Some Jazz-Age Ballparks

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by bctrackboi11

I was told to reach out to you as you've had a similar problem. How do you keep your outfielders inside the ballpark? I recently made a historic park and the LF/RF are on the outside.

Hi,

Like zappa1 says, that post mentions the limits we're under. So, you'll either need to change the park from its historic dimensions or else accept that they'll be outside the field of play when the pitch is delivered...

[asrivkin]

By request, here's Red Bird Stadium in Columbus, home of various minor league, Negro League, and football teams (under various names) since it was built in 1932. It currently sits in a half-demolished limbo.


Google Drive link to Red Bird Stadium

I'd been shooting for a 1930s appearance, but most of the info I had was from the 1950s so I think that's basically where things ended up. The backdrop is from the present day. I colorized and used the scoreboard from one of the photos below.

I'll try and tackle Miami Stadium next (and soon), for which I potentially have a solution that will let me leverage someone else's work and seriously cut down on the amount of work...

[niu354]

Woohoo thanks! New home of four Ohio clubs in my save: Columbus, Mansfield, Lancaster, and Newark.

[oosl]

Red Bird Stadium is outstanding! Thank you so much for doing this request!

Can't wait to see what you do with Miami.

Thanks again!

M

[zappa1]

I agree. Red Bird is wonderful.

[asrivkin]

After a long travel stint, I've gotten a little time to make another few ballparks and actually post them here! First up is Maple Leaf Stadium, Toronto's home for professional (if minor league) baseball for a bit over 40 years. There's a SABR article on the ballpark here.

Google Drive link to Maple Leaf Stadium

The park was in use from the mid-20s to the mid-60s, but there was surprisingly little that I could find in terms of (useful) high-res imagery from inside the park or even the dimensions. Happily, there are aerial photos and Toronto is a big enough city that there was plenty of general historical information out there. I aimed for an early/mid-50s appearance, if only because early photos seemed to show funny dimensions that weren't documented in print. So perhaps this is more "Rock Era" than "Jazz Age".

I did make two other versions of Maple Leaf Stadium: a 1930s, pre-lights version with a more oval appearance that the older pictures seem to show, and a 1920s version set up with bleachers for an MLB team (for my own sim). If there's any interest I'm happy to share them, too (or adjust the 1950s version to have bleachers, which would be easy enough)...

As always, let me know if there are issues or comments!

[oosl]

Awesome job on Maple Leaf Stadium. Can’t wait to use this one!

[asrivkin]

For today's post, we go to a Jazz-Age ballpark that was largely used for Spring Training and only met its demise relatively recently: Orlando's Tinker Field. Tinker Field was built in 1923, and served as the Spring Training home for the Reds and (briefly) the Dodgers before hosting the Senators and then Twins from 1936-1990.

Google Drive link to Tinker Field

At the time Tinker Field was built it was the only facility there, but the Senators moved in at the same time as the Orlando Stadium football field was built. That field eventually grew to the 60,000 seat monster Camping World Stadium, and its renovation in 2015 spelled the end of Tinker Field, which is now a history exhibit for baseball and commemorating Martin Luther King's 1964 address from its pitcher's mound.

I didn't shoot for any particular time period for this one, but it's probably closest to mid-1930s--I put in a small football field next door, but no lights. The next one I'll post is another old Spring Training park in Florida, but it's still in existence!

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by asrivkin

Hi all,

Back with another niche one today, and perhaps more historical fiction than historical per se. In the sim I'm playing there's a post-season all-star tournament that follows a barnstorming tour route, which has been the impetus for some of the more unusual parks I've made. For the tournament that closes the 1924 season the tour route will be leaving North America for the first time and heading to East Asia. That's what motivated building Manila's Luneta Park, which will host the final. I've also been retrofitting a couple of Silvam's Japanese parks to look more like how (I think) they'd've been in the 20s, and I'll thank Flying Canuck for providing Korean and Taiwanese parks that I can do the same to. I'm happy to post my retrofits if there's interest.

In any case, I also figured that the teams would stop in Hong Kong and Shanghai. I'll post Shanghai next, though to be honest there's nothing particularly distinctive about it. Partly because of that, I figured I should try to make Hong Kong more obviously unique. There was a game in Hong Kong on the famous Giants-White Sox 1914 World Tour but apparently it was kind of an ad hoc affair and I wanted my boys to have something better. So I modeled the Hong Kong Cricket Club grounds and slapped a field on it.

