[QUOTE=Braden;5003588]I have been playing the negro leagues on 23 for a while. I was playing the 1931 league when I got OOTP 24 and imported it. The import didn't do well and when I tried to move to 1932 it got all screwed up, e.g. extra team, not enough players, etc. I think it all relates to the database problems they are having. Thank goodness I still have on 23. I will try the import again with the db is fixed. I have a historic minor league folder that has lots of Negro League caps, jerseys and logos, including the marcos. I don't remember where I got this folder but I can put up for download if you want. I also have a lot of Negro League player photos up to 1932you may want to use instead of facegen ones. They are in this folder. https://www.mediafire.com/folder/p8o.../Negro+Leagues


I have now uploaded the historical jerseys, caps and logos I have. They are in the same place as the above link.

Textile Field/Gill Stadium, Manchester NH
 

Here's today's park, Manchester's Gill Stadium. It's been standing since 1912 and is still there!

Google Drive link to Textile Field

You can read about it at Wikipedia, and there's a bunch of pictures at Digital Ballparks.

I'll just keep this short and get this posted. I'll note for those interested in this sort of thing that per usual practice this is imagined as c. 1920 (and the Sanborn map below shows some random bleachers past the outfield, so they're there) so there are no lights, and it has a raised mound since I made it before I stopped doing that. I've played it in OOTP23, but not OOTP24.

Rochester Baseball Park/Bay Street Grounds
 

I'll sneak another park in before heading to work. :)

Here's the Rochester Baseball Park aka Bay Street Grounds, home to the Rochester Hustlers/Colts/Tribe from 1908-1927. No Wikipedia article for it, but there's a Digital Ballparks page here and some other information about it including this page including a bunch of great photos.

Here's the Google Drive link to the ballpark zip file.

I had a lot to work from for this, which was a nice little change! The walls were "arena style" (the walls tilted slightly outward from the ground, then went up), which apparently showed off the advertisements better. Per my usual practice I tried to put in period- and place-appropriate ads, there are no light towers, and I made this when I was still putting in mounds.

Enjoy!

Both look really nice. Thanks.

Love the old time pics. Great job!

This is the kind of doubleheader that I truly enjoy...and right about now I really need the lift. Thanks!

I'm gratified if this helps bring you some comfort, Ty. Be good to yourself.

College Park, Charleston (under an alias)
 

Today's post represents College Park in Charleston, SC. But the files aren't called that because I hadn't planned to post it until recently and I renamed it Lombard Park after a friend who grew up in Charleston. You can rename it as you choose, of course. :)

Google Drive link to College Park (again, called "Lombard Park".

As I was getting ready to post this I also realized this is somewhat more fictional than I like to post (which also contributed to my initial reluctance)--the park that stands today was built in 1940 on a site that had been hosting baseball since much earlier. There's some confusion out there (which I'm maybe contributing to now) because there's a neighboring diamond that was the original minor league site that was abandoned after hurricane damage. The only pre-1940 picture I could find is below--in that picture, the field on the right is College Park. When the metal grandstand was built in 1940 they reoriented the field. I think the Sanborn map excerpt below represents the post-1940 park even though it says the sheet was added in 1939.

What I made for my c. 1920 game was a mish-mash of eras--it's the post-1940 orientation and the dimensions (and background) from today's park, but made retro-style with sharp angles and wood to fit in with the 1920-era parks in the league. So, depending on your need for verisimilitude, you may or may not like this park. However, contrary to many of the fields I make, I didn't put any period- or place-specific ads, so it should be able to stand in all right for various needs.

Next up: I'm trying to work my way through a bit of a backlog. I've got several parks already finished that were on thehef's priority list (but that I didn't realize anyone else would want), so I'm going to try to push those out (College Park was one of them). The remaining ones that I haven't posted are:

• Island Park, Wichita
• Scranton Athletic Park
• West End Park, Houston
• McNulty Park, Tulsa
• Wearn Field, Charlotte
• Sulphur Dell, Nashville (but in its original orientation not the crazy hill orientation)
• Bayside Park, Portland

I have some others not on the list, too, but figure I should post these first.

