Remembering Crosley Field

believe it or not I am sitting here in the middle of what used to be Crosley Field a magical place for generations of Cincinnatians and Cincinnati Reds fans if you come here now it looks nothing like a ballpark a place where wonderful things happen exciting things happen the world's World Series were played great players like Frank Robinson vada Penson Ted Kluszewski played the Reds careers it's an industrial site now but there are still little traces of it and if you have the memory and you've been to Crosley Field you can walk this ground and recognize things that will remind you of your childhood and a innocent day in baseball when it was all about going out and playing the game this is a spate the place where great pitchers for the Reds like Jim Maloney Bob Perkey Jim O'Toole it's also the place where a lot of Hall of Famers pitched for the other side Sandy Koufax Warren Spahn Bob Gibson Don Drysdale names they're legendary in baseball were right here on this spot and pitched for thousands and thousands of Reds fans and all of us who were here at the time have memories of those days this is approximately where the main gates of Crosley Field were and walking into this ballpark was an experience in itself because your senses were just overwhelmed by what the smells of a ballpark the first thing you would smell is is stale beer you would smell the cigars the five-cent I bowled cigars that they used to sell in the stands you'd smell the popcorn you'd smell the roasted peanuts the peanuts Jim Shelton sold out on the street and then you would walk into the seating area and into the seats and walk down towards the field and this great rush of the smell of fresh grass would hit you and I can smell those same smells today as clearly as I could forty some years ago this is a very busy intersection these days it's Finley and Dalton streets but back in the Crosley Field days about right here is where you would find before every game p-nut Jim Shelton in his stovepipe hat and his tail with a cart where he did fresh roasted peanuts and he bagged them for you he'd roast them and you would take this more bag of peanuts straight into the ballpark it's not like it is that the modern ballparks where you're buying bags of peanuts that have been processed and shelled and bagged you know hundreds of miles away peanut Jim would do it right here in front of you and put them in a bag for you and they were delicious you see the building behind me the Wegman company and next to it is a building that was an old paper box factory when you sat in the seats of Crosley Field just about from anywhere and you looked over the bleachers you would see those two buildings and even today when I'm driving down i-75 and I pass those buildings across the fields the first thing I think of we're standing right now just about where the bleachers were the bleachers were a special place in Crosley Field during the day they were called the Sun Deck at night they were called the moon it was an important place because many many homerun balls would end up in the bleachers and you'd have a mad scramble of kids going for a souvenir and I have to admit I was one of them I just want you to tell me a little bit about the development of this place why it was here and how it changed over over the period of time that the Reds played here well you know people think of this as Crosley Field most of us from the 50s and the 60s and so forth but they actually played baseball on this site since 1884 and when you think about the history of this site in terms of baseball I mean every great baseball player practically had ever played at some point set foot on this this hallowed ground one of the great changes in the ballpark was the addition of the light towers in 1935 so you have the very first night game play here in Major League history and then to have this these big light towers in here illuminating that green grass I mean I'm you talked to people and said it was just a miracle they'd walk in they just took their breath away there was a newspaper account of that first game that I read one time where the sports writer described a fly ball that's looking like a pearl on velvet yeah well it was a marvelous place and its place it will not ever be forgot all right all right let's go get us some peanuts cracks go see peanut Jim

Channel: cincinnatidotcom

Views: 152,635

Keywords: history, reds, baseball, youtube, sports, National League, News, ENQ, mlb

Id: oXKyOa4DKmE

Length: 5min 9sec (309 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 06 2012