truly mesmerizing,” Reeves said.
Fans, too, have enjoyed that spectacular view from every seat in the house along with the sound of the crack of a bat and the smell of hot dogs and fresh cut grass for 31 years. But with the Bees’ Landon Wallace’s groundout to Oklahoma City third baseman, Kody Hoese, in a 3-1 loss Sunday, more than a century of minor league baseball in Utah’s capital city came to an end. The Larry H. Miller Company, owner of the Salt Lake Bees, is moving the team next season from the urban neighborhood near downtown to a new, privately funded stadium under construction in the suburbs.
“Goodbye, old ballpark. We’re going to miss ya,” retired Utah Jazz coach Frank Layden said after leading the crowd Sunday in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” during the seventh-inning stretch, as he has done many times. “God bless you, Salt Lake City, Utah.”
Kevin and Bonnie Williams settled into their seats on the first base line long before the first pitch with hot dogs, popcorn and peanuts at the penultimate Bees game in the stadium on Saturday. They attend every chance they get, figuring they’ve been to more than 100 games through the years. Kevin Williams’ dad brought him to his first game as a kid more than 60 years ago, an exhibition game between the Cleveland Indians and San Francisco Giants in what was then Derks Field. He recalled Giants’ center fielder Willie Mays tipping his hat to the crowd. From there he reminisced about watching baseball at Derks Field and Smith’s Ballpark for six decades, recalling his six decades of going to games and the thousands of photos he’s taken.
“The nostalgia,” he said, is what draws him to the park year in and year out.
“We will miss it,” Bonnie Williams added. “This is a piece of our history, a lot of memories.”
For baseball fans, there’s no better place to be than a ball field.
“It’s tough to beat a night at Smith’s Ballpark on a cool, late summer evening,” said Steve Miller, Larry H. Miller Company board chair, reflecting on the mountain glow, fall colors and freshly painted white lines on the green lawn and red dirt. “I can see it in my mind. All I have to do is describe it and it takes me there.”
He relished being at the ballpark with his family, especially when his kids were young, sipping a cold fountain drink loaded with ice and tearing open a bag of peanuts.
“I remember thinking how ironic it is that we always try to be so tidy yet you can open a bag of peanuts and sit and shell them right on the concrete and have that be an acceptable form of behavior. Nowhere else in America is that OK except in a ballpark,” said Miller, who sat in the stands rather than a suite.
“My only regret with that ballpark is of all the games I attended, I never caught a foul ball. Most nights I would take my glove. Never had an opportunity for a foul ball.”
That slice of Americana isn’t going away, just moving to a new location. And some aren’t particularly happy about that. One woman in a Dodgers hat wanted to know how to start a petition to keep the team from leaving the stadium.
The 14,300-seat stadium on the corner of 1300 South and West Temple was built in 1993 with city, county, state and private funds at a cost of $22.8 million after Joe Buzas announced plans to relocate his Triple-A Portland Beavers to Salt Lake City. It replaced 10,000-seat Derks Field, which had occupied the site and housed various minor league teams since 1928.
The basketball arena that the late Larry H. Miller built for the Utah Jazz is often called the “house that Larry built.” The same might be said of the baseball stadium. Miller was an unpaid consultant on the ballpark project, though he didn’t own the team at the time.
“That is very accurate. But it really was the opposite. He paid to be a consultant, not by choice. (Salt Lake City Mayor) Deedee Corradini asked him to oversee construction of the new ballpark but they were over budget and underfunded. He said, ‘I’ll make up the difference,’” Miller’s wife, Gail Miller, said in an interview this past week. Larry Miller also helped relocate residents whose houses were torn down for the stadium.
The park opened as Franklin Quest Field for the 1993 Pacific Coast League season with the team rebranded as the Salt Lake Buzz. “I have a really nice picture of Joe and Larry and Deedee cutting the ribbon,” Gail Miller said. Naming rights changed hands several times the past three decades — Franklin Covey Field, Spring Mobile Ballpark and, since 2015, Smith’s Ballpark.
Opening Day on April 11, 1994, ended in a 7-1 loss to the Edmonton Trappers. The first Salt Lake win came two days later over the Trappers, 6-5, in 10 innings.
Copyright issues with the team name forced a change from Buzz to Stingers in 2001. When Miller bought the team from Buzas in 2005, he immediately set out to rename it the Bees, the moniker used for Salt Lake City’s first Triple-A baseball team back in 1915 and for several other teams that came and went over the years. But that name now belonged to a minor league franchise in Burlington, Iowa. Miller eventually obtained permission to share the name on the condition he publish an ad in the Salt Lake team’s program advertising the Burlington Bees to fans who might travel to nearby Nauvoo, Illinois, an early headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a popular destination for Utahns.
