Some Jazz-Age Ballparks

[asrivkin]

Well! This thread is newly stickied, so I guess it needs some new content! I have a bit of a backlog of parks I’ve made, though that includes several that I made for my league and don’t think there’s much general interest in. I’ll post what I think people want and then list what else I have in case there’s any demand.

For now, here’s Neil Park in Columbus. This is technically “Neil Park II”, built in 1905 on the same site as an earlier Neil Park, but reoriented and with a steel and concrete construction (the first such ballpark in the country!).

Google Drive link to Neil Park

Neil Park was home to Negro League and minor league teams throughout the first third of the 1900s. I didn’t find too many interior shots, but hopefully I got the c. 1920s vibe correct in any case. It’s right across the street from Fort Hayes, and the buildings beyond right field are based on what’s still there today (according to Google Earth).

Enjoy!

[micropterus58]

Thanks, I've been using many of your stadiums in my New England league. I'm in 1905 right now so these smaller parks are perfect. I also edit some textures to give the local feel. I think there would be interest in any stadiums you make

[kcstengelsr]

I always look forward to asrivkin's new creations and Neil Park is a worthy addition.

Actual MLB ballgames were played in Columbus, Ohio at Neil Park. The statistics for the Negro Leagues from 1920 through 1948 now count as official MLB numbers and for the one 1921 season the Columbus Buckeyes played in the eight team Negro National League and they played their home games at Neil Park.

When one creates a 1921 season with Negro Leagues included using OOTP23 he will find the eight teams of the Negro National League along with one independent 1921 Negro Leagues team--the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants (wrongly named in the game the New York Bacharach Giants). The Chicago American Giants had the best 1921 record in the NNL and the Columbus Buckeyes are included when the league is created for that season. One has to get into commissioner mode to tweak the NNL rosters and lineups to more properly fit those found at a source like Seamheads.

I set up a 1921 season, tweaked the rosters of the American Giants and the Buckeyes, placed the Buckeyes in Neil Park, assigned caps and jerseys by nopepper to the two teams, added my own custom camera angles and my own custom sounds (stretch song from 1920) to Neil Park, and gave each of the teams my own shorter pants with black shoes to fit the era. I played the resulting 1921 NNL game at Neil Park and placed it on YouTube for free viewing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIWW...el=kcstengelsr

Note: it sounds like nopepper is considering updating his historical Negro Leagues uniforms. i wonder if additionally team logos could be added for any of them?
Note2: i mentioned that creating a Negro Leagues with OOTP23 for 1921 gives a nine team league. now four of those teams have proper homes:
American Giants played in South Side Park by silvam14 (called Schorling then)
Indianapolis ABCs played in Washington by asrivkin
Bacharach Giants played in Inlet by asrivkin
and now
Buckeyes played in Neil by asrivkin

Thank you asrivkin!

[asrivkin]

Thank you for the continued encouragement, micropterus58 and kcstengelsr! Whether I give every park its own post or just put the more niche parks in a folder and just point to it is TBD, but I do have Worcester and New Haven that I'll put here since they seem relevant to at least one person.

For today, here's Eclipse Park, which served Louisville from 1902-1922:

Google Drive link to Eclipse Park (1910s)

For nearly 50 years, Louisville baseball teams played in a facility called Eclipse Park. Whether there were three or four such parks is a matter of opinion centering on whether the version of the second Eclipse Park reconstructed after a 1899 fire counts as #3 or is still #2. Regardless, the final Eclipse Park stood in downtown Louisville from 1902-1922, and that’s what I’ve got for you at the link above. If you're interested, there's a lot of Louisville baseball pictures here: https://historiclouisville.weebly.co...all-parks.html

This Eclipse Park (which I’m calling #3 rather than #4) was home to the minor league Louisville Colonels, the independent Negro League precursor team Louisville White Sox, and the Louisville Brecks of the NFL (!!). Unfortunately, while there are a lot of photos of this park, few of them have a wide view. Still, I think between what's available and a Sanborn map I think it's reasonably close?

Enjoy!

[asrivkin]

With Neil Park and Eclipse Park III, a bit of a funny set is completed.

