Now You Know Baseball. Doug Lennox
who was slated to become a free agent, demanded that the Tigers move the fences in. The Tigers refused, and Gonzalez bolted to the Cleveland Indians in 2001.
Criticism continued to plague the outfield dimensions at Comerica, and the Tigers moved the fences in for the 2003 season. By that point, even had Gonzalez still been a Tiger, injuries had taken a toll, and Gonzalez was a shadow of his former self.
Quickies
Did you know …
• that the original Wrigley Field was in Los Angeles, California? Though the Chicago stadium was built earlier, it went by the name Cubs Park. Owner William Wrigley Jr. owned both the Cubs and the minor league Los Angeles Angels, and built the L.A. Wrigley Field in 1925. The Chicago venue wasn’t named Wrigley Field until 1926.
What stadium has a ladder that is in play?
Fenway Park has many quirks, not the least of which is the Green Monster in left field. The fabled wall is notable not only for its height (and for the short distance between the wall and home plate) but for the difficulties it poses for outfielders who have to judge how the ball will bounce off different parts of the wall.
A strange feature of the wall is a ladder that is attached to the wall in play. Prior to the addition of seats on top of the wall, home runs hit over the Monster landed in netting. Stadium employees would use the ladder to climb up to the top of the wall and retrieve balls from the netting.
When seats were added there was no need for ball retrieval, but the ladder remains as an essential part of the character of the ballpark.
What stadium, currently used by a major league team, was originally constructed for a team in a league that no longer exists?
It’s hard to imagine Wrigley Field without the Chicago Cubs, but when the iconic stadium first opened in 1914, the Cubs were not the tenants. The stadium, then known as Weeghman Park, was built to house the Chicago Federals, the Windy City’s entry in the upstart Federal League.
The Federal League was the last major challenge to the American and National Leagues, and made a valiant attempt to recruit big-name players and establish itself as a third major league. The league was a flop, and shut down after only two seasons. (In 1968 it was retroactively recognized as a major league.)
Weeghman Park was left empty, but not for long. The Federals’ owner, Charlie Weeghman, teamed up with William Wrigley Jr. to purchase the Chicago Cubs and move them into the young ballpark. In the following years, Wrigley became sole owner of the team. In 1920, the park’s name was changed to Cubs Park; in 1926, Wrigley threw humility aside and named the stadium after himself.
They Said It …
“Now it is done, now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead.
Reality has strangled invention.
Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”
Sportswriter Red Smith on Bobby Thomson’s 1951 pennant-winning home run.
What kind of ivy is used at Wrigley Field?
Built in 1914, Wrigley Field originally had an uncovered brick wall in the outfield that was a danger to outfielders. In 1937, Bill Veeck planted ivy plants along the wall. The ivy has grown thick over the years, and often balls get stuck in the foliage, but the frustration an outfielder might face in searching for a lost ball is a small price to pay for the safety that is provided.
The ivy of choice is Boston ivy, which is capable of surviving the harsh Chicago winters.
What was the fi rst baseball stadium built of concrete and steel?
Concrete and steel stadiums are the norm in professional baseball, and have been for generations, but there was a time in the early years of the major leagues when all stadiums were constructed of wood. This began to change in 1909 when Shibe Park opened in Philadelphia.
Shibe Park was built for the Philadelphia Athletics at a cost of $457,167.71, and originally seated 20,000 fans. In 1925, an upper deck and outfield seats were added to bring capacity to 33,000.
The Athletics eventually moved to Kansas City and later Oakland, but Shibe Park continued to be used by the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies until 1970. It was demolished in 1976.
Why did the Boston Red Sox rearrange the order of the plaques for retired numbers on their out fi eld wall in the 1990s?
Currently there are eight retired numbers on the wall at Fenway Park, but for many years, the numbers of Ted Williams (9), Joe Cronin (4), Bobby Doerr (1), and Carl Yastrzemski (8) were the only numbers on display, and they were arranged in that order.
In the 1980s, media began fabricating the “Curse of the Bambino.” The supposed “curse” was a hex Babe Ruth placed on the team after being sold to the Yankees. Ruth never actually placed any curse on the team, but it made for a nice story. In 1989, a new piece was added to the myth when Yastrzemski’s number was retired. Someone observed that the order of the numbers, if seen as a date, would be 9–4–18 — September 4, 1918. That date was the night before the 1918 World Series — the last that the Red Sox had won. As much of a stretch as it was, this was useful information to curse theorists.
In the 1990s, the numbers were arranged in order — 1, 4, 8, 9 — in an effort to break the curse. The rewards were not immediate, but curse believers will tell you that if the numbers had not been re-ordered, the Red Sox would not have won the World Series in 2004 and 2007.
What happened to the lights that were supposed to be installed in Wrigley Field in 1941?
Wrigley Field was long known as the last hold out against night baseball, playing 5,687 consecutive day games before lights were finally installed and night games played in 1988.
But the holdout was almost a brief one. In 1941, lights were delivered to Wrigley Field for the purpose of lighting the stadium for night games for the 1942 season. But the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a patriotic William Wrigley donated the lights to a shipyard to aid in the war effort.
As time went on, day games became a nearly unbreakable tradition. But by the late 1980s, the lack of lights became an issue, to the point that Major League Baseball was threatening to force the Cubs to play postseason games at Busch Stadium in St. Louis — an unthinkable penalty for Cards-hating Cubs fans. So, on August 8, the Cubs started their first night game at Wrigley.
The baseball gods must have been reluctant to part with tradition; the game was called due to rain after three innings, and the official night game at Wrigley wasn’t played until the following evening.
What is the only monument in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park that is not dedicated to a speci fi c person?
One of the most famous features of the old and new Yankee Stadiums is Monument Park. Once located on the playing field before being moved behind the outfield wall in the 1970s, the section of the park honours former Yankee greats with plaques and monuments.
But one plaque is not dedicated to an individual — it is dedicated to a group of people. On September 11, 2002, one year after the attacks on the World Trade Center, a plaque was placed in the back right corner of Monument Park in honour of the victims and rescue workers of 9/11.
What was the “Black Monster”?