Payne Park was a center of spring training and professional baseball in Sarasota from 1924, when the New York Giants opened spring training there, until 1988, when the Chicago White Sox played their last spring game there, and the stadium was torn down in 1990. Calvin N. and Martha E. Payne sold the 60-acre tract on which the stadium was built to the City of Sarasota and Sarasota County for $18,000 in 1923, with terms requiring development as a fairground and public park and allowing space for a baseball diamond if a major league team agreed to train in Sarasota. The Sarasota County Fair opened the following January, a month before the Giants arrived, after John Ringling and Samuel Gumpertz helped persuade Giants manager John McGraw to bring the team to Sarasota, where it played exhibition games from 1924-1927. As downtown Sarasota grew, the fairgrounds moved east, but professional baseball remained the main attraction at Payne Park. The Indianapolis Indians held spring training games there from 1929-1932, followed by the Boston Red Sox from 1933-1958, except for three years during World War II when spring training was suspended, and crowds came to see players including Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson. After the Red Sox moved their spring games to Arizona, the Los Angeles Dodgers played a handful of games there in 1959 while Sarasota sought another team. The Chicago White Sox began spring training there in 1960 and continued a relationship with Sarasota that outlasted the field itself. By the mid-1980s, city and county officials decided to phase out baseball activities at Payne Park and build a more modern sports stadium, and the White Sox and Texas Rangers played the last major league game there on March 30, 1988, after which the White Sox' sign moved to their new spring quarters at Ed Smith Stadium on 12th Street.