Recreation Park (Grand Rapids, MI)

Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Recreation Park, which stood from 1894 to 1900, was one of several professional baseball parks of the era to use this name. Detroit won its first world championship in 1887 in a Recreation Park; therefore, one needn’t travel outside of the state even to find another. So, the name itself suggests a generic afterthought to match its hasty construction. There was little that was original and certainly nothing that was elegant about this long-forgotten American League cradle. It was a humble, transitional witness to legend.

Both its hurried name and its transient nature fit perfectly though: a last-minute name for a quickly assembled structure hosting a newly begun franchise in a revived, once-dormant league that refused definition as even a top-flight minor league. Ban Johnson’s reconstituted Western League seemed minor in name alone, always expected to eventually turn rogue and declare itself a major league. Grand Rapids was never assured a permanent franchise in that league: Its team faced yearly renewal decisions, while other towns, mostly former major league cities, enjoyed five-year terms.1

All seemed a wager, and fittingly, the man responsible for the Grand Rapids Western Leaguers and Recreation Park was a professional gambler whose wagering pool operations accepted bets on everything from Wall Street price fluctuations to sporting events to the outcomes of presidential elections. George E. Ellis had blustered his way onto the circuit. He pledged $10,000 cash, about a quarter of his worth, to secure a franchise without baseball experience, without the slightest notion of who would play for his team or where it would play.2 

Large enough by this time to have traded much of its forests and farmland for a manufacturing sprawl fueling its rise as “The Furniture Capital of America,” Grand Rapids was a city of 87,565 residents at the turn of the 20th century.3 Yet it did not have sufficient population to warrant as many dedicated recreational parks or palaces for professional athletics as New York, Chicago, or Philadelphia. Parks within the city were leftover spaces of unpurchased private lands, or remainder properties unrented by often-absentee speculators. Public green spaces in the growing city were becoming fewer, and those that remained tended to be shrinking.4

Since organized professional baseball’s first appearance in the city in 1883, Grand Rapids struggled with where to house its teams. On and off for a decade, teams played in four different league berths and in as many different parks. Each grounds proved inadequately built for WL purposes or poorly located. Alger (Ramona) Park at Reed’s Lake was sizable enough, but at four miles from the city center, was impractical for weekday games and was held as a last resort or as a Sunday option when Blue Laws challenged.5

After debating the matter all through the winter of 1894, Ellis and his fellow Grand Rapids diamond boosters finally centered on Smith’s Addition, also known as Centennial Plat. The grounds were constructed in a vacant area of yet-to-be rented lots amid what today might be zoned as “mixed use.” The space was located on the eastern side of Division Avenue, a few blocks south of Hall, flanked to the north by the Detroit, Lansing, and Northern railroad tracks about two miles south of downtown.6  

Ground was broken the first week of March 1894, and all was completed in time for the season opener five weeks later at a cost of $2,000.7 A modest crescent-shaped grandstand was built to seat 1,200, with open bleachers on either side to welcome several hundred more. The adjacent sawyers’ mills flanking the property provided the wood, and fences were said to have been made from “the best lumber” to prevent youngsters from discovering knotholes for free viewing.8 In 1898, two additional stands were added,9  one further along the first-base line and the other in the right-field corner in foul territory, bringing seating capacity to about 2,800.10

Given the period’s travel necessities, the location was excellent, and the park was as well-connected as any stadium in baseball at the time. It helped explain why even some rotten Grand Rapids teams succeeded financially while other, more successful squads playing in larger cities – Omaha and Columbus—failed. There was a railroad substation nearby where teams could finish a series and hop aboard the train for a travel date. Also, the Division Avenue Streetcar line provided fans with a two-mile journey from downtown for the price of a nickel in as few as 15 minutes.11 Patrons arriving via the Division Avenue line walked through a collection of lumber stacks and sheds to reach the grandstand. For those who biked to games, Recreation Park provided rack space and locking mechanisms for a token fee, issuing a seat cushion for the stands as a bonus.12

Few photographs of Recreation Park survive, and none give a complete architectural view. What can be reconstructed comes from newspaper images, scattered descriptions, and Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. These indicate that the grandstand stood well east of Division Avenue, perhaps about 400 feet from the curb, and that it faced due east.13 This placed the late-afternoon sun in the eyes of every defensive player save the catcher, a frequent complaint.

The field dimensions were unbalanced even by the relaxed standards of the Deadball Era. Recreation’s third base line and left field were snug against the railroad tracks, with the corner sliced off at under 230 feet behind a freight depot.

