Wrigley Field, Avalon

The Cubs trained here for thirty seasons; the stadium came down in 1966

In February 1919 William Wrigley Jr., the chewing-gum magnate and new principal owner of the Chicago Cubs, crossed the San Pedro Channel to see an island he had bought sight unseen. "My goodness. It is a mountain, I thought it was flat," he said as the fog lifted off Santa Catalina. His wife Ada looked out of their hotel window the next morning and said she would like to make it her home, and Wrigley decided the island should never leave his hands. Two years later he married his two passions: from 1921 his Cubs would train on Catalina every spring.

The first spring game was played in Avalon in 1921, against an island team calling itself the Catalina Cubs, but as late as 1922 the players were still doing much of their work on the beach while Wrigley's engineers hunted the steep terrain for level ground. They found it in Avalon Canyon, beside the oldest continuously operating golf course west of the Mississippi. The plans called for an irrigated, sodded field laid out to the exact dimensions of Wrigley Field in Chicago, eucalyptus trees along the third-base line to shade fans and stop stray golf balls, and grandstands for a thousand. In 1928 a mission-style clubhouse with a red tile roof and Catalina tiles went up on the hillside beyond centre field. It is now the Catalina Island Country Club.

Wrigley built his own spring bungalow on a hill he named Mount Ada, with a clear line of sight to the diamond. With a telescope, it was said, he could watch practice, and players he thought were loafing were summoned to run the zigzag trail up to the mansion to wish him a penitent good night. Camp brought its own island rituals: goat hunts in the backcountry, fishing off the pier, Charlie Grimm leading sing-alongs on banjo and piano, an 11 p.m. curfew, and ads urging fans back in wintry Chicago, "The Cubs Are Here! Why don't you come, too?" A young radio sportscaster named Ronald "Dutch" Reagan covered the team there, and Rogers Hornsby, Hack Wilson and Joe McCarthy all passed through.

The Cubs trained on Catalina until 1951, except during the Second World War, when the island became a military training ground and lookout station. In 1952 the team moved its camp to Mesa, Arizona. The ballpark was demolished in 1966, and a plaque below the golf course now marks where it stood. When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" rang out over Avalon Canyon on the Catalina Chimes.