Philip Spiess
Histories of baseball and other sports are long and complicated, filled with wins and losses, names of team members, statistics, franchise buyouts and trades, and many other things. In order to respond to Chuck Cole’s request on the history of the Cincinnati Reds, I am going to dodge most of those things, letting those interested in the arcana of team sports report on those. But as a lagniappe, or perhaps an appetizer, to my main reporting on the Cincinnati Reds baseball team in the 19th century, I offer the following (in order to buy me a little time to draw together the basics of the historical information requested):
NOTES ON CROSLEY FIELD: A Time Line
1869: Union Cricket Grounds (on the site where Cincinnati Union Terminal now stands), at the western end of Lincoln Park, served as the first ballpark for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, America’s first professional baseball team. (The team's name was shortened to the Cincinnati Reds in 1890.)
1875-1879: The reorganized baseball team of the Cincinnati Red Stockings played its home games at a ballpark known as Avenue Grounds (also known as Brighton Park and Cincinnati Baseball Park). Atlases of the period show this park to have been located two short blocks west of Spring Grove Avenue at Alabama Avenue, between the rairoad tracks and the Mill Creek (on a north-south line, between the old Cincinnati Stockyards and the Cincinnati Workhouse). The park had a grandstand that could seat up to 3,000 people, and was distinguished in baseball history for two events: (1) it held the first major league Ladies' Day in 1876, and (2) it was the park where the first home run ever was hit in professional baseball. The park was used through the mid-1890s for various sports, even after the Red Stockings had left in 1879.
1882-1883: The Bank Street Grounds ballpark, located northwest of the intersection of Bank Street and McLean Avenue (the "foot of Bank Street"), was home to the yet-again reorganized (1882) Cincinnati Red Stockings of the American Association (the current Reds franchise, which moved to the National League in 1890) from 1882 to 1883. When the new Union Association ball club, the "Cincinnati Unions" (better known as the "Cincinnati Outlaw Reds") team took over the Bank Street Grounds in 1884, the Red Stockings team moved to "Findlay and Western" (see below). (The Bank Street Grounds was also the home park of the short-lived "Cincinnati Stars" team -- 1880 only -- of the National League.)
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1884-1901: “Findlay and Western,” the intersection of Findlay Street (on the south) and Western Avenue (on a northwest angle) in western downtown Cincinnati, east of the Mill Creek and the major railway lines, was the location of three different baseball parks for the Cincinnati Reds from 1884 to 1970. The first baseball park was League Park. Mathias “Matty” Schwab served as groundskeeper at the park (and then at Crosley Field) from 1894 until 1963 [!]; thus the park was sometimes called “Schwab’s Field.”
1902-1911: The second baseball park at “Findlay and Western” was the Palace of the Fans.
1911-1912: Between the 1911 and the 1912 seasons, the entire seating area of the Palace of the Fans and the remaining seating from the original League Park were demolished.
1912-1933: The third baseball park, Redland Field, featured a new stadium, the third steel-and-concrete stadium built in the National League (Chicago's Wrigley Field and Boston's Fenway Park remain in use today). Built by Cincinnati architect Harry Hake, Sr., for $225,000, the grandstand was double-decked with single deck pavilions extending outward and bleachers in right field (later known as the “Sun Deck”). Because the angled covered areas had a distinctive V-shape, the park was nicknamed “The Old Boomerang.”
1934-1970: Cincinnati businessman Powell Crosley, Jr., buys the struggling (because of many years of being a mediocre team, attendance was usually low) Cincinnati Reds in 1934; the ballpark is renamed Crosley Field in honor of the man who rescued the team. (Crosley also advertises his Crosley radios and automobiles on the outfield fences.) Crosley Field was considered among the smallest of the major league baseball parks: in 1912, its capacity was 25,000 seats; at its peak, it had just above 30,000 seats.
1935: Because it had long been plagued by low attendance, the Reds convince major league baseball owners to allow night baseball at Crosley Field. Thus by May 24, 1935, 632 individual lamps on eight stanchions had been installed, the Reds played the Philadelphia Phillies, and President Franklin Roosevelt lit up Crosley Field by pressing a button at the White House.
1936-1937: Crosley Field, in addition to the Reds, serves as the home of the Negro League’s Cincinnati Tigers baseball team.
1937: Crosley Field is flooded by the Ohio River flood of 1937, the worst flood in the recorded history of the Ohio River; the field is under twenty feet of water. The original 1937 Cincinnati Bengals football team plays home games at Crosley Field.
1938: The Reds host Cincinnati’s first All-Star Game on July 6, 1938 (they hosted a second one in 1953).
1939: Roofed upper decks are added to the left and right wing pavilions [see above], giving the ballpark the appearance it would have for the rest of its existence.
1940s-1950s: Events at Crosley Field include: a political rally for presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie; a Roy Rogers rodeo (the “King of the Cowboys” was born in Cincinnati as Leonard F. Slye); and an Ice Capades show [!].
1961: Powell Crosley, Jr., dies; Bill DeWitt purchases the Cincinnati Reds.
1966: The Beatles perform at Crosley Field, August 21, 1966, on their final tour.
1970: Crosley Field closes on June 24, 1970, as the Cincinnati Reds move to Riverfront Stadium. Cincinnati mayor Eugene Ruehlmann symbolically takes up home plate at Crosley Field and flies it by helicopter to Riverfront Stadium, installing it in the artificial turf. (Crosley Field’s small size, lack of adequate parking in the neighborhood, the rise of crime in the area, and planning for a national football franchise in Cincinnati to possibly share a stadium with baseball all contribute to its closing.)
1972: Crosley Field, having been bought by the city and used as an auto impound lot, is demolished on April 19, 1972.
1974-1984: Larry Luebbers builds a replica of Crosley Field on his farm in Union, Kentucky, with memorabilia he had collected from Crosley Field during its demolition. It includes seats, signage, the ticket booth, and advertising on the fences. He opened it for the Cincinnati Suds professional softball team (which he owned), but eventually he had to sell off the whole farm to settle his finances.
1988: Marvin Thomson, then city manager of Blue Ash, Ohio, makes one of the ballfields of the city’s new community sports complex a re-creation of Crosley Field, using collected memorabilia from old Crosley Field (donated by fans), including 400 original seats. The field is used by various teams at various levels of play, but it is home field of Moeller High School’s varsity baseball team.
[Key books on the Cincinnati Reds and Crosley Field are: Lee Allen: The Cincinnati Reds (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1948); and Greg Rhodes and John Erardi: Cincinnati’s Crosley Field: The Illustrated History of a Classic Ballpark (n.p.p.: Road West Publishing, 1995).]
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