These look awesome, thanks!

I am looking forward to the Dell most of all!

Sulphur Dell I
 

OK, I've already kept Ty Cobb kept longer than I'd intended, so here's the Google Drive file for Sulphur Dell!

The Sulphur Dell that people know and love has two serious strikes against it in terms of making a 3D model--it had a serious hill in right field and had very short dimensions. Luckily for me, my league is in the 1920-1921 offseason, and that version of Sulphur Dell wasn't created until 1927. Prior to that, the hill was in foul territory parallel to the third base line and the dimensions were more reasonable. This perfectly reasonable setup, however, was oriented so the sun was in the batter's eyes, leading to the reconfiguration. The original configuration did see at least one classic baseball game, a picture of which is among those below.

In OOTP, the batters don't care about that sort of thing. :) So, enjoy!

I wonder if any players hit TOPPIE for those 10,000 Top Value Stamps.

https://i.redd.it/89lt5v6jejf21.jpg

The Dell!!! Awesome!

Scranton Athletic Field (aka Brooks Stadium)
 

For today, here's Scranton Athletic Field (aka Brooks Stadium), long-time home of the Scranton Miners from the 1890s to the 1930s. ]

The Digital Ballparks page for the park was, as usual, a great source of help!

Google Drive link to ballpark

Enjoy!

The link for Scranton Athletic Field takes us to Sulphur Dell. I can't believe you can make a stadium from these photos.

Whoops! Fixed link!
 

There's also an insurance map (split between a couple of pages, see one of them below!), but yeah. There's some amount of research (stadium dimensions are sometimes available for these parks), some amount of measurement, some amount of educated guesswork (backstops are almost always 60' and are otherwise usually 45'), and some amount of historical fiction. The maps like the ones below are great when available--sometimes they have the heights of the stands or to the roofline, but even if not the height is typically close enough to half the grandstand width that I just use that. Sketchup lets you put in photos and match the viewing angles and lines of sight that you can trace what you see (in theory). And I almost always have a lot more material than I cram into these posts. But I don't have any particular artistic ability, this is really just a lot of practice.

Night & Day
 

Heres Russwood.

Heres Bugle

Since the East Cuban team(s) have not assigned park, I made one out of Hilldale

That's great, thanks! I've never had the patience to really do that--is there an easy way to darken everything and add the lit house windows, or is it all basically done by hand (particularly the windows)?

It is not difficult but a little tedious, the most tedious is the constructed buildings, as you have to change each part.


Here is a simple example for trees: find the tree that is in the model in the texture folder and change the name from tree.jpg to tree_day.png. The use some photo improvement program to open it. ( I use photo shop). Then darken the picture so it looks like it is at night and save it as tree_night.png. Then open the .mtl file for that park and find tree.jpg and change it to tree_day.png and save the file. That's it. I also do this with all the grass and other ground stuff outside the park.



It would be a lot easier if, when you build a park to put all those type items as _day.png to start with then make the _night afterwards.


I have uploaded all the parks of have used so far in my negro league starting around 1926. It is one zip file with no .skp files. So, it may take a little while to down load. You could have a couple of IPAs whilst you wait.


https://www.mediafire.com/folder/7mtuv3r8o1nug/Parks

For those who are more interested in small, more modern-day parks, I just made Stitzel Field in Poughkeepsie, New York by request. You can find the link and discussion in this post, and I've put a picture below for visual learners. ;)

Is there a Maple Leaf Stadium available?

Does this one have a .prk file?

Hi all,

Sorry for being scarce of late. To answer the last couple of questions:

1) Maple Leaf Park is on my to-do list, but I haven't gotten to it yet. If anyone else feels like tackling it, I do not consider myself as having dibs on it. :)

2) Savin Rock does have a .prk file, not sure why I didn't stick it in the folder (or check to see that I hadn't done so). I'll update that when I can, but for now see the screenshot, which should have all the relevant info...

