Happy Cinco de Mayo/Orthodox Easter/Sunday!
I'm happy to post another park today, this is
West Side Park, home to the Chicago Cubs back when they were still the White Stockings (and the Colts). The franchise won two pennants while tenants here, though did not win the "World Series" either year, tying the AA's St. Louis Browns 3 games a piece in 1885 and losing to them 4 games to 2 in 1886. In addition to serving as the NL's Chicago outpost, West Side Park also served as the home park for the Western Association's Chicago Maroons in 1888 and hosting contests between the Maroons and teams like the Omaha Omahogs, Des Moines Prohibitionists, and Davenport Onion Weeders.
Google Drive link to West Side Park
Not a whole lot of graphical help for this park, but that actually simplified things a little bit. The dimensions are availabile in
Green Cathedrals, and I had inadvertently derived them by coming up with the smallest park that outfielders could fit in. There's a story about the very first game here and how the opposing manager challenged the quoted 215-foot distances down the lines thinking they were actually shorter than that and may be shorter than the 210-foot minimum allowed at the time. The umpire dutifully went out with a tape measure and found the distances to the lines were actually 225 feet down the lines. This is, to make a long story short, just about the smallest park that can work unaltered in OOTP. The park works fine, though depending on where the 3rd out is made, the players may run through the edge of the bleachers when the inning ends.
I usually try to use backgrounds that are from or near the spot where the ballpark is, but Chicago has changed way too much from the 1880s. So, Elgin, Illinois is doing the stand-in. I'll also note for completeness that there's a tower back behind the park that I neglected to put in, but it's not clear to me that it could really even be seen from within the park...
Enjoy!