The Ballparks of Cleveland

While Cleveland’s baseball history dates back to the National Association of the 1870s, its important ballpark history essentially involves two locales: League Park and Municipal Stadium. Two versions of the former and one of the latter have sheltered variously named home teams in different leagues Since 1891. Recent developments promise to make a third baseball home of the twentieth century a reality, taking the franchise into the next century.

To give the nineteenth century its due, Cleveland’s teams played in several leagues between 1871 and 1890, moving from one wooden facility to another as shifting alliances, changing ownership, and newly formed leagues dictated. Like most of the era’s parks, Cleveland’s facilities were primarily wooden affairs, quickly and plainly built, convenient to public transportation.

The National Association Forest Citys played at Wilson Avenue (later East 55th Street) and Garden Street (later Central Avenue) from May 11, 1871 to August 19, 1872. Cleveland’s National League entry, the Spiders, occupied Kennard Street Park from May 1, 1879 to October 11, 1884. It was located on Silby Street, now named Carnegie Avenue, by Kennard Street (now East 46th) and Cedar Street. The city’s short-lived American Association team played the 1887 and 1888 seasons at a relatively large site on the present day streets of East 33rd to East 37th, Perkins and Payne Avenues. This spacious park with outfield fences 400 feet distant also hosted the National League Spiders for the 1889 and 1890 seasons. A large fire in June of 1890 seriously damaged this structure.

The first League Park took shape on Lexington Avenue between 66th and 70th Streets. Club owner Frank DeHaas Robison controlled the Lexington Avenue cable car line and built the ballpark there in 1891 to beef up the route’s patronage. The new park witnessed both legends and legendary futility. Cy Young pitched the opening day game on May 1, 1891. League Park also hosted the first “National League Championship Series” game on October 17. 1892 with split-season champs Cleveland (second half) playing Boston (first half). Cy Young and Boston’s Jack Stivett posed eleven scoreless innings before the contest was declared a tie. Boston would eventually win the next five games and take the best-of-nine series.

Futility came in 1889 and 1890, Cleveland’s last season in the National League. Club owner Robison acquired the St. Louis franchise and moved most of his best players there, leaving the Cleveland team to wither and die. Fans stayed away in droves and the team played twice as many games on the road as at home. Posting a 20-134 record in 1899 that was witnessed by just 6088 fans all season (37 dates), Cleveland set major league marks for failure and non-support.

A new league and team came to League Park in 1900. Ban Johnson’s American League circuit was recognized as a major league by 1901 and the Cleveland entry began its uninterrupted stretch of ninety years of play. Competition between the two leagues and real world forces that increased the sport’s standing as a profit-driven business would soon alter the face of ballparks for the next two generations. Ben Shibe in Philadelphia started the fireproof concrete and steel movement with his 1909 facility and soon every flammable brick and wooden grandstand looked obsolete. St. Louis and Pittsburgh followed that same year with a rebuilt Sportsman’s Park and new Forbes Field. On April 21, 1910, League Park was born again on the same site with an 18,000-seat creation the fourth “modern” park in baseball.

The new ballpark bore the stamp of the Osborn Engineering Company, a local firm that designed or remodeled most of the classic parks of this era. Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds in New York, Braves Field and reconstructed Fenway Park in Boston, the original Navin Field and the expanded Briggs Stadium (now Tiger Stadium) in Detroit, Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., the expanded Comiskey Park in Chicago, and the expanded Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis round out the list of their better known achievements. Osborn would also design League Park’s replacement, Municipal Stadium.

A current vice-president of the firm, Dale Swearingen, explained the circumstances that led company founder, Frank Osborn, to enter the business of ballpark building. In a September 18, 1989 New Yorker interview, Swearingen noted that Mr. Osborn had been a chief designer for a major bridge builder. His experiments and research with structural steel and concrete gave him the know-how to put together larger sports stadia. Osborn Engineering certainly captured the market. In a promotional brochure of the 1930s, they noted that their experience provided a “comfortable seat and a full view of the playing field for every spectator.” Fans might take exception to that statement after a game behind a column, but Swearingen also explained that posts allowed a designer to bring a second deck of seats closer to the field, unlike the many recent stadia that eliminate the posts but push the seats far away from the playing field. That promotional brochure addressed finances, claiming that “the skillful arrangement of space and economical structural design combine to produce a plant chat earns a worth while profit on the investment.”

League Park was set firmly in the urban framework, occupying most of a large city block and surrounded on three sides by the neighborhood’s houses and by a school and small businesses on the fourth. This cozy relationship trapped the park, leaving little room for expansion. While the club rarely needed a dramatic increase in seating (say for the 1920 World Series), the only way to add seats was from the inside, thus new sections were added that took away parts of the outfield and foul territory. Most of the era’s parks eventually expanded to seat 30,000 or more but League Park never had more than 21,500 seats and crowds over 25,000 put many fans on the field in right, shrinking the playing field by as much as fifty feet in some areas.

With its left field foul pole 375 feet from the plate and its right field pole a close 290, League Park was more rectangular than square, offering hitters a cavernous field from left to center. Batters soon caught on to lessons that were reinforced in other lopsided parks like Fenway, Ebbets, and Baker Bowl: hit to the short fence. Fielders too had to adjust as the wall’s steel beams caused frightful caroms, a common problem for outfielders at other parks of this time. Left and center fielders needed to stay alert to the short sets of wooden steps protruding from the bleacher wall.

