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| Obligatory legal information: This site is copyright 1998-2008 Kevin Reichard/August Publications. All rights reserved. My wife is a lawyer, so she will come and chop off your hand in a legal fashion if you rip off this site in any form. All logos are the property of their respective owners. |
Cincinnati is often called the "cradle of baseball." When baseball fans think about Cincinnati, they think about firsts. The first professional baseball team. Charter members of the National League and the American Association. The first night game. The first pitch of the season. For six decades this city of baseball firsts played its games at the "old boomerang at Findlay and Western," Crosley Field. The park was a green oasis amidst the smokestacks and warehouses of Cincinnati’s west end. Crosley was intimate and unpretentious, and its many stories and unique characteristics gave the average fan a lot of baseball to experience.
Dating back to 1884, the Reds played baseball at the intersection of Findlay Street and Western Avenue. League Park was the first to open there, and as happened with most wooden ballparks of the day, it burned to the ground. In 1893, League Park was rebuilt, columned, expanded, and renamed The Palace of the Fans. The Palace of the Fans resembled a Greek temple, with an extravagant façade and opera-style private boxes. Alas, it too burned, in 1911, and gave way to Redland (later Crosley) Field.
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| Crosley Field opened as Redland Field on April 12, 1912, as the home of the Reds. Compare this photo to the photo above and see how the park was expanded over the years. |
Despite the cozy confines for the fans, the park played big. It was a pitcher-friendly 360 feet to left, 420 feet to center, and 360 feet to right. Throughout its early years, Redland was said to have the hardest and fastest playing surface in the league. (Coincidentally, and unfortunately, years down the road at Riverfront Stadium, the Reds would become the first outdoor team to play its home games on the slick, billiards table-like artificial turf.) Before the 1927 season, responding to the popularity of Babe Ruth and the Home Run era, the Reds turned their playing field and moved home plate out 20 feet, creating better dimensions for sluggers (339’, 395’, 366’).
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It was said that Powel Crosley was not a man of broad interests, and his wife complained that they did little together other than fish and watch baseball. That's a little unfair: Crosley invented the first compact car (which was sold through department stores, not traditional dealerships), the first car radio (the Roamio), the first refrigerator with door shelving units (the Shelvador), and a bed cooling system (the Koolrest). To his credit, he gave the majority of ownership responsibilities to his younger brother Lewis (Lewis actually ran all the businesses for Powell), changed the name of the park to Crosley Field, and hired Larry MacPhail to be the general manager.
Many of the major structural renovations at the stadium happened after the new administration took over. Between the 1937-38 seasons, home plate was moved another twenty feet out (328’, 387’, 366’) and in the middle of their pennant winning season of 1939, the Reds added roofed upper decks to the left and right field pavilions. This gave Crosley Field 5,000 extra seats and the appearance it would retain for the rest of its existence.
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The Terrace in left field, similar to Duffy’s Cliff at old Fenway and Tal’s Hill in present-day Houston, was the scourge of National League outfielders. Due to an underground stream, about twenty feet out from the left field fence, the ground sloped upward, gradually inclining until it reached the four feet grade at the wall. Thus, the left field fence measured 14’ high but was 18’ above home plate. In 1935, near the end of his career, Babe Ruth playing with the Boston Braves went back on a fly ball and tripped on the incline, falling flat on his face. Ruth got up and solemnly walked off the field in disgust. He would not return to the game and retired a few days later.
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| The scoreboard was the center of signage at Crosley Field. Note the scoreboard's listing of Redlegs (as opposed to Reds); during the Communist hysteria of the 1950s the team used Redlegs as a nickname in order to avoid any association with those nasty Russians. (Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Reds.) (Click on the image for a larger version.) |
Center field at Crosley was the source of some
controversy over the years. The three-story brick
Crowe Engineering Company building in center was
where 1950’s Reds’ skipper Fred Hutchinson would
position his sign stealers. That is at least what
the Cubs alleged. Also, a fluke play in center
cost the Reds a potentially critical game in their
pennant winning season of 1940. Street lights
behind the center field fence caused such glare
that canvas shields were placed on the fence to
protect the batter’s eyes. The shields were then
taken down for day games. Following a night game
on June 5th, someone from the Reds forgot to take
the shields down. In the ninth inning of a day
game two days later, the Reds’ Harry Craft hit a
shot that struck a shield above the center field
fence. The ball fell to the ground and Craft wound
up at third with a triple. Reds manager Bill
McKechnie argued for thirty minutes that the call
should have been a game-winning home run.
Ultimately, the umpires ruled against the Reds
because it was their fault, and predictably, they
lost the game in extra innings by one run.
Right field was the only section of Crosley that
was completely exposed to the sun and the
bleachers were thusly nicknamed the Sun Deck. A
huge sun burst was painted on the rear wall. At
night, naturally, the area was called the Moon
Deck. For two periods during the 1940s and 1950’s,
seats were installed in front of the Sun/Moon
Deck, cutting the distance in right field from
366’ to 342’. This area was called the Goat Run or
the Chicken Run or the Giles’ Chicken Run. This
was expected to aid the popular, sleeveless
strongman Ted Kluszewski. The right0field fence
intersected at a point with the center field
concrete wall. This necessitated a home run line,
a white vertical stripe painted on the center
field wall that read "Batted ball hitting concrete
wall on fly to right of white line – home run."
Never before or since has a ground rule been
painted on an outfield wall.
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| In the old day a television broadcast from any ballpark was a major undertaking, and TV stations made a huge deal of their remote broadcasting capabilities. Here's a promotional photo from WLW-TV describing their remote capabilities. |
Of these fans, the most celebrated was Harry Thobe. Dancing a perpetual jig, flashing 12 gold teeth, the superfan and crowd entertainer attended almost every game in the 1940s and 1950s, wearing his customary white suit with red stripes, one red and one white shoe, a straw hat with a red band, and a red and white parasol.
Major upgrades were undertaken at Crosley prior to the 1957 season. The red brick façade was painted white, new lights were installed and the largest scoreboard of its day replaced the old one in left center. The scoreboard stood 58 feet high and 65 feet wide. Atop the scoreboard was eight-foot-tall Longines clock. In addition to showing scores of all the major league games in progress and displaying full home and visiting team line-ups, the new board was the first to feature up-to-date players’ batting averages.
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| Another view of he famous Crosley Field scoreboard with the Longines clock at the top. (Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Reds.) (Click on the image for a larger version.) |