The frequent utterance “hit one over the depot” was a Furniture City expression for a fence clearance that won the batsman only two bases.14 Because the left field corner was so shallow, there were two white poles in that corner—the foul pole, and a ground rule pole to its right. A fair ball clearing the fence between the poles entitled the batter to two bases only, not a homer—a universal ground rule mandated by an 1892 rules change.15 Grand Rapids was not alone in this; the early Western League grounds in Detroit16 and Minneapolis17 were known for their similarly short porches.

The center field distance is a contentious point. Period sportswriter Charles P. Woodward replied to a Kansas City colleague who belittled the dimensions of the park, stating that center measured 610 feet.18  Sanborn maps and other visual evidence expose this as windy, rival club journalism. Allowing for a fence to come all the way back to the Jefferson Avenue curb, center field played no more than 420 to 425 feet.19  Right field was a more standard distance at roughly 285 feet.20 The players’ benches stood along the front wall of the stands, the full regulation 90 feet behind the plate.21 Players could enter the park through the grandstand, emerging between the benches to the field, and cross the diamond to the right-field corner to access the clubhouse. The grounds were not always leveled perfectly smooth, and the infield was a mélange of sand and stubbled grass. With the prevailing westerlies off Lake Michigan, sawdust from the mills a stone’s throw away blew in to choke the grass.22 Spectators traversing the airborne dust frequently complained, as did players trying to track unpredictable bounders across the infield hodgepodge.23 

Its architectural and groundskeeping shortcomings aside, the park provided a mixture of familiarity and uniqueness that is often fondly remembered in parks of these times. The standard Western League admission prevailed – a quarter granted admission into the park and available bleacher seating, while an additional 25 cents provided space in the covered grandstand that, by afternoon, was shaded from the sun.24 Just beyond the bleachers on the third-base side, a nine-foot-long wooden fence stood; behind it, the booster club stood and cheered. The area was named “Burkeville” in honor of a similar section of property at New York’s Polo Grounds.25 George Ellis and his team partner William C. Chinnick established a concession booth underneath the grandstand, while vendors afoot hawked bottled soda, peanuts, and scorecards. The score was painted on large white sheets on a makeshift board to the left of Burkeville.26  

As in many high-league parks, the fans often were part of the field of play. This was an era when the signs never read “sold out” but maybe “seating on the grass,” where patrons were directed to sit if open seating in the bleachers had run out. Since home and away team equally shared revenue from general admission, no fans and their quarters were turned away. A Sunday game in Recreation Park against a league leader such as Indianapolis or Minneapolis would have a crowd standing all the way back to the right-field corner, with players wading through a sea of humanity just to reach the bench.27

And it is a tribute to the fandom of Grand Rapids that Recreation Park often accommodated these crowds despite their club’s showing on the field. After Ellis’ 1894 entry finished the first season two games under .500, the city suffered through three straight last-place seasons. When Ellis sold his club to partners Robert Leadley and Bob Glenalvin in 1897, the team bottomed at 34-100.  After the 1897 campaign, Grand Rapids lost its first Western League franchise, but not for lack of fan support: Rather, Leadley forfeited the team after refusing to pay his players. President Johnson recognized this, came to regret his decision removing the franchise from the city, and soon worked to rectify what he considered an error in judgment.28 

For the 1898 and first half of the 1899 season, Recreation Park hosted the Furnituremakers, a clunky-monikered franchise which played in the B-tiered Interstate circuit. With his mind on the turnstiles, owner and manager Frank Torreyson added more bleachers to the field, as well as a new clubhouse. However, fans used to higher-level baseball did not turn out for the new team, playing as it was in the farthest-flung city of what was essentially an overextended Ohio league.29 Torreyson was anxious to leave, Grand Rapids was quick to oblige him, and when it was clear things were failing for Tom Loftus and the Western League in Columbus, both he and Johnson were eager to return the high league to Western Michigan. A unique trade of franchises and leagues was soon arranged.30            

Recreation Park’s greatest historical importance lies in the players who appeared there, especially during the 1899 season, when Loftus shifted his Columbus club to Grand Rapids in midseason—Torreyson taking his place in the Buckeye capital city. The Grand Rapids Prodigals of 1899 and Recreation Park signified the final gate opening for not one but two players bound for Hall of Fame careers:. Sam Crawford and George Edward “Rube” Waddell. 

