19th Century 3D Ballparks

[dfswans]

Hartford Ball Club Grounds

Hartford Dark Blues (National League) (1874-1876)

Nothing fancy here. Just a big old lawn next to a church with a small grandstand.

Hartford_Ball_Club_Grounds

[asrivkin]

Nice!

[zappa1]

This might not be fancy, but It's great all the same. A nice background on this also. I find myself looking out at the backgrounds on these parks while I play. It is so cool.

[micropterus58]

Thank you, Hartford is my "nearly home" park. There is a vintage baseball team in Hartford. https://www.vintageballist.com/

[jg2977]

Originally Posted by micropterus58

Thank you, Hartford is my "nearly home" park. There is a vintage baseball team in Hartford. https://www.vintageballist.com/

Same here. I live in the Hartford area as well.

[sdcrazyman]

Same here x3 lol my Sea Unicorns need Dodd Stadium

[asrivkin]

OK, noting to self to post the c. 1920s Clarkin Field I made for my personal use to the Jazz Age thread soon...

[darkcloud4579]

gonna put my youth teams in some of these parks

[asrivkin]

Hi all,

I just finished this one today, so rather than wait to my more typical Sunday I figured I'd just post it now. So, here's Brooklyn's Capitoline Grounds, one of the very first enclosed baseball grounds to exist, home to various amateur (and one professional) early baseball team, and site of several historic events including the day in 1870 that the Brooklyn Atlantics snapped the Cincinnati Red Stockings' 84-game winning streak. It is also said to be the location where the first slide to avoid a tag took place, and where the curveball was demonstrated to be real rather than an optical illusion. The park opened in 1862 as a skating pond (it was flooded in the winters), and opened for baseball (or "base ball" if you prefer) in 1864. It was opened in part because of the success of the Union Grounds, a few miles away (and already modeled by dfswans!).

Google Drive link to the Capitoline Grounds

There are several accounts of games at this park, but not a whole lot of information that could be used for a model. The two buildings just past the walls represent clubhouses, which are mentioned. The brick building may or may not have been an outhouse, and they'd award home runs if you could hit over it on the fly. I did some AI generation of lines of fans standing in the outfield, hopefully they'll serve as a bit of decoration rather than a bit of distraction. There is mention of an embankment, and since the field was flooded in the winter it sits a few feet below the surrounding area. Finally, I'll note that the field is set to look like the 1871 rule set--the foul lines go to the center of home plate (and don't extend past first or third base, the bases are rotated relative to current practice, there are no batters boxes, and there are two pitcher's lines rather than a box (much less a mound). If you're interested in seeing the rules changes with time, I used this site, which is fun to poke around in if you're into that stuff.

If you're curious, the background comes from Google Earth imagery of Governor's Island in NYC, and I edited out the skyscrapers that are otherwise visible.

With this, I believe there are only two one-year parks left in Garlon's list (and however many more in the longer wish lists). I'll probably tackle Newington Park first since I have more information about it, and then finish up with Philadelphia's Oakdale Park.

Enjoy, and as usual let me know if there are problems!

[zappa1]

Very nice. Just saw this today. I like very much the info you give on these parks as some of them I never even heard of. Thank you.

Here is my update on this park as I just now played it. It's wonderful. Plays very well no problems for me. And the fans out by the wall in left and right field look cool. Kind of cozy around the plate and then it opens up wide. Great addition to the library.

[asrivkin]

Thank you, Zappa1!

[asrivkin]

Next up is Baltimore's Newington Park, the first home to professional baseball in Charm City. It hosted the Canaries of the National Association from 1872-1874, and the 1882 Orioles.

Google Drive Link to Newington Park

There are no photos or contemporary depictions of the park that I could find. It is listed (as the Peabody Baseball Grounds) on a map from the time period (which I show below), and an artist's rendition from much, much later (also shown below). In the end, I didn't use that artist's rendition at all, instead using period descriptions that were listed on the Protoball site (which is also fun browsing). The details are inspired by Boston's original South End Grounds, built around the same time. Since there's mention of other buildings on the grounds and a large clubhouse, I stuck those on.

This should leave just Philadelphia's Oakdale Park and the original Polo Grounds from Garlon's list, and the latter is being tackled by other folks as I understand it. I anticipate spending more of my modeling time in the other thread once I get Oakdale done, but as I've said elsewhere we'll keep this thread going for other 19th century parks that Dswans and I (and anyone else!) can get done...

[Ty Cobb]

Love it! Loving these older small capacity parks as venues for my small town leagues. Yeah, I'm still working on that...

[asrivkin]

Hi all!

