5 Dead Ball Era Ballparks Where We Wish We'd Caught a Game
They were concrete-and-steel palaces with marble rotundas, uphill outfields, and fences built out of pure spite. All five are gone. Here's where we'd sit if the time machine ever gets fixed.
They were concrete-and-steel palaces with marble rotundas, uphill outfields, and fences built out of pure spite. All five are gone. Here's where we'd sit if the time machine ever gets fixed.
5. Crosley Field, Cincinnati (1912–1970) — The Park With an Uphill Outfield
For its first 22 seasons, it wasn't even Crosley Field — it was Redland Field, renamed in 1934 for new owner Powel Crosley Jr. Its left field ended in the terrace: a 15-degree incline rising four feet toward the wall, so outfielders literally ran uphill to make catches. No warning track needed — the ground itself warned you.
Crosley hosted the first night game in MLB history (May 24, 1935 — FDR flipped the switch from the White House), and in the 1937 flood the field sat under some twenty feet of water — two Reds players rowed a boat over the outfield fence. Beyond left field, the Superior Towel & Linen building offered a free suit to anyone who hit the Siebler Suits sign.
Get us a seat for: June 11, 1938 — the first of Johnny Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters. (Hold that thought until #1.)
4. Shibe Park, Philadelphia (1909–1970) — The Palace With the Spite Fence
The first concrete-and-steel stadium in baseball — it beat Forbes Field by 10 weeks — and it looked nothing like a ballpark: a French Renaissance façade with a domed tower at 21st & Lehigh, and Connie Mack's office inside the dome.
Its greatest feature was born of pettiness. Neighbors on 20th Street sold rooftop seats overlooking right field — so in 1935 the A's raised the fence from 12 feet to roughly 50 feet of sheet metal. Philadelphia named it honestly: the Spite Fence.
Get us a seat for: Oct. 12, 1929, Game 4 of the World Series — the A's, down 8–0 to the Cubs, score 10 runs in the seventh inning (Hack Wilson losing a fly ball in the sun along the way) and win 10–8.
3. Forbes Field, Pittsburgh (1909–1970) — The Park Where No-Hitters Went to Die
A million-dollar poured-concrete cathedral set against Schenley Park, with an outfield so vast — 457 feet to left-center — that the Pirates stored the batting cage in center field, in play. In 61 seasons of baseball, no one ever threw a no-hitter there. Not one. The ivy-covered brick wall enclosed Greenberg Gardens (later Kiner's Korner), a bullpen zone invented to bring Hank Greenberg's home runs closer.
And Forbes is the one you can still touch: a stretch of the ivy wall still stands on Pitt's campus, distance markers intact, and home plate sits preserved under glass in the floor of Posvar Hall — office workers walk over it every day.
Get us a seat for: Oct. 13, 1960 — Bill Mazeroski walks off Game 7 of the World Series against the Yankees, still the only Game 7 walk-off homer in Series history.
2. Polo Grounds, Manhattan (1911–1963) — The Bathtub Under the Bluff
The most gloriously wrong-shaped field ever built: 279 feet down the left field line, 483 to dead center, where the clubhouse stood in fair territory. A pop fly could be a home run; a 450-foot rocket could be an out — ask Vic Wertz, whose blast died in Willie Mays' glove in The Catch (Sept. 29, 1954). Broke fans didn't need tickets: they watched free from Coogan's Bluff, the cliff looming over the grandstand. And no, it never hosted polo.
Three MLB franchises called it home, and it hosted one of the most famous swings in baseball history: Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World, Oct. 3, 1951.
Get us a seat for: That one. Obviously. Sorry, Ralph.
1. Ebbets Field, Brooklyn (1913–1957) — The Cathedral of Flatbush
You entered through an 80-foot marble rotunda beneath a chandelier made of 12 baseball bats holding baseball-shaped globes. Inside: a right-field wall with roughly nineteen different angles, the Abe Stark sign promising "Hit Sign, Win Suit," Hilda Chester howling over her cowbell (the bell is in Cooperstown now), and the gleefully off-key Dodgers Sym-Phony band.
And on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson took first base in Dodger white, and the sport — and the country — changed. No park on this list held more history per square foot, and none went down harder: the wrecking ball that leveled it in 1960 was painted like a baseball, and reportedly came back four years later to take the Polo Grounds too.
Get us a seat for: April 15, 1947. And June 15, 1938 — when Vander Meer, four days after his Crosley no-hitter, threw his second straight under Ebbets' brand-new lights. Two parks on this list, one immortal week.
Which demolished park do you resurrect first? One vote each. Wrong answers celebrated.
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