I've attached a couple of screenshots from some research I ran across a while ago while working on making Omaha's Vinton Park. It's from an article from the Omaha Bee from...October 7th? 1917. At least I think that's right--there's no date on the top of the page, and the most recent articles on this page are dated October 6th.

In any case, there's a discussion about the way the ongoing World War might affect the minor leagues in the coming 1918 season, which is of local interest since Omaha played in the Western League, and it wasn't clear if that league would survive and/or if the Omaha team would move up or down a level.

What's of most interest to me here is that one of the drivers for Omaha's situation is what happens to the major leagues. There was some amount of intrigue going on with the American League in general at this point, which isn't mentioned in the article, but they claim in the article that Ban Johnson (president of the American League) thinks a third major league was on the way. The further claim, though not ascribed to Johnson, is that such a league would have teams in Providence, Baltimore, Toronto, Buffalo, Newark, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville.

So, if anyone ever wanted to explore what an alternate history scenario would look like with three 8-team leagues at peace with one another in 1918, they now have correct parks to do it with.

[asrivkin]

Caveat Emptor for Eclipse Park--one user has reported the grid locations are messed up for the dugouts and some wall segments. They seem OK to me in the editor and during play, but computers are strange things.

If anyone else has trouble with players running through Eclipse Park walls, please DM me and I'll see if I can sort it out and post a new version. Thanks!

[kcstengelsr]

Had there not been contraction of late 19th century major league teams with Pittsburg doing some "pirating" of orphan players, Honus Wagner likely would have played in this park for Louisville.

Setting up a game for Youtube with this park using historical era teams faces the problem that Louisville during the stretch of Eclipse Park III was back in the minor leagues and OOTP23 seems not to include minor leagues which do not have at least one team affiliated with a major league team. For example I had already set up 1921 with "full" minors and Negro Leagues but only the Pacific Coast League and the Texas League were included in the minors as both of these leagues had at least one affiliation that season. Louisville's 1921 minor league team was in a league with no affiliated teams and so they were not included.

I decided to play the 1921 Chicago Cubs against the Cincinnati Reds, imagining that the Reds set up an exhibition game 105 miles down the road from Cincinnati in Louisville at Eclipse Park. Just for fun, I put both teams in uniforms resembling those used in the real 2022 Field of Dreams game (caps and jerseys by nopepper, I did the shorter pants with black shoes). Here it is free to watch on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbHb...el=kcstengelsr

Note: I was one who had my copy of Eclipse Park with some fences not lining up with the model and so I went into 3D Model of the park and moved some fences around. I think I did ok but notice something in the sixth inning near the Tea sign in right center field.

Thank you asrivkin for this fine ballpark. I love the bull out in left field foul territory.

[mytreds]

Katy park file contains no .prk file.

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by mytreds

Katy park file contains no .prk file.

Thanks for the catch! I'll update the link when I can, for now here's a screenshot of the Park Profile so you can enter the numbers yourself.

[asrivkin]

While I'm working on some other parks, I'll post some of my backlog. Here's Montreal's Atwater Park, which served various professional and amateur baseball teams in Montreal in the last decade of the 19th century and the first few of the 20th.

Google Drive link to Atwater Park

There were a few game-time images from inside the park, but they were bad scans of newspaper pictures hosted on the indispensable digitalballparks.com. There were some aerial photos (one of which I've included below), but they seem to date from the era after the grandstand came down and the field was only used for amateur use. So there was a lot of interpolating going on (including the townhouses across the street, which are probably way too pastel for that time and place!)...

Delorimier Stadium was built in 1928, I will eventually get to making that (unless someone else gets to it first!)...

I'll continue my tour of Canadian ballparks c. 1920 in my next post!

[Ty Cobb]

Thank you! Another great addition.

[kcstengelsr]

Atwater in Montreal by asrivkin has lots of interesting details. Here is a game I played on Youtube at Atwater with the 1921 Brooklyn Robins hosting the St. Louis Browns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S-z...el=kcstengelsr

[asrivkin]

OK, next up is Vancouver's Athletic Park, which was used from 1913-1951. There's a page of pictures for it on Digital Ballparks. I was aiming, as usual, for c. 1920 appearance. I'm using it in an expanded PCL, but in real life the Vancouver teams were in other leagues. You of course can do what you like with it.

