Rodeos And Circuses At Yankee Stadium
This article was written by Sharon Hamilton
This article was published in Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark
Bonnie McCarroll riding Morning Glory, Tex Austin’s Rodeo, Yankee Stadium. (Courtesy of National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.)
The same year in which the House That Ruth Built began to house baseball games, it also hosted events of a very different sort. That summer, workers laid down 100,000 square feet of mats made from coconut coir to save “Babe Ruth’s front yard” from possible damage during the first rodeo held at Yankee Stadium, which ran from August 15 to August 26, 1923. This protection proved necessary in more ways than imagined. The planned entertainments for Yankee Stadium that summer included a Tex Austin Rodeo that spun wildly out of control: on the event’s opening day, a cowgirl was trampled by a wild horse; a rider was thrown by an angry steer and seriously injured; and spectators in lower left-field seating had to scramble for cover while cowboys “raced over seats” to secure the angry animal.1 The unconscious rider was taken to a hospital with a suspected skull fracture, but without the protective mats in place the immediate outcome could have been much worse.2
Over its history the original Yankee Stadium witnessed numerous non-baseball events, including rodeos and circuses.3 Such events could occupy the space for an extended time; for example, an advertisement for the Tex Austin Rodeo that managed to go so disastrously wrong on its first day said it would occupy Yankee Stadium for 11 days.4 These miscellaneous events proved reliably popular, attracting large crowds, and thus contributed to some of the ballpark’s largest yearly attendance records.
For example, a nine-day rodeo held from May 30 to June 7, 1947, attracted 27,000 spectators to its first performance in Yankee Stadium.5 This show – which was billed as a “Rodeo and Thrill Circus” – promised its audiences not only “bronc riding” and “bull-dogging” cowboys and cowgirls but also “dare-devil stunts by motion-picture stunt men” who would crash motorcycles through “flaming barriers.”6 Events like these contributed to Yankee Stadium’s record-setting attendance that year, although baseball still brought in the most attendees. An article at year’s end observed that even without “the benefit of any championship boxing matches and the Army-Notre Dame game,” people had gone to Yankee Stadium “in greater numbers than ever before,” with an attendance record of 3,415,957. The largest part of that number came from fans going to Yankees games along with other baseball events, including Negro Leagues matches. The rest of the total came from attendance at such entertainments as football, soccer, and rodeo.7
Circuses also numbered among the ballpark’s other sources of funding from miscellaneous events. These performances could be quite the spectacle. Reading about them in retrospect feels somewhat surreal – like something in a dream. An article promoting the Cole Brothers Circus that ran at Yankee Stadium for five days from June 21 to 25, 1950, said the event would feature “personnel of 1,080” along with “500 horses,” as well as elephants, camels, zebras, llamas, and an assortment of “jungle beasts.”8 The act also promised that the Wallenda aerialist family would defy death in a “seven-human pyramid 120 feet above the ground.”9
A review of the show, once it opened, reported that it had left “12,000 patrons, mostly small fry, hoarse from shouting and whistling.” The three-hour show, for which three rings had been placed on the “lush green infield,” included a bravura moment from a wire-walker. Witnesses recalled that she climbed to the top of a “116-foot sway pole in short centerfield.” Lights focused on her as she tilted the top section of the pole at “precarious angles” before planting her foot in a loop and sliding upside down along a “sharply angled rope from centerfield to home plate.”10
Holding circuses and rodeos at Yankee Stadium brought in more attendees, and therefore more revenue, but also served as source of tension. In October 1923, just a few months after the first rodeo had been held in the stadium, a headline in the New York Times proclaimed, “Johnson Puts Ban on Bouts in Park,” with the subheading, “Rodeos Also Frowned On.” American League President Ban Johnson expressed his opinion that baseball and prizefighting “do not go together.” He explained that the league was “opposed to the association of the two sports” and had “taken a stand against the use of its parks for prize fights.” He also said he was against holding rodeo contests “such as were held in the Yankee Stadium recently” on the basis that “it was impossible to keep the fields in good condition if such contests were permitted.”11
In 1947 Joe DiMaggio expressed similar concerns directly to Larry Sunbrock, promoter of the “World’s Greatest Rodeo and Thrill Circus,” just before their early-summer show in Yankee Stadium. DiMaggio pleaded with Sunbrock not to “ruin our ball park.” DiMaggio’s worries were understandable. The Yankees were on their way to being World Series winners, and DiMaggio the season’s most valuable player. A sportswriter expressed understanding of DiMaggio’s position, observing: “This is a common first reaction of ball players and fans” when a rodeo moves into a baseball arena; “They can vision pennants skipping out of the window as a ground ball skids off a hoofprint left by a Brahma bull.”12
The controversial nature of holding rodeos and circuses in a major-league ballpark may have contributed to the relatively small number of such events that appear to have taken place within the confines of the original Yankee Stadium. More often such events took place at Madison Square Garden or on grounds near the Stadium.13 When such entertainments took place in the ballpark itself, it appears this was sometimes motivated by extenuating circumstances, for example repairs taking place to Madison Square Garden in 1923.14
While the hosting of such events as rodeos and circuses in a ballpark generated understandable concern from ballplayers, there is ultimately something symbolically appropriate about the fact that such awe-inspiring events as rodeos and circuses took place at Yankee Stadium. The articles proclaiming these events promised wondrous acts: prodigious feats of strength and courage in staying on angry steers, and human pyramids towering skyward. There is a similarity in that to baseball, a sport in which a defensive maneuver – one involving a particularly impressive act of concentration and athleticism – is referred to as a “circus catch.”