Thank you for the replies.

Bayside Park, Portland Maine
 

I'm going to try to post a few parks before my next bout of work travel hits. I'll start with Portland's Bayside Park. There's not a lot of documentation for it--some interior shots that are too tight to get much of anything, a couple of exterior shots, and an aerial of the field when it was used for amateurs after the grandstand came down. I didn't find it on any insurance (or other) maps. But I think it came out OK anyhow. :)

Google Drive Link to Bayside Park zip file

Here's an article about the stadium from a Portland history blog

A mix of historical and model photos are below, per usual practice!

West End Park, Houston
 

Next up, here's West End Park in Houston. This was the home to the Houston Buffaloes minor league team from 1905-1927, as well as host to the Cardinals, Browns, and Yankees at various times from 1906-1915. It's pretty close to where downtown Houston is today, though admittedly it may be the present-day sprawl making me think that. There's a historical marker at the site today, and the application with supporting information is available online (pdf).

Here's the Google Drive link for the ballpark etc.

I'm not 100% satisfied with how it came out--my modeling bete noire is usually balancing the background/horizon with building models I want to include. Since the view with the church is one of the few contemporary views I found I wanted to include that (though the steeple is wrong), and when I made this I didn't have a great sense of how to grade that into things further out. I stuck the cityscape in since I think it would have been visible. Given infinite spare time I might try and revisit the background, but realistically I think this is what it is! I'll also note for what it's worth that the extended covered grandstand is inspired by the aerial photo below--the picture with the church clearly doesn't have it extended that far down the LF line...

I'll enjoy this one as I'm turning to a more small market feel for my personal play. The league I'm currently rabbit-holed in is entirely small market and regional and a park like this will be a great asset!

Wearn Field, Charlotte
 

OK, continuing to post some of my backlog--here's Wearn Field in Charlotte:
Google Drive link to Wearn Field

Wearn Field (also known as Hayman Park) operated from 1912-1940, with a minor league team usually called the Charlotte Hornets in the Sally League about half of that period and in other leagues the other half. The park also hosted spring training and MLB exhibition games, and at least some Negro League baseball (though none of the teams that have been recognized as MLB as far as I can tell). Charlotte was the largest city in NC during this period (though Winston-Salem was only a hair smaller), but was not one of the 100 biggest metro areas in the USA until it got to #95 in 1940, just as the field's usage was ending.

It's reported to have had attendance at 4,000 for Babe Ruth, so the capacity is probably more like 3,500-4,000 than the 5,000 I have in the .prk file. As always, change as you need. :) I'm reasonably content with how this one turned out, there wasn't a lot of interior material to work with so I tried to guess what the view would be like from period maps. Next up will be Tulsa and Wichita, and I've actually been seeing if I can get Skeeters Park in Jersey City done...

These are terrific old time parks you've done. Thank you. I like the ads, too.

McNulty Park, Tulsa
 

Here's my take on Tulsa's McNulty Park:

Google Drive Link to McNulty Park.

McNulty Park was home to the Tulsa Oilers from 1919-1929, a very successful period for that team as they won 6 Western League pennants in that stretch. It is likely best known these days as a detention site for Black residents of Tulsa during 1921's Tulsa Race Massacre, which nearly led to me abandoning this model while I was doing the research for it. But I figured since the Chicago American Giants and Kansas City Monarchs were willing to play there 5 years later, I should be willing to model it 100 years later.

It's a hitter's park for sure, with home runs inflated by about a factor of 2 thanks to short fences. I couldn't find a Sanborn map with it, but its dimensions are in Green Cathedrals, and it's present in a 1924 aerial shot of downtown Tulsa (show below)...

Enjoy!

Thanks, it looks like another great addition.

