Bisbee’s Warren Ballpark: America’s Oldest?

A bronze plaque erected by the City of Bisbee in May 1994 proclaims Warren Ballpark in that southeast Atizona municipality as the oldest baseball stadium in Arizona. But Bisbee’s boast may be too modest. This classic structure, which was constructed in 1909, may in fact be the oldest ballpark in the United States now being used for its intended purpose: baseball.

Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, which was built for the Southern Association Barons in 1910, has laid claim to the oldest ballpark honors. Historian Richard Bak wrote in 1994 that Rickwood is “the country’s oldest ballpark.” The National Park Service also recognizes Rickwood as the nation’s oldest baseball stadium in current use.

Rickwood officially opened in Alabama’s largest city on August 18, 1910. The Bi1mingham Barons occupied the park from 1910 through 1987. Rickwood was also used by the Negro League Black Barons from 1920 through 1960. The park, called “the best Minor League park ever built” by Phillip Lowry in his book Green Cathedrals, is patterned after Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field and is now owned by the Birmingham school district. Rickwood Field is presently being used by school teams.

But the opening of Bisbee’s Warren Ballpark predates Rickwood’s by one year. The Warren Company, a subsidiary of the Calumet & Arizona Mining Company, was created in 1907 to develop the “streetcar suburb” of Warren as a company town in the mold of the then-popular “City Beautiful” movement, but without democratic emphasis on citizen participation. As part of that effort, Warren Ballpark—a cast-in-place concrete structure with a wooden outfield fence was built at a cost of $5,000, opening on June 27, 1909. The ballpark, not coincidentally, was also the last stop on the Warren Company’s streetcar line.

Warren Ballpark was considered an immediate success. Warren Company president Colonel Louis W. Powell justified the construction expense for the Warren Ballpark in his 1909 annual report by saying that the park should “meet the demand for a place of amusement and also with the view of increasing the patronage of the electric line.”

In its original form, Warren Ballpark was 380 feet at its deepest point. But since being rebuilt in the 1930s by the WPA, the park has featured a 444 foot jag in left-center field. Warren’s other dimensions are 351 feet from home plate down the left field line, 390 feet to straightaway center and 394 feet to right.

Warren Ballpark has had a long and storied history. Semipro, company, and outlaw teams initially used Warren Ballpark. The first regular tenant was the City Beautiful club that was founded in 1908 with support from Warren Company president Powell. The team was organized to compete with similar aggregations representing Bisbee, Douglas, and Benson. In 1926 and 1927, the Bisbee Miners of the Copper League occupied the park. From 1928 to 1955, Warren Ballpark was home to various Bisbee-based professional minor league teams as follows:

 

Years	League	Level	Nickname	Affiliation
1928-30	Arizona State	D	Bees
1931-32	Arizona-Texas	D	Bees
1937-39	Arizona-Texas	D	Bees
1940-41	Arizona-Texas	C	Bees
1947	Arizona-Texas	C	Yanks	Yankees
1948	Arizona-Texas	C	Miners	Yankees
1949	Arizona-Texas	C	Copper Kings
1950	Arizona-Texas	C	Copper Kings	Dodgers
1951	Southwest Int’l	C	Copper Kings	Dodgers
1952-54	Arizona-Texas	C	Copper Kings
1955	Arizona-Mexico	C	Copper Kings

Note: From 1948-55, Bisbee shared a franchise with nearby Douglas.

 

Some of the most memorable highlights of Bisbee’s 19 minor league seasons include Bisbee’s two disputed championships in 1929 and 1930, and the start of a classic feud in 1947. In 1929, Bisbee squared off against the Miami Miners, a rival mining town about 90 miles east of Phoenix, in the Arizona State League playoffs. Bisbee entered the series with a .667 winning percentage, the best in the minors that year. In the seventh and deciding game of the championship series, Bisbee was leading in the ninth inning when fans in Miami stormed the field stopping the game and a “no contest” was declared. In 1930, the Bees won the second-half Arizona State League title but were again denied a chance to win the championship on the field. Facing a seventh game in the final playoff series, Globe refused to play in Bisbee and the Bees were awarded victory by forfeit and the league title.

In 1947, two Yankee farmhands began what would become a feud that would last for years. The rivalry started when the Phoenix Senators’ Billy Martin sought revenge after catcher Clint Courtney of the Bisbee-Douglas Yanks spiked one of Martin’s teammates. Retaliatory spiking, a fistfight, and just plain brawling continued throughout the season. The feud lasted into the 1950s when both men played for separate teams in the big leagues.

Many players took advantage of Warren Ballpark’s spacious outfield to lead the league in various offensive categories. Native son Clarence Maddern, a future big leaguer, won an RBI crown in 1941. The 1930 and 1931 Arizona State League batting champs, Tony Antista and Johnny Keane, hit .430 and .408 respectively, not only the highest averages in league history, but the highest averages in all of minor league baseball for those years. Antista, whose record was tied by Len Rodriguez of Cananea in 1954, ranks 19th on the all-time Minor League single season batting list.

Interestingly. the most important historical event to take place at the Warren Ballpark has nothing to do with baseball and is not mentioned on the plaque erected by the city. In 1917, the radical Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as the IWW or Wobblies, called a strike of the miners working in the Bisbee copper mines. The strike was particularly controversial because copper was in high demand for use during World War I. The strike led to a roundup of miners, their sympathizers, and even tradesmen who had done business with them. On the morning of July 12, 1917, a sheriff’s posse marched nearly 2,000 people, including three women, to the mining company-owned ballpark, and held them there under armed guard. The women were let go in short order and almost any man who promised to go back to work or could get a “respectable citizen” to vouch for him was released.

The remaining 1,200 miners were loaded onto 23 cattle cars of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, which belonged to Phelps Dodge, another major mining company. The miners were eventually abandoned in the desert near the small New Mexico settlement of Hermanas. Ironically, only intervention by the U.S. Army, which President Woodrow Wilson had refused to allow to intervene in the strike, saved the miners’ lives. However, the miners were not allowed to return to Bisbee and, for many years, the city remained divided between mining company defenders and those who sympathized with the strikers.

Phelps Dodge. which absorbed the Calumet & Arizona Mining Company in 1931, still operates in Bisbee, and the failure of the local authorities to mention what became known as the Bisbee Deportation is testimony that the wounds have not yet completely healed.

As for its intended use, the Warren Ballpark has not been vacant in the nearly forty years since the loss of professional baseball. Baseball and football teams from Bisbee High School and Lowell Middle School use the field, which is now owned by the Bisbee Unified School District. In 1994, Babe Ruth League play commenced at the ballpark. The park is also used for concerts and other special events.

The Warren Ballpark is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. Recent restoration work assures that the park will continue to stand as a monument to the past while serving as a training ground for the youth of Bisbee. If indeed Warren Ballpark is America’s oldest, it should remain so well into the 21st century.

David Skinner lives in Bisbee, Arizona and has been a member of SABR since 1983. He has particular interest in pre-integration black baseball. His articles on Arizona baseball history have appeared in the Bisbee Observer and Arizona Baseball Journal.