American Baseball, Football, Stadium History .Pdf
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A. Mostly Eastern Football and baseball developed gradually from European forebears in the 19th century; basketball, however, was invented in Springfield, MA in 1891. Baseball and football evolved along different paths. Many baseball rules were set by 1850, and recognizable baseball games were played in the 1840s and 50s. Entrepreneurs fenced in fields in order to charge admission to ball games, beginning in 1862. Overhand pitching wasn’t fully legal until 1884, a generation before a restricted version of the forward pass became legal in football. 1869 was a special year for both sports. The Cincinnati Red Stockings, with ten salaried players, compiled an amazing 58-0-1 record in 1869 and went on tour. They visited the White House, and came to California on the new transcontinental railroad to play six games in September and October 1869. Two thousand people welcomed them in San Francisco. They didn’t come to LA, which had no rail access until 1876. The team disbanded after the 1870 season. About half of them moved to Boston with manager Harry Wright in 1871, and became the Boston Red Stockings. They later became the Boston Braves, they were not the ancestors of the Boston Red Sox team, which formed in 1901 and took on the Red Sox name in 1908. The Atlanta Braves are their descendants today. Just to confuse you, the Cincinnati Reds also claim the Red Stockings as ancestors. You’d understand the 1869 game, although pitchers threw underhanded. The teams had nine positions, but note that right fielder Gerald Ellard also made the team’s baseballs. Football started as an elite college game. Different versions developed, most emphasizing kicking and a few allowed running with the ball. The Boston Oneida Club, formed in 1861, may have been the first organized football team. They probably invented the "Boston Game," which allowed players to kick a round ball along the ground, and to pick it up and run with it. The “New York game” allowed only kicking. Princeton and Rutgers played the first college football game in November 1869, more than ten years after the first college baseball games. Each team had 25 players. They could kick the ball or bat it with hands, feet, head or any body part. They could not run with it or pass it, i.e. they followed ‘New York rules’. Rutgers won 6-4. Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Yale agreed to establish rules in 1876, Yale coach Walter Cap revolutionized football with several makeovers in the 1880s, including three downs to gain five yards, (served the same purpose as basketball’s shot clock) a line of scrimmage, a seven man offensive line and more. He also created and publicized an All-America team, starting in 1889. Eastern newspapers covered college football in great detail in the late 1880s and 1890s. It was a status symbol for the elites, along with golf and tennis, and newspapers pushed the idea of an All American team. Thanksgiving Day games came to be especially important; they were often followed by rowdy fan behavior in restaurants and other places. Independent semi-pro football games between teams representing local athletic associations and businesses playing irregular schedules appeared in the 1880s. The players were supposed to be amateurs but often received expenses or trophies. The line between the colleges and the independents was fuzzy; some players played for both colleges and independents during the same season. The first truly professional football team was that of the Latrobe, PA athletic association that signed all players to season contracts in 1897. This came 30 years after the first pro baseball team, Cincinnati in the late 1860s. Neither the Cincinnati nor the Latrobe team was economically stable. Bankruptcies were the rule in the early days of pro baseball and football. That has changed dramatically. The average NFL franchise today is worth more than $1 billion, and the last NFL bankruptcy was in 1952. The NFL has been more profitable than other professional sports leagues. Its small town origin, skilled use of television and its top down control of franchises differ from other American professional sports. The last team to win an NFL championship that no longer survives was the Providence Steam Roller, 1928 champions. They played in a bicycle racing stadium, the Cycledome, which seated 10,000 spectators. The seats were so close to the field that players landed in the seats if they were knocked out of bounds. The Cycledome was demolished in 1937. Early stadiums were wooden, privately financed and prone to fires. Harvard Stadium, built in 1903 with alumni money, was radically new, all steel and concrete, the first stadium to use vertical reinforced concrete. Older ballparks had slabs