Crawford, the longtime Detroit Tigers slugger, first caught the eye of the baseball establishment in the Furniture City. A strapping woodsman not quite 20 years old, he batted .324 with the team. The future major league career leader in triples easily led the team in that category with 13. He finished the season with 27 extra base hits, close to manager George Tebeau’s team-leading 31, despite joining the team on July 9 and playing only 68 games to Tebeau’s 125.31

Crawford’s oral history in Lawrence S. Ritter’s 1966 book The Glory of Their Times provides us color about the park and the doings of an even more colorful teammate: Waddell. The elderly Crawford recounted the legend of the Rube’s late arrival for an important game, through the grandstands as he shed every stitch of his street clothes on his way to the clubhouse for his uniform. Fully suited, he then arrived at the uncovered players’ bench a few moments later, pouring water on his left arm lest he burn up the catcher’s mitt.32 

The three Grand Rapids daily newspapers never recorded this story, but they confirm that Waddell was a draw to “that little park,” as Crawford put it decades later, and his on-the-field antics made him a clear favorite with fans.33 Nonetheless, some of the nonconformist larks for which he became a legend hurt both the team’s cause and his own in the end. Specifically, he took three unannounced vacations from the team,34 likely geared in vain attempts to force Loftus to release the hurler’s option back to Louisville, the National League team that held his contract.35 He also wore out his arm pitching both ends of a doubleheader and then coming back the next day to win in his third consecutive game pitched.36 Waddell was simultaneously barnstorming for a local semipro team north of town,37 and the press observed his proclivity towards binge-drinking.38 The combination kept the childlike eccentric from achieving a 30-win season in the league’s 126-game season; he finished instead at 28-13.39 But it was Recreation Park and Grand Rapids where Waddell’s talent was successfully employed.  Loftus and Tebeau’s soft-handed approach with their burgeoning superstar would later be employed by Connie Mack during the high point of the pitcher’s career.  

Though the Western League barely missed major-league status, the Grand Rapids Western League grounds hosted some of the greatest names of the era. Joe McGinnity and Roger Bresnahan, later batterymates on the 1905 World Series champion New York Giants, were visitors to the park in their minor-league days. Mack skippered the Milwaukee Brewers and caught his final game of organized ball there on Labor Day, 1899.40 

Some authorities considered the statistics earned by future major league players in Recreation Park and other Western League stadiums to be part of their major league records. One such authority was the early Ban Johnson-dominated National Commission.41  Though a controversial consideration rejected this claim in 1969, it goes to show the stature of this circuit, and the part that Recreation Park has in its history.

The field hosted more than just baseball. Some of the city’s earliest high-school football games were played in Recreation Park, including a heavily attended 1894 contest in which Grand Rapids (Central) High School faced the University of Michigan’s freshman team in 1894.42  The sawed-off dimensions did not allow the gridiron to be painted any way other than with the permanent stands cupping the western end zone. Fans in the midfield stood and followed the ball’s progress along the sidelines—bleachers along the sidelines were erected only for the 1899 football season.43  Grand Rapids newspapers advertised the occasional Wild West Show and circuses that used the easy on-and-off freight depot just beyond the left-field wall.

Once the Western League under Johnson was firmly established as more than just a minor league, but rather a force soon destined to revolutionize the sport, Recreation Park fell behind the changing times. There was talk of a newer, modern park to keep up with the Western Joneses—a grandstand sporting an upper and lower deck and seating for 3,000, with a concrete base and dedicated space for food services. However, it came to naught.44

On October 11, 1899, the Western League changed its name to the American League, now with a circuit stretching from Kansas City to Buffalo. A national moniker belied Johnson’s continued plans for expansion. Johnson and Loftus never regretted returning Western League baseball to The Furniture City for its impressive attendance. The city clearly appreciated the opportunity of being the smaller town in what was very nearly a major league and would soon become one in fact. However, the National League abandoned Cleveland and opened the South Side of Chicago to Johnson at this same time. There remained no room for Grand Rapids in American League plans, and the Prodigals were transferred to Cleveland in February 1900.  Recreation Park was torn down the same year, its usable lumber recycled to the East Grand Rapids diamond.45  The land was excavated shortly after the turn of the 20th century for the Macey Building, producers of mail-order furniture. A fire destroyed the abandoned factory in 1977.46 

No part of Recreation Park exists today. The land is now a fenced-in green space which provides drainage, situated behind a substation for the local rapid transit system. Briefly at the edge of major-league possibility, the memory of Recreation Park remains a worthwhile part of baseball history as one of the future American League’s bygone venues.

 

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Kurt Blumenau and Rory Costello and checked for accuracy by SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credits: Grand Rapids Evening Press, August 26, 1899.

 

Notes

1 Charles P. Woodward, “Grand Rapids Glad,” Sporting Life, January 21, 1896.

2 E. W. Dickerson, “Ellis At One Time Was Strong Figure In Baseball World,” Grand Rapids Herald, February 11, 1921: 5.

3  https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1900/volume-1/volume-1-p9.pdf

4 Albert Baxter, History of the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan (New York: Munsell & Company, 1891), 405.

5 “The Base Ball Park,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, March 7, 1894: 4.

6 “The Base Ball Park,”

7 “Sporting Notes,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, March 13, 1894: 3.