Ackerman Park, Wichita
 

Happy Autumn, everyone! Unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case Happy Spring!

Today I'm posting Wichita's Ackerman Park, aka various other things including "Island Park". It combines two relatively common features of 1910s-1920s ballparks: A location at/near an amusement park (like Toronto, Tucson, and LA among others), and a location taking up most of a river island (like Richmond and Harrisburg, again among others). Ackerman Island itself (to say nothing of the ballpark) had a pretty short existence--it was a sandbar in the Arkansas river that formed in the 1870s, and was removed/joined to the river's west bank in the 1930s due to flooding concerns.

There's not a ton of info about the ballpark out there, but there are a few photos (which I've put below). One of the anecdotes that seems to be mentioned with all of the mentions of the ballpark is how in 1925 a KKK team played a Black team for charity. The KKK lost. :D

I've never quite been happy with the background, which was taken from one of the aerial photos, but it was fun to make a ballpark with a bit of landscape around it.

Google Drive link to Ackerman Park Zip File

Skeeters Park, Jersey City
 

Hi all,

Here's one that took a bit of extra research--Skeeters Park in Jersey City, also called West Side Park. This was the home of the Jersey City Skeeters and the local park prior to Roosevelt Stadium being built, and so was used until 1934. The available Sanborn Maps, my usual go-tos, don't cover the right place at the right time. However, there are other local atlases that are useful, as well as an aerial photo from 1930!

Google Drive link to Skeeters Park

After playing a bit with Google Earth, it didn't look to me like the NYC skyline was visible from the park, and it looked out toward the (in)famous swamplands (which inspired the team's name, I believe). As usual, I'm happy to provide the Sketchup file itself to anyone out there who'd like to play around with backgrounds etc.

In the near future (so...next few weeks?) I'll try to upload some more, plus I'm planning to tackle some of the missing Federal League parks by request.

Enjoy!

Anchorage Base Ball Park
 

OK, nobody asked for this one and it's pretty niche, but some of you might enjoy it--it's the c. 1920 ballpark in Anchorage, Alaska. In one of those quirks that I've run into a few times researching parks, there's a _lot_ more photo documentation of this random park in a newly-established town way out on the fringes of the North American frontier than there is of the previous park I posted, which was a contemporary AAA park that sat less than 5 miles from the Brooklyn Bridge as the crow flies. Anyhow, my quest to have a c. 1920 park in every US state and territory means there has to be an Alaska one, so here it is. If you're generally interested in the history of baseball in Alaska, there are a few good sites out there, I'll just point to this one from the state library.

Google Drive link to Anchorage Base Ball Park

I don't know that this park was ever used for anything other than local amateur games. The famous Midnight Sun game is played in Fairbanks, I had a hard time finding much info about even the present-day ballpark. There was also a park near Juneau in 1920 in a gorgeous setting, but Anchorage has the most info. Per usual, I put various model and historical views below!

Buildiungs around Achorage park
 

Kind of curious why you put the big brick building around this park when there were obviously, from the pictures, there were none. Just looks odd to me.

Yeah, I went back and forth a bit. As I've noted, I'm rarely satisfied with the backgrounds in my parks, and really struggle with the non-home plate views in particular. I put the buildings in so that there was _something_ there rather than a sharp edge or a backdrop that I'd spend too long dwelling on and still be unhappy with. ;)

I'm happy enough if folks what to try their hand with the Sketchup file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y1R...usp=share_link

Except for my Great Lakes themed leagues, I always drop a team in Alaska. Nice addition!

Handlan's Park, St. Louis
 

By request here's Handlan's Park, home ballpark of the Federal League's St. Louis Terriers:

Google Drive Link for Handlan's Park

While its use by the Federal League didn't last very long, this ballpark did have a bit of an extended life--after the Terriers were done with it, it apparently was used by some of the better soccer teams in the USA during its first wave of popularity in the 1920s. At that point it was called "High School Field", which is not an easy thing to do a search on.

