Dazzling $9.6 Million Florida Estate With Its Own Baseball Field Comes Complete With a Home Run of a Backstory

Eight miles from Florida's Capitol, past a gated entrance, a magnolia-lined driveway delivers you to a 6,000-square-foot cypress home that took shape from a hand-drawn sketch made after a family ski trip. The 100-acre property, known as Old St. Augustine Hills, is now on the market for the first time in more than 20 years, with an asking price of $9.6 million, and comes with a story that any Florida State baseball fan will appreciate. The land's modern history began in 1960, when retired Navy captain Albert Gallatin Neal bought the acreage, dug its ponds and planted more than 4,000 trees across the idyllic plot, which is located just outside of Tallahassee. His widow, Margaret, fielded repeated offers from developers over the years and turned them all down, waiting instead for a family to take on the land. She found that family in 2003, when current owners David and René Hanselman bought the property, which fronts Old St. Augustine Road, a stretch of the historic El Camino Real dating to the 1680s.The Hanselmans took on not only a beautiful piece of land—but also a rich legacy in the world of college and professional baseball, one that was started by the Neal family, whose lives we...