Larry Miller also wanted the stadium to have a signature hot dog. He had employees taste various versions and make suggestions until “it was just right,” Gail Miller said. The Millers owned a company called All Star Catering at the time, so he dubbed the winning fare the All Star hot dog. It was sold at the concession stand until the gates closed Sunday.
Another mainstay in the park is the train that totes children back and forth behind the outfield wall. And not just children; parents and grandparents, too, have climbed aboard with them, including the likes of Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham and other prominent Utahns in politics and business.
On Saturday, Gail Miller came near home plate to shout what Reeves announced as the two most important words in baseball: “Play ball.” Hamilton Porter would be proud.
In 30 seasons, the stadium hosted 2,157 Buzz/Stingers/Bees games. The home team has won 1,139 and lost 1,018. Some notable players have suited up for Salt Lake, including three-time American League MVP Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels — the Bees’ parent club — and David Ortiz, who came to be known as “Big Papi” and won three World Series titles with the Boston Red Sox.
Construction on the Bees’ new stadium is well underway and on target for an April 8 opening in the Daybreak area of South Jordan, about 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Miller Company executives made the difficult decision to leave Salt Lake City after nearly a decade of considering their options, including exercising the option on its lease with the city to stay longer.
“How hard of a decision was it? It’s tough to quantify that. But I will tell you that it didn’t come easy. It came over a long period of time,” said Steve Miller, Larry H. Miller Company board chair.
Gail Miller and Steve Starks, Miller Company CEO, both cited crime and safety as well as parking in the Ballpark Neighborhood among the factors prompting the move. The stadium never became a catalyst for improving the area in the three decades it has been there. Other than for baseball games, the park is empty for most of the year as are the sidewalks surrounding it, making it a “magnet for nefarious behavior,” Starks.
Also, Starks said moving out of Salt Lake City “clears the market” for a future Major League Baseball team. The Miller Company is spearheading an effort to land a big league franchise, with plans to build a stadium in the Power District on the city’s west side. He said there would be enough distance between the major and minor league teams for both to thrive.
The Millers said moving to South Jordan, located in the fastest-growing area of the Salt Lake Valley, is the right decision for a number of reasons.
“It gives us a clean slate. We control our own destiny. It’s our property. It’s our development. It’s our ballpark. We now control every aspect of it operationally. Now, we own the risk as well, which is fine. We’re no strangers to that,” Steve Miller said.
The new stadium, which Starks said will have first-class amenities for players and fans, is part of Utah’s first sports-anchored, mixed-use development. Called Downtown Daybreak, the 200-acre site will include apartment buildings, restaurants and shops. The field and adjoining plaza would host concerts and other events making it more of a year-round venue. He said the environment will be akin to The Battery in Atlanta or Wrigleyville in Chicago.
“It will be more than a ballpark. It will be an entire district and I think people will love the experience of going there,” said Starks, who spent many summer nights at Bees games in his younger days.
Marc Amicone, the Bees general manager for 19 years and now the senior advisor for baseball operations for Big League Utah, said the new park will be a “great situation for players and player development is what we do.”
Though some see the new field as far away, it’s next to two major thoroughfares and a light-rail station. The 14000 South off-ramp on I-15 runs west to Daybreak. Interestingly, Larry Miller filled in a Utah Department of Transportation budget shortfall by buying some of the land needed to extend the exit, not knowing it would someday provide access to the stadium for his family’s baseball team.
“He did it just because he felt like it was the right thing to do and he could help the community,” Starks said. “Fast forward to today, he had no idea that this would even be a conversation.”
And the Millers didn’t leave Salt Lake City hanging with the move. The Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation donated $22 million toward redevelopment of the Ballpark neighborhood, specifically the stadium. The donation is part of a $100 million fundraising initiative to provide an investment into the city’s Ballpark NEXT project. Salt Lake City officials in collaboration with residents are considering options for reimagining the ballpark.
“We weren’t under any obligation to do that. We didn’t do it out of a sense of guilt or obligation. We did it because we felt like. … ‘how can we make this not necessarily a win-win but how can we leave this situation at least better than we found it?’” he said.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall told KSL.com last week that the city is negotiating with the University of Utah for the college team to play at Smith’s Ballpark.
Fans going to the new stadium also will be treated to a view of the Wasatch Mountains — perhaps even more expansive with Lone Peak and Mount Timpanogos to the south — as the field will be oriented the same as Smith’s Ballpark. Steve Miller said that feature was about as close to nonnegotiable as any aspect of the project could get. And Larry Miller’s All Star hot dogs will continue to be sold in the park.
“Not only is that a fan favorite, if there’s any alterations to that we hear it from Gail. It’s going to stay,” Starks said. “We’ll pay respect to the big guy and keep his dog there.”