In any case, there are some maps (both contemporary and by researchers), and two photos (one tiny, the other of a soccer game). I actually tried going the skybox route with this one, though I'm not sure if it's really better than going no skybox and YMMV. I used the park factors from the Gambo spreadsheet rather than calculating them from the park itself, though I did include the dimensions of the park (which differ from the ones in Green Cathedrals by a little bit). I also left it unadorned with ads or anything specific.

I'm planning to move on to do the Indianapolis and Buffalo Federal League parks next, I maaaaaaaay also try Newark's. The reason I didn't do these three originally was because I didn't have much information and I was just starting out with making stadia. I've gotten a lot more experience and think I can do OK with Indy and Buffalo, but I'm still not convinced I have what I need for Newark...

Anyhow, as ever, enjoy!

Greenlawn Park, Indianapolis
 

Next up, it's Greenlawn Park, aka Federal League Park, home of the Indianapolis Hoosiers Federal League team (obviously).

Google Drive Link to Greenlawn Park

A history of the ballpark at the SABR website can be found here. In short, it was purpose-built for the 1914 season, then the Feds moved the team for 1915, it was used for random sporting events and as a home park for the Indianapolis ABCs through 1916, and then the park was torn down early in 1917.

Given its very short life, there's more info than I might have expected. Only a couple of photos, both from the LF corner (or beyond it) looking toward home plate. An Sanborn map update was fortuitously made that included it, but it split the park between three different maps (a quick-n-dirty splice is included below). However, the dimensions appear to be pretty well-known, and I used the Green Cathedrals values in the .prk file. I again used the Gambo park factors.

As far as other design choices, I put in a few Indianapolis- and period-appropriate ads, which I pulled from the West Washington Street ballpark I posted very early in this thread. The scoreboard is also pulled from that ballpark. I'm also doing an experiment by using skyboxes that are only the sky--I'm always thrown by the way the world seems to spin because the sky moves non-physically, but I've been unable to make location-appropriate skyboxes that I like. Anyhow, put the skybox on or not, as you like. :)

Nice. This is another one I've been waiting for. Thank you.

Thank you for your hard work. Being able to bring these old stadiums to life from a few graining pictures takes great skill.

Buffalo International Fair Association Grounds
 

Next up is another Federal League Park, and a bit of a mouthful: Buffalo International Fair Association Grounds. This was in what is today the Hamlin Park neighborhood of Buffalo, but about 150 years ago it was "The Driving Park", a popular race track and polo grounds. It then hosted the International Industrial and Agricultural Exposition in 1888 before getting destroyed by fire in 1896. At that point it was recognized as prime real estate for a housing development, and starting in 1912 that whole area began getting developed as such. It took a while to get that underway, though, so in the meantime part of the old Driving Park grounds got used for this ballpark, the home of the Federal League's Buffalo Blues. I'm not certain when it was torn down, but I don't think it lasted too long--I can't find any trace of it on a 1927 aerial photo of that part of Buffalo.

Google Drive Link to Buffalo etc. Park

Not a ton of photo evidence for this one, just an outside shot (which I used but I don't think anyone will ever see evidence of!). I decided that since the Sanborn map prominently says "stucco" that that's what the design would use, though not on the outfield walls. :) I also decided to use a bit more color than I often do, taking the shade of blue that the Buffeds used in their uniforms according to Dressed to the Nines.

Next up I'm going to try Harrison Park, which should complete the Federal League ballparks!

Thanks again. I just happen to be playing the Federal League right now.

Great stuff again asrivkin!

Thanks for your continued encouragement, all! :)

Well deserved praise, sir. I'm copping many of your parks for my Five Lakes League...

For what its worth, I'm pimping out your parks to some fellas I know who love doing 19th century. Since I don't have any that I created myself, I think yours and my deadball parks can give them more of a selection. Hope you don't mind :)