Blasts from the past!
By popular demand, here is BASEBALLPARKS.COM's
tribute to gone-but-not-forgotten parks
  When I was growing up in the '60s, it always seemed like my Reds
were battling the Phillies in 19-17 games -- and those run-filled battles
were usually taking
place here at Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium. The photo to the left was taken
during the park's last season in 1970. Previously called Shibe Park,
it was the home of Connie Mack's Athletics from 1909 through 1954, and
the Phillies called it home from 1938 through 1970. It was by no
means a huge stadium, as the largest crowd ever to watch a game there was
41,660 in 1947.
And just as the site of Wrigley Field was once a seminary, the Deliverance
Evangelistic Church (see 2001 photo to the right, which shows the intersection
of 21st and Lehigh) now sits atop the ground that this park once occupied.
Thanks to Bob Leposki for supplying the photo of Connie Mack
Stadium
  One
of America's most interesting Minor League parks was Sulphur Dell near downtown
Nashville. Aside from its historical value as being the site of baseball
games since the time of the Civil War, it is almost unimaginable in this day of
homogenized ballyards that real, honest-to-goodness pro baseball could be played
on a field such as this. Warren Corbett, who as a 17 year old in 1963 was
the play-by-play broadcaster for the Nashville Vols of the South Atlantic League
(the last year of pro baseball at the Dell), described the misshapen field this
way: "The slope began gradually a few steps behind the first baseman, then
shot up at a 45-dgree angle. It leveled off 235 feet out, forming a
10-foot-wide shelf. Then the 45-degree climb resumed to the
fence." That right-field fence was only 262 feet from home at the
foul pole. Today, the site is a parking lot for State of Tennessee
workers, as the State Capitol is just a few blocks away. The shot to the
left was provided by Tennessee resident Fred Sadler, who provided me with a
number of fascinating shots of this historic facility. My shot to the
right shows the plaque that was erected near what was the right-field foul
pole. A lovely fountain flows in the background. (There
is now a site devoted to Sulphur Dell
and its memory.)
 If you've seen football games or the Olympics (in person or on TV)
from LA's Memorial Coliseum, I'm sure it's hard to imagine how that place
could ever have been configured to play baseball. The consensus,
I think, was "not very well." This was the place, though, where the
Dodgers played for four seasons (starting in '58) after moving from Brooklyn
-- before moving to their new palace a few miles to the north in Chavez
Ravine. How about these
outfield dimensions in the Coliseum: the right field foul pole was
301 feet from home plate; right center was 440 feet away; dead center was
425; left center was 320; and the left field foul pole was an incredibly
short 252 feet from home. And look at these HR stats from the '58
season: eight HRs hit to right; three hit to center and 182 hit to
left! Left-handed Dodger outfielder Wally Moon perfected the art
of hitting pop flies to the opposite field -- which in the Coliseum was
a home run! These became known as "Moon Shots." And the
Dodgers did have success here, both financially -- they drew 93,103 for
a game in May '59 -- and on the field, as they won the World Series against
the White Sox that same year.
Thanks to friend and
Dodger fan Ken Rubin for supplying this vintage postcard
 
Oh, and do I have a warm spot in my heart for this place!!
I saw my very first pro baseball game in Cincinnati's Crosley Field in
1967 (the Braves beat the Reds, as I recall) -- and now
hundreds and hundreds of games later, the fire burns as brightly within
me as ever! Crosley had a very unique feature called "the terrace."
Instead of the standard warning track to warn outfielders that they were
nearing the outfield fence, the ground sloped upward (steeply!) right in
front of the wall. On a historical note, the first Major League night
game occurred here in May of 1935. Remnants of Crosley still exist
in nearby Blue Ash, Ohio, as a fan named Mark Rohr used pieces of the original
park to rebuild a smaller version of the stadium. I took the color photo
(with my cheesy Instamatic) just a few weeks before the Reds moved out
of Crosley and into Riverfront Stadium in the middle of the 1970 season.
And if you don't know who this player is, let me give you a hint:
he should be in the Hall Of Fame, but instead he is banned from baseball.
The classic black-and-white shot on the right was contributed by
BASEBALLPARKS.COM visitor Chuck Foertmeyer. His father took this photo in
1948.
 Where was the first All-Star Game held (Babe Ruth homered, by the
way) -- and the first Negro League All-Star Game? Which park once
had an Astroturf infield and natural grass everywhere else? Where
did Shoeless Joe Jackson patrol the outfield? If you said Chicago's
original Comiskey Park, you're right on the money! I only saw one
game here before
it was demolished (and the Sox moved into the ugly New Comiskey Park next
door), but I'm very thankful that I did, because it allows me to compare
the "old" Comiskey -- which had character and a sense of real baseball
history -- with the antiseptic New Comiskey. Yes, I know the
80-year-old park needed to be replaced, but the new stadium is so sterile,
so uninviting, so football-like that many are already talking about the
need for Comiskey III even before "Comiskey II" is a decade old.
My photo here was taken right after the new stadium opened (the building
on the right side of the picture is the new park towering over the original
Comiskey, on the left).
 
"The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!"
Even if you weren't alive in 1951 when Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard
'round the world," I know you've heard a tape of Russ Hodges' play-by-play
call as the New York Giants came from behind to defeat the hated Brooklyn
Dodgers in the bottom of the ninth in the final game of a play-off series
for the National League pennant. The park where this -- and many
other great baseball moments -- occurred was the Polo Grounds. And
it was the bizarre dimensions of the Polo Grounds that made Bobby Thomson's
name go down in baseball lore, as Oscar Palacios points out in his book
Ballpark
Sourcebook: Diamond Diagrams, as Thomson's drive traveled only
314 feet before it settled in the left field seats. In fact, it was
only 280 feet down the left field line, 258 feet to the right field
foul pole and dead center was an incredible 505 feet away!
As this somewhat grainy postcard from the 1930s shows (above left), the Polo Grounds
-- shown in the far left of the photo -- was very close to Yankee Stadium
(far right). The Hudson River is at the upper left corner of this
shot, and the Harlem River flows through the center, separating the upper
end of Manhattan from the Bronx. The photo on the right was taken (and
provided by) Woody Strong, a visitor to BASEBALLPARKS.COM. The
shot is from sometime in the '40s.
The postcard on the left is
from Ron Menchine's excellent book A Picture Postcard History of Baseball
If you have any photos of old Major League parks that you'd like
for me to use here, please e-mail me.
I'd love to have 'em!
|