of horizontal concrete only. However, newspapers were not enthusiastic. The Boston Globe said that this “largest chunk of concrete in the world” might not work out for New England winters and the New York Times gave the new stadium only one line. This indifference may explain the delays before Harvard rivals Yale and Princeton built new concrete stadiums in 1914. The Yale Bowl had a shape unlike the Harvard and Greek Olympic stadiums. Stadiums with similar shape came to be called bowls. The Rose Bowl, built in 1922, initially had an open South End. It was enlarged in 1930 and the open end was closed, making it a bowl. Shibe Park, home of the Philadelphia Athletics, opened in Philadelphia in 1909 and was the first concrete and steel baseball stadium. New York’s famous Polo Grounds illustrates the evolution of ballparks. The first version (1876) had no fences. The 3rd version, a wooden private stadium built in 1908, was second only in seating capacity to Harvard Stadium. It was badly damaged in a 1911 fire, followed by the fourth version of concrete and steel that later housed two NFL teams and the New York Yankees until they built their own stadium. Yankee attendance soared after they got Babe Ruth from Boston; they built the first triple decked baseball stadium, surpassing the capacity of all college stadiums. The first game in the new stadium was April 18,1923 against the Red Sox; 74,200 fans attended. The Polo Grounds was demolished in 1964, the original Yankee stadium in 2010. New York was unique. Many other cities built large municipal stadiums in the expansive 1920s: The Rose Bowl (funded by the Tournament of Roses and given to the city of Pasadena) 1922, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, originally larger and more expensive 1923, Philadelphia Municipal Stadium built in 1923 for the 150th anniversary International Exposition, a horseshoe stadium with 102,000 seats, and Chicago’s Soldier Field that opened in 1924 as a public, multipurpose sports venue, and was renamed Soldier Field to honor World War I veterans. More than 123,000 fans watched the 1927 USC-Notre Dame game at Soldier Field. Cleveland Municipal Stadium, built by the city for both football and baseball, opened in 1931. Dallas built the Cotton Bowl stadium in 1932. Miami businessmen noticed the success of the Rose Festival, they started a Palm festival and got the city of Miami to build Burdine stadium, which opened in 1937 and later became Orange Bowl stadium. It was expanded to a peak capacity of 80,000 in the 1960s when the Miami Dolphins played there. Tulane University built a 35,000 seat stadium in 1926. It was used for the Sugar Bowl from 1935 (when it began) until 1975, when the game was moved and eventually the stadium was torn down. Lacking luxury seating, it could not attract games to fund its maintenance. The Houston Astrodome (1965) was the first domed stadium and had the first luxury boxes. These features were widely imitated and the old municipal stadiums came down, broken by premium seating and TV. Soldier Field remains in a shrunken state, remodeled to suit the needs of the Chicago Bears. The Cotton Bowl is on the ropes, but city of Dallas recently voted to renovate it with premium seating. It’s likely to survive. The era of giant municipal stadiums built for sports, concerts and public assemblies is over. Keith Eggener wrote a lovely essay about Baltimore Memorial Stadium, which applies to many of its older sisters. The Houston Astrodome was replaced by Reliant stadium in 2002, with a retractable roof, 75% of its cost paid for by Harris County taxpayers. Today six MLB and three NFL stadiums have retractable roofs. B. Mostly Western, featuring Chavez Ravine California major league baseball surfaced in 1941 when the American league rejected a proposed move of the St. Louis Browns to Los Angeles. After the war, business interests began to push for a Los Angeles major league team. No team would come without a major league stadium and no one would build a stadium without a team. Many suggested upgrading Wrigley Field to 40,000 to 50,000 seats. However, this would entail condemnation of adjacent housing and businesses. The LA Times’ Ned Cronin first suggested public financing of a new stadium in Chavez Ravine in February 1955 to attract a team. A bond measure to finance a stadium was rejected by the voters later that year. The first Wrigley field was built in Los Angeles in 1921. Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley bought both the Chicago Cubs and the LA Angels of the Pacific Coast League. He owned Catalina Island and wintered in Pasadena; his Pasadena mansion now houses the Tournament of Roses. He built a new stadium in South Central LA for the Angels in 1921. It was a modern stadium with an attractive clock tower, seating only 21,000 fans.