League Park took on another name, Dunn Field, from 1916 to1927, in honor of club owner Jack Dunn. While it hosted but one World Series, that 1920 match-up with the Brooklyn Dodgers produced several outstanding moments. Bill Wambsganss completed the first and only unassisted triple play in Series history while fellow Indian Elmer Smith hit the first Series grand slam. With this as inspiration, Cleveland went on to victory, five games to two.

Other baseball greats had special moments at League. Babe Ruth clubbed his 500th career home run over the right field wall on August 11, 1929. T he boy who retrieved the ball received a$20 bill, an autographed ball, and a chance to join the Yankees on the dugout bench. Indian rookie pitcher Bob Feller struck out seventeen batters on September 13, 1936, giving local fans a taste of success to come. The Cleveland Buckeyes of the American Negro League won the 1945 championship playing at League Park. The legendary Satchel Paige played for the Cleveland Cubs in the 1930s at League when baseball was not yet open to black players.

Municipal Stadium wasn’t meant to be just a ballpark. City boosters in this ambitious community had often discussed building a large sports stadium during the 1920s, and perhaps the golden age of baseball that same decade made tiny League Park seem out of place.

The 40,000-seat Braves Field in Boston opened in 1915, ending the first wave of ballpark construction with a record capacity, and eight years later came Yankee Stadium, a 70,000- seat masterpiece. The times were definitely changing and Cleveland considered itself a big-league city, so it set its sights on the 1932 Olympics, passed a bond issue, and started construction on this huge facility. It took a little over a year and $3 million with completion by July 1,1931. Unfortunately, the Olympics went to Los Angeles, but Cleveland now had the first-class stadium it craved. The debut came with a July 3 boxing match between Max Schmeling and Young Stribling.

The Indians waited until the 1932 season to make their first appearance at Municipal, playing the league champion Philadelphia Athletics on July 31 before a massive throng of 76,997. The Indians played all of their 1933 games at Municipal which was a short walk from the heart of downtown, but success did not automatically follow them to the new location. A declining team batting average and the increased overhead of operating at Municipal convinced management to save the bigger park for Sunday and holiday games, cutting costs and boosting both batting and earned run averages in the more intimate League Park.

The Indians were the only major league team with two ballparks: cozy League Park for weekday games and expansive Municipal Stadium for holiday, weekend, and eventually night contests. The transition from League to Municipal was neither smooth nor swift. The two-park system would last from 1932 to 1946, when Indians owner Bill Veeck hitched his club’s finances to the 80,000-seat stadium by the shores of Lake Erie. This proved to be a wise move as the 1948 pennant winning team drew 2,620,627 fans, a major league record that stood until the Los Angeles Dodges played their first season in the new Dodger Stadium in 1962.

Babe Ruth is credited with saying that one would need a horse to play the outfield at Municipal and the original dimensions back him up. The foul lines were modest enough at 322 feet in1932, but the450-foot power alleys and a center field of 470 feet discouraged home runs and made outfield speed a priority. All subsequent changes to the distances have brought the fences closer to home plate with a major concession made by Veeck in1947. An inner fence reduced the center field mark to about 400 feet and made the power alleys a more attainable 365 feet. Veeck also admitted that he had his groundskeepers periodically shift these fences as much as fifteen feet in the dark of night in response to certain pitching matchups and visiting team characteristics. If true, no one ever noticed! To this day, no batter has reached the bleacher seats in center field.

There was always plenty of room in the stands and many of the game’s attendance records have been set at Municipal. The Dodgers broke some of Cleveland’s marks with their World Series games at the Coliseum (which was expanded for an Olympics – the one Cleveland wanted!). Municipal Stadium remains the largest park in baseball, but for many years Yankee Stadium was a close rival. As chairs replaced benches and fire law enforcement and renovation took their effect, Yankee Stadium slowly lost seating capacity. By 1970, it held about 65,000 and it fell to 55,000 after the controversial renovation. Smaller ballparks now seem more in style, so it’s doubtful that Municipal will be repeated in any major league community.

Municipal has had its share of both the famous and infamous. Who can forget the Nickel Beer Night of June 4, 1974 when unruly fans powered by the inexpensive suds took over the field? On the more positive side, Ted Williams hit his 500th home run here in 1960 (and he also hit his only inside-the-part home run here); Len Barker hurled a perfect game in 1981; and Bob Feller set several strikeout marks. Joe DiMaggio had his hitting streak halted at Municipal Stadium on July 17, 1941. It had reached 56 games the day before at League Park. The 1948 and 1954 pennant winning teams kept Municipal Stadium an exciting place, but the past thirty years have been less kind to Cleveland baseball as large crowds are relatively infrequent.

The third ballpark for Cleveland in this century is not yet designed, but one can safely say that the previous two well reflected their eras. League Park fit into the urban grid on an established site with mostly private financing. Municipal broke ground in a new lakefront landfill, publicly underwritten and built in grand scale. Baseball was the prime tenant for both parks initially, but both sites embraced other sports and activities. League took in extra activity for economic survival; Municipal was designed for many sports and activities and took advantage of its flexibility. Parts of League Park, a seating section and ticket office, still exist. One suspects that Municipal may endure for another decade or more and then be difficult to dispose.

The next Cleveland ballpark will rise on the southern edge of downtown at East 9th Street and Carnegie Avenue, a part of a larger project including an arena, hotel, and office building. With proper design, it could be as closely linked to its neighborhood as League Park was nine decades earlier. In this case, a “baseball only” facility would benefit the fans and avoid the multi-purpose style of a municipal stadium, a grand stadium, but not a satisfactory baseball park.