Hi! I'm Mike Brooker and you're not!
Yoga, Sanskrit study, practical Hinduism...all really cool, but before I
even knew the difference between Yogi Berra and Yogi Amrit Desai I was a
baseball fan. I have visited a number of Major League ballparks
that, sadly, are no longer with us. I don't mean Ebbets Field, the
Polo Grounds, and other stadiums that were bulldozed before I was even thought
of, but some of baseball's heritage that I do remember and that disappeared
in the 1980s and 1990s. This page is my tribute to baseball's lost
legacy of recently-abandoned ballparks.
Please note: This page is graphically-intensive and may take a little while to download. If you can't wait for all the images to download, either you have a very slow modem or you don't have the attention span to enjoy baseball!!
Comiskey Park, the home of the Chicago White Sox from 1910 to 1990.
The setting sun casts long shadows over the old ballpark on the South Side
of Chicago as Ernie Whitt bats in the top of the first inning of a Blue Jays
vs. Chisox game on August 5, 1987. Above is an autographed picture
of Comiskey Park organist Nancy Faust. There aren't many female organists
in the majors, and she was one of the best. Her trademark tune was
"Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye!" after every White Sox victory.
On July 24, 1991 an abandoned, partially-demolished
Comiskey Park awaits the wrecker's ball. :-( Truly a sad scene.
The outfield grass that was once home to 80 years of memories from Shoeless Joe Jackson to the Big Hurt
is littered with rubble. The White Sox' new home, also called Comiskey
Park , opened in April 1991 across the street from the old Comiskey.
But it has little of the charm of the old ballpark, or even of some of the
recently built baseball-only retro-stadiums such as Baltimore's Camden Yards.
For the 2003 season, Comiskey II has been re-named -- I'm not making this
up, folks -- "U.S. Cellular Field".
Willie Upshaw (#26) steps up to the
plate for the Blue Jays vs. the Cleveland
Indians on August 6, 1987. Some 75,000 fans are disguised as empty
seats in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. Built in the 1930s as a make-work
project during the Depression, the dank, musty, windy former home of the
Indians and Browns more than earned its nickname of the Mistake on the Lake.
Arlington Stadium, the former home of the
Texas Rangers, basks in sultry
97ºF/36ºC heat as the Blue Jays provide the opposition on July
18, 1991. Built for high school football and minor league baseball,
Arlington Stadium was hastily expanded when the second incarnation of the
Washington Senators moved to Dallas-Ft. Worth in 1971. Note the Dr.
Pepper billboard above the left field bleachers. This may have been
the only ballpark in the majors that didn't sell either Coke or Pepsi.
The Seattle
Mariners joined the American League as an expansion team along with the
Blue Jays in 1977. For the first 22 years of their existence, the Mariners
played in the unfriendly confines of the Kingdome. This cold, desolate
concrete tomb exemplifies everything that is wrong with domed stadiums.
A sparse gathering watches the Mariners take on the Blue Jays on July 23,
1988. Such small crowds were the rule in Seattle until the Mariners
won the A.L. West in 1995. They've kept on winning in their new Safeco
Field home, despite the loss of Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and A-Rod.
I sucked back a few cold Millers and sampled
a variety of bratwursts at Milwaukee's County Stadium, on July 19, 1985.
The Milwaukee Brewers moved
to Miller Park in 2001. The opening of the Brew Crew's new ballpark
was delayed for a year because of a fatal construction accident.
The corner of Michigan and Trumbull, on an overcast Saturday morning, November 13, 1999. Tiger Stadium awaits an opening day that will never arrive. The Detroit Tigers' final game at the famous corner was played some two months earlier. In downtown Detroit (the corner of Woodward and Elizabeth - doesn't quite have the same ring to it) the Tigers new home, Comerica Park, is under construction for its scheduled opening in April 2000. Although I was born in Detroit, I didn't live there long enough to develop any attachment to the Tigers, or Red Wings for that matter!
Tiger Stadium hasn't been bulldozed yet.
It's sitting abandoned, like so many other vacant buildings in downtown Detroit.
Please visit Friends of Tiger Stadium
and help save this historic ballpark from demolition.
Last, and definitely least...
Exhibition Stadium, the former home of the Toronto Blue Jays, seen here packed to the gunnels for an afternoon game during Toronto's 1985 A.L. East Division winning stretch drive. From the Jays' inception on a snowy April afternoon in 1977 until their move to the Skydome in June 1989 (and the stadium's ultimate demolition by implosion almost a decade later), Toronto's version of the Mistake on the Lake was arguably one of the worst places to watch a baseball game. It was no bargain for football either. Its most infamous moment may have been the fogged-out 1962 Grey Cup. Note the covered bleacher seats (the old Canadian National Exhibition grandstand) while the more expensive seats are totally uncovered, with no protection from rain and snow! Above is a ticket stub from the last game ever played at Exhibition Stadium. Ave Atque Vale.
Visit www.ballparks.com for a virtual tour of past, present and future Major League ballparks, as well as NFL stadiums, NHL rinks, and NBA courts.
E-mail me your baseball memories and
trivia: aum108@idirect.com Sorry
for the minor inconvenience of having to manually copy or cut & paste
the address. I have removed the <mailto > HTML tags thanks to
the bush-league bums of the cyber-world. To paraphrase Smokey the Bear,
only you can prevent spam fires.
© 1999-2003, Mike Brooker. Page updated April 18, 2003. I took all photos on this page moi-même :-)