Quote:
Originally Posted by the_mad_monk
An artist's rendition from an 1876 trade card:
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Excellent find! That, together with the 1875 photo, can give us a pretty good idea of what the grandstand at the original South End Grounds looked like, which could then form the basis for a historically faithful recreation of the ballpark. Of course, we still don't know what the field dimensions were, but since the OOTP game engine doesn't care, I'm not sure why we should.
A few more observations:
1. The owners of the Red Stockings were notorious penny-pinchers, so perhaps it's no surprise that they would be installing barbed-wire on top of the fences to keep out freeloaders. Still, nothing says "fun at the old ballpark" quite like a wall that makes the place look like a prison.
2. The field dimensions, if they exist, typically show the distances from home plate to the outfield fence, but one thing they often leave out is the amount of foul territory behind the plate and down the lines. In the ballparks of the nineteenth century, foul ground was often
enormous, especially when measured by today's standards. The trade card gives some feel for that, although the artist's rendition is all screwed up and the perspective is downright weird.
The current minimum distance from home plate to the backstop (60 feet) was only instituted in the 1930s. Before then, the minimum distance was 90 feet, and often it was more than that. The reason was simple: there was no netting protecting the fans behind home plate and down the lines from errant foul balls, so seats had to be a safe distance from the batter. That also explains why the grandstand at South End Grounds and those at other ballparks were so high. That can be seen in the photo, which shows that the wall behind home plate is, I estimate, at least 10' tall.
3. Another feature that the photo shows is the board fence in front of the grandstand. That wasn't unique to the South End Grounds - the Messer Street Grounds in Providence had something similar.
At Providence, I've read that the locker rooms were underneath the grandstands, so the fence protected players going to and from the clubhouse. At Boston, there were evidently concession stands there. What's unusual is that the Boston management put bleachers between the fence and the grandstand, thereby squeezing a couple dozen more paying customers into the park at the risk, no doubt, of killing a few each season due to foul balls. That board fence wasn't there to protect the fans - presumably no one was sitting directly behind it. Instead, it was clearly just a backstop for balls so they wouldn't roll under the bleachers. The fans had to watch out for themselves.
4. As the trade card shows, canvas sheets were installed on the wall down the first base side to prevent people in the houses across the street from seeing the games for free. That is something that is timeless - Connie Mack did the same thing at Shibe Park in the 1910s, and the Cubs were still doing it in the 1990s at Wrigley Field.