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Before Katrina, This Happened
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Twenty years since Hurricane Andrew, one of the legacies still visible is Homestead's empty baseball stadium. You'll recall that they spent county hotel tax money on a state-of-the-art baseball complex to attract the Cleveland Indians, but before they could even hold a single spring training there, Andrew blew through and destroyed everything around the park. 165 mph winds, over 60 dead, 180,000 without power, and if you saw it in '93 or '94, as I did, it was unbelievable devastation. The ballpark was wrecked, too, but rebuildable. And they did, but the Indians, seeing the Homestead area ravaged, broke their lease and stayed in Winter Haven. The park? Mostly empty, rarely used, and while an entrepreneur is trying to get things going there, it's a reminder of what happened and what could have been. (Miami Herald)
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