This sports idiom perfectly captures such seemingly impossible plays as that, in 2015, of Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar appearing to fly up a left-field wall to catch a baseball torpedoing over its top. Professional baseball, like a circus or a rodeo, is at base a form of entertainment involving an exchange of money for amusement. But it too can seemingly transcend this reality. At their best, each of these forms of human diversion possesses within it an extraordinary ability. These are amusements capable of metamorphosing before our eyes into the actuality of what the carnival barkers promise: spectacles worthy of our astonishment.
SHARON HAMILTON is the chair of the Society for American Baseball Research’s Century Research Committee, which celebrates important milestones in baseball history. She served as project manager for the special 100th-anniversary SABR Century 1921 project at SABR.org as well as for web projects on Jackie Robinson’s Re-integration of Baseball and on Baseball and the Supreme Court.
NOTES
1 “Cowboy Badly Hurt, Thrown by a Steer,” New York Times, August 16, 1923: 10.
2 The injured cowboy, Buford (or Beauford) B. Polk (born 1885), survived this rodeo incident and made it to 1958 when, on March 22, he died in Payson, Arizona; see “Arizona, Mesa LDS Family History Center, Obituary Index, 1959-2014,” FamilySearch database, Beauford Brown B.b. Polk, 1958.
3 For example, a detailed breakdown of attendance at Yankee Stadium for 1947 included the following baseball events: Yankees home games, the World Series, Yankees vs. Giants, as well as “Negro baseball,” amateur baseball, other exhibitions, and tickets allotted for the Yankee Juniors organization. (The Yankee Juniors provided free tickets to teenagers to “combat juvenile delinquency.” See “Yanks Give Free Tickets,” New York Times, May 1, 1947: 30 and “Hardy Adult Fans Jam Stadium, but Many ‘Free’ Seats Go Begging,” New York Times, December 15, 1947: 37.) Nonbaseball events that year included football, rodeo, and exhibition soccer. A note in the article mentions that there had been three boxing matches among miscellaneous events at the Stadium in 1946 but none in 1947. See “Crowds in 1947 Set Mark for Stadium,” New York Times, December 28, 1947: 97. An article on attendance in 1948 at Yankee Stadium listed similar baseball and nonbaseball events as in 1947, noting that in 1948 the Stadium hosted football games of various sorts, along with boxing, rodeo, soccer games, and rallies. See John Drebinger, “Yanks Surpassed 2-Million Mark in Attendance Third Year in a Row,” New York Times, December 30, 1948: 25.
4 “Cowboys Invade Stadium,” New York Times, August 15, 1923: 17.
5 “Rodeo Opens 9-Day Run,” New York Times, May 31, 1947: 17.
6 “Stadium Rodeo Nears,” New York Times, May 29, 1947: 17.
7 “Crowds in 1947 Set Mark for Stadium,” New York Times, December 28, 1947: 97. An article a year later broke down the attendance by category. John Drebinger, “Yanks Surpassed 2-Million Mark in Attendance Third Year in Row.”
8 “Circus Here June 21 at Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, June 6, 1950: 31. A photograph in the New York Times shows the elephants of the Cole Brothers Circus lined up in front of Yankee Stadium. See “A New Herd Marches on the Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, June 20, 1950: 22.
9 “Circus Here June 21 at Yankee Stadium.”
10 “Cole Circus Opens at Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, June 23, 1950: 36.
11 “Johnson Puts Ban on Bouts in Park,” New York Times, October 20, 1923: 13. Although Johnson was opposed to prizefighting in Yankee Stadium, that does not appear to have stopped it from happening. Notable championship bouts took place in the original Yankee Stadium regularly during its history, including throughout the 1920s. See “Other Events at the Original Yankee Stadium,” 2022 Yankees Media Guide: 405.
12 “Conservative AP Recognizes Importance of Big Sid, Gives Him Feature Writeup,” Knoxville Journal, June 5, 1947: 16. Big Sid was a bull in the “World’s Greatest Rodeo and Thrill Circus.” According to this article, other ballparks that hosted this same rodeo and circus included Braves Field in Boston, Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Crosley Field in Cincinnati. With respect to the controversies surrounding possible damage to the field, the event organizer Larry Sunbrock claimed “not a single ground ball” had “ever gone astray” because of his show.
13 For example, the “Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West Show” took place for 15 days on the grounds north of Yankee Stadium. See “Rodeo Halts Traffic,” New York Times, July 22, 1928: 34.
14 The article “Late Bob Crosby, Rodeo Star,” Lubbock (Texas) Avalanche-Journal, December 28, 1970: 6 says “the world’s top rodeo” took place in Yankee Stadium in 1923, because Madison Square Garden was under repair.