Google Drive Link to Hong Kong Cricket Club

There was ample material for what I needed--the grounds were right in the middle of things back then (and until the 70s) and there were plenty of maps and photos. The grounds were a pretty good size to house a baseball field, if a bit short along the right field line. The pavilion might have a bit of a later appearance than the mid-20s, but it might actually be correct. The surrounding buildings are right. The background is taken from various panoramas from the right time period, though I had to do some cutting and pasting to merge an older panorama with the distant landscape together with a colorized one from the 1920s with the newer buildings.

This was a fun one to make! I'm about to head off for some work travel, so won't be posting anything for a couple of weeks, but will be back! As usual, let me know if you have questions/issues.

this is neat

[asrivkin]

While most of my attention and all of my posts in 2026 have been focused on the 19th century parks, I have actually been slowly working on some 1920s-era parks for my own sim, and it's well past time to posts some of those, too!

I'll start with Stuart Stadium, home of the Beaumont Exporters of the Texas League from 1929 to 1957. Despite serving as a Yankees farm team from 1946-1952, the most prominent Hall of Famers to call the ballpark home were two Tigers: Hank Greenberg and Hal Newhouser.

Google Drive link to Stuart Stadium

These 20s/30s-era parks are pretty straightforward compared to the relatively undocumented 1800s parks I've been spending time with! Not too much to say about this one, though I'll remind folks that while I set all the park factors to equal 1 for the 19th-century parks, I use the auto-calculator in the Park Profile tab determine the park factors for the parks in this thread.

As always, let me know if there are questions or problems!

[bctrackboi11]

What's your go to method for obtaining backgrounds?

[Braden]

Originally Posted by asrivkin

While most of my attention and all of my posts in 2026 have been focused on the 19th century parks, I have actually been slowly working on some 1920s-era parks for my own sim, and it's well past time to posts some of those, too!

I'll start with Stuart Stadium, home of the Beaumont Exporters of the Texas League from 1929 to 1957. Despite serving as a Yankees farm team from 1946-1952, the most prominent Hall of Famers to call the ballpark home were two Tigers: Hank Greenberg and Hal Newhouser.

Google Drive link to Stuart Stadium

These 20s/30s-era parks are pretty straightforward compared to the relatively undocumented 1800s parks I've been spending time with! Not too much to say about this one, though I'll remind folks that while I set all the park factors to equal 1 for the 19th-century parks, I use the auto-calculator in the Park Profile tab determine the park factors for the parks in this thread.

As always, let me know if there are questions or problems!

This good except you night version still has the daytime background.

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by bctrackboi11

What's your go to method for obtaining backgrounds?

Ugh, yeah. I've never been totally happy with what I do, but here's what I have mostly settled on--you may just be asking about steps 1-2 or maybe just step 1, but here's the whole thing:

1) Fire up Google Earth, load a 90-degree FOV KML file. I leave the 3D buildings on, and most of the locations in the USA we care about have 3D buildings.
2) Go to the location where the ballpark is/was, scout around for, ideally, a nearby area that's clear for at least 300 feet radius, I don't like to use cemeteries or golf courses, but I'm not judging if you do.
3) Go down to within 50 or so feet of the ground, level the camera so it's mostly pointed horizontally, then take screenshots every 45 degrees of bearing (so, N, NE, E, SE, etc.)
4) Take those screenshots into Preview (I'm on a Mac and that's easiest, but use whatever you like) to make the sky transparent (and potentially remove any anachronistic-looking skyscrapers in the distance)
5) Use those processed screenshots as textures and add them to vertical panels that line the circumference of the model, using a width for the texture that matches the 90-degree FOV and switching from one texture to another so only the middle, least distorted part of each FOV gets used.

There are aspects of nearly every step I'm unhappy with.

The step 2/3 issue is that if you're too high it looks weird from within the park, but to be low you need a clear area otherwise the nearby buildings get blown up way too big. Ideally Google Earth would let you turn some buildings off, or download a scene as a 3D file we could play with, but alas.

There's also an issue that often I have to wander off from the real ballpark location, sometimes to another state entirely to get the look and feel I'm hoping for, but that's not really a modeling problem per se.

The step 5 issue is that even though the math is clearly very easy, I have basically never gotten the overlap I'm expecting and sometimes need to repeat nondescript areas (which I usually stick on the far side of the model behind buildings and/or trees) to stretch the background all 360 degrees. I do not understand why the math isn't mathing for me, but at this point I'm just going with it.

It _seems_ like I could use skyboxes, but I suspect it will take a bit of time for me to understand how best to do that and I haven't had that time yet.

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by Braden

This good except you night version still has the daytime background.

OK, this prompted me to finally go and install ImageMagick (which meant installing brew). I'd already been using eriqjaffe's OBJ maker, lets see if this now lets it make real nighttime versions.