Here's Oakdale Park, first home to the Philadelphia Athletics of the American Association, and the park that just about completes the InteGREATed Mod ballparks. It was used by amateurs since the Civil War before it was spruced up for 1882, its single season of professional use. In 1883 the Athletics moved to Jefferson St. Grounds, ably modeled by dfswans!

Google Drive link to Oakdale Park

As a natural consequence of starting with the parks with the most info, I'm finshing with the ones with some of the least info. Even SABR's article on Early Philadelphia Baseball only grants it a scant mention, and a chance encounter on social media with a historian of 19th century Philadelphia baseball also showed that there's not much out there. There are a few mentions from contemporary newspapers on the Protoball website, including a description of a three-part grandstand of 200' length with a small pavilion on top for the press, and uncovered seating along the sides. Period maps show a pond in what's called Oakdale Park ("park" being used in the "Central Park" way here), so I stuck that next to the ballpark for fun. It's got the look and feel of the other parks from the period that we have more information for, which is probably all we can hope for at this point!

I'll have a few thoughts in the next post about what I'm hoping to do next here, though that hasn't changed much if you've read previous posts on similar topics...

Please enjoy and let me know of any problems!

[asrivkin]

With Oakdale Park, we've arguably got all of the parks needed for the InteGREATed mod, pending the original Polo Grounds (which it still in progress last I heard).

Looking at actual history, we've got the NL covered for the entire period when it was the only major league and had 12 teams (1891-1900). There are 3-4 parks that we'd need to push that NL timeline further into the past, some of which may already be in somebody's plans. Providence's Messer Street Grounds was used for 8 seasons and is the longest-used unmodeled NL ballpark.

The AA looks like it was something of a mess for ballpark model completists, with teams coming and going. We do have the main parks for the most stable AA franchises, though. Most of the remaining unmodeled AA parks were one-year stands, with Columbus' Recreation Park II the only one that lasted as long as three years.

We're actually pretty close as far as the Players' League--all we're missing is Brotherhood Park in Cleveland, for which something like National League Park II could be substituted if desired.

There are also some 19th-century parks floating around in other threads. Obviously, Silvam's thread has a bunch of MLB parks that were built in the 1800s and used into the 1900s. My other thread has at least one relevant park as well--Buffalo's Olympic Park was used by their Players' League team. There may be a few others in there, though I confess I haven't looked in a comprehensive way. Scranton Athletic Park and Minneapolis' Nicolet Park are in there and were built in the late 1890s, but the others I've done a spot check on seem to be from the early 1900s. Labatt Park is in Flying Canuck's excellent Ballparks Around the World thread, though not in a 19th-century configuration. There may be others--I'm going from memory here.

Other than trying to tick off some of the outstanding NL/AA/NA parks, the other obvious (to me) things to try next are parks in major cities that didn't have MLB. I'm pretty confident that San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, St. Paul, and Toronto have enough information out there for their 19th-century parks to take a swing at modeling them.

In any case, I plan to continue adding to this thread, if perhaps at a slower pace. I expect dfswans to do the same--I know they had a great-looking to-do list. I invite anyone else who feels like adding to do so, as well!

[AESP_pres]

Not that big of a deal but cost nothing to ask... Do you plan to have the ballparks available in a single zip or rar file in place of having them individually?

Edit: Thanks for all your hard works!

[Garlon]

Great work.

I will need to get around to updating the NeL mod files with these ballparks.

I think Silvam may have stopped work on that earlier version of Polo Grounds. We can use a different model.

I never thought we would be able to get all of these earlier ballparks modeled. This is a really significant contribution to historical games.

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by AESP_pres

Not that big of a deal but cost nothing to ask... Do you plan to have the ballparks available in a single zip or rar file in place of having them individually?

Edit: Thanks for all your hard works!

Let me see how big it would be and whether that's realistic. I certainly could put them all in a single Google Drive directory and then someone could download that whole thing in one go or not as they like. I think.

And thank you!

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Great work.

I will need to get around to updating the NeL mod files with these ballparks.

I think Silvam may have stopped work on that earlier version of Polo Grounds. We can use a different model.

I never thought we would be able to get all of these earlier ballparks modeled. This is a really significant contribution to historical games.

OK, I'm willing to do that first Polo Grounds if I'm not stepping on any toes. I think there should be plenty of information, so it wouldn't be too much extra work...

And really, just speaking for myself, getting all the ballparks done speaks to the power of procrastination.

[zappa1]

Unbelievable stuff has been made on these parks. I'm really loving playing all of these. Thank you to everybody involved. Awesome.