8 “At Recreation Park,” Grand Rapids Democrat, March 7, 1894: 4.

9 “Play At Home Today,” Grand Rapids Herald, April 23, 1899: 9.

10 “To Help Him Out,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, August 8, 1898: 3.

11 “The Base Ball Park,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, March 7, 1894: 4.

12 “For Free Cushions,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, April 6, 1898: 4.

13 “The New Base Ball Park,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, June 19, 1897: 8.

14 “One Game For Each,” Grand Rapids Herald, July 5, 1894: 1.

15 Henry Chadwick, ed., Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide, 1892 (Chicago: A.G. Spalding & Bros., 1892), Playing Rule 40, https://archive.org/details/spaldingsbasebal189chic/page/166/mode/2up

16 https://www.retroseasons.com/stadiums/western-league-park/history/bio/

17 Kristin M. Anderson and Christopher W. Kimball, “The Mysterious ‘Base Ball Park Minneapolis’,” Minnesota History, Spring 2012. https://storage.googleapis.com/mnhs-org-support/mn_history_articles/63/v63i01p015-023.pdf

18 Charles P. Woodward, “Grand Rapids Roused,” Sporting Life, April 13, 1895: 9.

19 “Instantaneous Photographs Of The Grand Rapids Base Ball Team,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Herald, August 26, 1899: 9.

20  None of the distances are stipulated by period journalism but are reckoned through photographic interpretation of surviving photographs and placement of the grandstand in Sandborn Fire Insurance maps.

21 Western League—Games Played Sept. 16—Grand Rapids vs. Kansas City at Grand Rapids (Box Score commentary), The Sporting Life, September 29, 1894.

22 “The New Base Ball Park,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, June 19, 1897: 8.

23  “Reuben Waddell Delivering the Ball,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, August 26, 1899: 9.

24 “Base Ball!” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, July 27, 1899: 2.

25 “In The Idol Corner,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Herald, August 26, 1899: 9.

26 “In Grand Rapids’ Burkeville,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Herald, August 26, 1899: 9.

27 “Mr. Loftus’ Team Could Not Be Beaten That Day,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Herald, September 9, 1899: 9.

28 “Today Decides It,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, July 12, 1899: 7.

29  Five of the ISBLs eight teams played in Ohio, a sixth played on Wheeling Island, WV (on the Ohio River making the Ohio state line), and a seventh was located in Fort Wayne, IN, fifteen minutes out of Ohio by rail.

30  “For Western League Ball,” Grand Rapids Herald: 8.

31 Statistical information compiled from box scores from The Sporting Life, triangulated with the Grand Rapids Herald and the Grand Rapids Democrat. Reach and Spalding place Waddell’s Columbus/Grand Rapids record at 26-8, woefully short, and Sam Crawford’s average at .334. Box scores from every game of the 1899 Grand Rapids season taken from three different journalistic sources – all agreeing – are at conflict with the annuals on these and many other records, some significantly. Waddell biographer Alan Levy incorrectly credits Waddell with 30 wins. Triangulated box scores from The Grand Rapids Herald, The Grand Rapids Democrat, and The Sporting Life – all matching – yield a 28-13 record in 40 starts, 34 completed, two relief appearances, in a total of 42 pitching outings in 1899 for Columbus/Grand Rapids.

32 Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 49.

33 Ritter, 49.

34 “Was After Reuben,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, July 27, 1899: 4.

35 “Reuben Has Gone,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, August 7, 1899: 4.

36 “He Wanted Too Much,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, August 16, 1899: 4.

37 Alan Levy, Rube Waddell (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2000)” 40-41.

38 “Was Lost By Waddell,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, September 4, 1899: 4.

39 Statistical information compiled from box scores from The Sporting Life, triangulated with the Grand Rapids Herald and the Grand Rapids Democrat.

40 “Game Won And Lost,” Grand Rapids Herald, September 5, 1899: 8.

41 Ritter, 47-48. This Western League stats inclusion argument is how Ritter ascribes Sam Crawford a 3,000-hit career (officially he finished with 2,963 hits.)  The debate over WL stats was put to rest in 1969 when the Special Committee on Baseball Research, in reporting its findings of which defunct leagues could be considered “major,” stated that the Western/American League constituted a “minor” league before 1901. This argument, however, illustrates the high esteem the Western League enjoyed in its time and how it may be regarded today.  

42 “Yellow And Blue,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, November 30, 1894: 1.

43 “From Bleachers,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, September 20, 1899: 1.

44 “The New Base Ball Park,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, June 19, 1897: 8.

45 “In The New Ball Park,” Evening (Grand Rapids) Press, April 28, 1900: 5.

46 “Warehouse Fire Destroys Block,” Grand Rapids Press, July 18, 1977: 1.