Sportsman's Park
- David Hegler
- May 6
- 5 min read
Sportsman's Park was St. Louis's first true baseball park. It was here where the city first fell in love with their Cardinals and where star players such as Stan Musial, Lou Brock and Bob Gibson first captured America's attention, making it realize that St. Louis had the potential to be a powerhouse. This is the story of Sportsman's Park.
Background
It all began in 1870 when August Solari bought a plot of land on Didier Street and North Grand Avenue and built a humble little ballpark he named "the Grand Avenue Ball Grounds". The wooden ballpark served as the St. Louis Brown Stockings home all through the decade. After a wooden grandstand was built on the southeast corner of the grounds in 1881, Solari changed the ballpark's name to "Sportsman's Park".
Meanwhile, the Browns moved on to the National League and trotted over several blocks northeast to a new ballpark in 1893. The New Sportsman's Park opened on April 27th in magnificent fashion as a massive crowd of 12,230 watched their Browns beat the Louisville Colonels 4-2.
While the Browns finished tenth in the NL that year, their new home proved to be a firetrap. Twice within the next decade, it burned to the ground and twice it was rebuilt. In between the blazes, the ballpark was renamed "League Park" in 1899 while the team briefly changed its name to the "Perfectos" before eventually settling for "Cardinals" a year later.
Throughout this time period, League Park's capacity swiveled between 14,500 and 21,000. In 1911, new owner Frank Robison named the ballpark after himself. The Cardinals played their last game at Robison Field on June 6, 1920 gifting the 16,000 who ventured into its wooden seats by beating the Cubs 5-2. With victory in hand, the Cardinals moved right back to where they started: on Didier Street and North Grand Avenue.
The Glory Years
In 1901, the Milwaukee Brewers of the American League moved to St. Louis where they changed their name to the Browns and built a small 8,000 wooden seat ballpark on the very sight of the original Sportsman's Park. Initially built of wood, the newly-built Sportsman's Park was was completely rebuilt in 1909 as a new concrete and steel double-deck grandstand replaced the old wooden one. In a unique twist, the ballpark's designers elected to build the new grandstand on the opposite side of the park while keeping the old one to serve as a bleacher section all the way in left-field.
The Browns' first game in the new Sportsman's Park was a 1-0 loss to Cleveland onApril 14, 1909. Lured in by the massive crowd of 25,000, the Cardinals began to ponder the possibilities. A little over a decade after it first opened, Cardinals owner Sam Breadon had grown weary of watching his team play in a small, wooden ballpark and decided to move the Cardinals into Sportsman's Park for a $20,000 annual rent. The two teams would share the same home for the next three decades.
From the start, Sportsman's Park was a hitter's paradise as batter salivated over the 310 foot right-field. George Sisler certainly enjoyed it. For years, the Browns' pitcher-turned-first-baseman frequently approached .400 as his team continued to struggle in the box office and on the field. In 1922, the Browns averaged .329 as a team in their own ballpark.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals' Rogers Hornsby was tearing up the league. In an incredible five year stretch from 1921 through 1925, Hornsby average an inhuman .425 at Sportsman's Park.
In 1926, Osborn Engineering was hired to build upon the city's blossoming little ballpark. In a short while, the noted firm constructed a second deck atop the existing grandstand, rebuilt the right-field bleachers out of concrete and replaced all box seats with foldouts a spacious 22 inches wide. In the end, the ballpark's seating capacity swelled to 34,000 for a staggering $500,000. After watching the Detroit Tigers crush eight home runs in a single horrifying afternoon, the Cardinals erected a giant mesh fence in right-field to stifle the easy home runs.
Shortly after the renovations were complete in 1926, Sportsman's Park hosted its first World Series. While the Cardinals won just once at home (4-0 in Game 3), they clinched the world title in seven games at New York. In total, Sportsman's Park hosted ten World Series, with the Cardinals winning it all seven times and clinching it at home in 1931, 1944, 1946 and 1964. 1944 was particularly memorable because that was the only year that the Browns won the AL pennant, placing each World Series game in one facility, Sportsman's Park. Needless to say, each of those games was a sellout.
But despite the Cardinals continued good fortune, both they and the Browns struggled mightily at the turnstiles throughout the 1930s. All through the decade, the two teams failed to even combine to draw one-million fans. The Browns hit rock bottom in 1935 when they attracted just 80,922 all year long. Likewise, although the Cardinals won the World Series in 1934, they drew just 325,000 fans, each of whom were surely struggling to make ends meet in the thick of the Great Depression.
Since St. Louis was in a region where slavery was widely popular, racial tension was intense during the ballpark's heyday. In fact, Sportsman's Park was the last major league ballpark to restrict seating for Blacks, relegating them to the right-field bleachers. Although St. Louis was a popular location for the Negro League, no Negro League team ever played a regular season game there.
In 1941, famed Negro League pitcher Satchel Page refused to play the Chicago American Giants in an exhibition game at St. Louis unless Sportsman's Park opened entirely for Black fans. As a result, 20,000 were on hand to watch Page's Kansas City Monarchs whip the Giants 11-2. Partially inspired by that event, Sportsman's Park officially opened to Black fans three long years later.
The End of an Era
Eventually, the ballpark began to age poorly. The Giants Rube Fischer once noted that the visitors clubhouse was like a "cheap hotel" and the Yankees manager Joe McCarthy joined a chorus by comparing the rough infield to a beach.
In 1945, new Browns owner, Richard Muckerman went about upgraded Sportsman's Park by adding two spectator ramps, more restrooms, separate dressing rooms for the umpires and trainers, a private ofice for the manager, a new scoreboard along the first-base side, an elevator that brought reporters to a newer, larger press box and a penthouse lounge for himself and his friends. Although initially planning on spending just $180,000, the entire project cost four times as much.
As the calendar turned to a new decade, the Browns changed owners again and again, from Muckerman to the DeWitt brothers to the great showman Bill Veeck. But not even Veeck could save the Browns and he soon sold his interest in the Browns to a group from Baltimore. Just 3,174 watched the Browns' last game and Veeck's likeness was hung in effigy as the White Sox beat the hapless Browns 2-1.
Veeck also sold his interest in Sportsman's Park to the Cardinals owner, Gussie Busch. The heir of the Anheuser-Busch fortune plunked down $1.75 million in upgrades for his new toy: new seats throughout, eight private suites, an organ played by Joe Garagiola's wife and a large Budweiser logo with an electronic eagle moving back and forth for home runs that sat perched atop the scoreboard in left-field. He even renamed it "Budweiser Stadium" for a brief moment before re-renaming it "Busch Stadium".
Still, even with all the upgrades, the clock was ticking on the old ballpark. The fresh coat of paint and the new sod laid out on the ground in the spring of 1965 felt like a final dressing before Sportsman's Park closed for good. With a new Busch Stadium opening up downtown the following year, the Cardinals played their final game at old Sportsman's Park on May 8, 1966, losing to the San Francisco Giants 10-5 in front of 17,503 fans. The stadium was demolished soon after and is now the site of a Boys & Girls Club, complete with an athletic field and commemorative tribute remembering the site's glory years.
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