Google Drive link to Vancouver Athletic Park

This one had a good amount of info. No insurance maps (or at least none that I could find), but some aerials and plenty of photos from inside the park (some of the latter made their way into the textures). I probably could/should have created colorized versions of the B/W panoramas that I used for the background, maybe that'll be for a later version if I get motivated...

I'll try to post a couple of New England parks next...

[asrivkin]

OK, it's been an intense month or two at work but I finally have some time to get back to this (I think)!

So, here's Worcester's Boulevard Park. There's not a ton of information about it out there, other than its lifespan (1906-1926) and the teams it served. There's one picture (which is below).

Worcester was one of the 20 biggest metro areas in the USA in 1920, but between its proximity to Boston and a general decline it mostly did without professional baseball between this ballpark's demise and the 2000s.

I've been using this park regularly, so it should work fine. The next couple of parks I post are less well vetted, and since "upgrading" my Mac to Monterey I've been unable to set or change the fences and grids on 3D parks. I have a backlog of things to post that I finished before the upgrade. I'll need to sort that out somehow before I can post any new parks, but I do at least have a few parks to post before getting there...

[Ty Cobb]

I hate to open a can of worms, but are you at all considering Ventura? I was also less than enthused with Monterey for a variety of reasons, but Ventura is running on by iMac i3 with no hitches so far...but the windows and system boxes do look more than a bit 'iOS-like'.

On the purely good side, I'm going to nab this for low minors in my Great Lakes League...if I ever get it finished. Nice work!

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

I hate to open a can of worms, but are you at all considering Ventura? I was also less than enthused with Monterey for a variety of reasons, but Ventura is running on by iMac i3 with no hitches so far...but the windows and system boxes do look more than a bit 'iOS-like'.

Alas, it's a work computer (shhhh ) so I've got limited flexibility in what/when upgrades happen. I have been considering just getting a cheap laptop for games, but it's not high on my to-do list...

On the purely good side, I'm going to nab this for low minors in my Great Lakes League...if I ever get it finished. Nice work!

Thanks! I actually have a few other c. 1920 parks that might be Great Lakes relevant, including Duluth and Grand Rapids. I made them for my own game rather than intending them for export, but I'm happy to share them anyhow.

[asrivkin]

Here's another New England park from c. 1920: Savin Rock Park in New Haven. As was the style in many parts of North America, this ballpark was adjacent to/associated with an amusement park. As was the case with Worcester, New Haven was one of the 20 largest metro areas in the US c. 1920 but went for several decades without minor league baseball. In New Haven's case, the demise of the Eastern League during the depression was the culprit.

There were a few different parks used in New Haven during this period depending on the day of the week, plus some of them went by different names. I tried not to make this park an amalgamation of several New Haven parks, but I might have accidentally done so anyhow. Otherwise, while I don't have any teams regularly playing in this park in my sim, I have used it and it seems more or less fine. I'm not crazy about the way the amusement park beyond the CF-RF fence looks, but perhaps it's good enough for now...


Google Drive link to Savin Rock Park

[Ty Cobb]

Spent some time this morning localizing ads on this to St. Ignace, MI as an experiment. Park is so tightly constructed that everything came together perfectly! St. Ig is going to be one of my Rookie League squads...and this is going to be awesome for it! Need to make a trip up there now for a good skybox. . Thanks!

Also...I'm always up for a nicely done park. If you're willing to share the others, I'd be thrilled. Great Lakes area parks are not terribly well represented yet.

[asrivkin]

Moving out to the Great Lakes for this one, hopefully it'll be useful/fun for Ty.

As I've noted (and you may know anyhow), it was really common for 1910s-1920s ballparks to be found in/near amusement parks. Ramona Park in Grand Rapids was such a park, serving a team mostly called the Black Sox in this period.

Google Drive link to Ramona Park

I didn't find a lot of info for the interior but there are actually a couple of aerial photos from the relevant time period, one of which was apparently taken from a kite? Anyhow, those are below. This park should run fine, though there are no 2D photos for it and relatedly, the model screenshots are from Sketchup vs. OOTP. Enjoy!

[Ty Cobb]

Thank you so much! This WILL go into my league.