Some Jazz-Age Ballparks

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by Braden

I use a few of your parks for my Negro League. Your trees, building and other stuff in them were showing up as in daylight when playing at night. I took some time and fixed that. Here is Hilldale

That's great, thanks! I've never had the patience to really do that--is there an easy way to darken everything and add the lit house windows, or is it all basically done by hand (particularly the windows)?

[Braden]

Originally Posted by asrivkin

That's great, thanks! I've never had the patience to really do that--is there an easy way to darken everything and add the lit house windows, or is it all basically done by hand (particularly the windows)?

It is not difficult but a little tedious, the most tedious is the constructed buildings, as you have to change each part.


Here is a simple example for trees: find the tree that is in the model in the texture folder and change the name from tree.jpg to tree_day.png. The use some photo improvement program to open it. ( I use photo shop). Then darken the picture so it looks like it is at night and save it as tree_night.png. Then open the .mtl file for that park and find tree.jpg and change it to tree_day.png and save the file. That's it. I also do this with all the grass and other ground stuff outside the park.



It would be a lot easier if, when you build a park to put all those type items as _day.png to start with then make the _night afterwards.


I have uploaded all the parks of have used so far in my negro league starting around 1926. It is one zip file with no .skp files. So, it may take a little while to down load. You could have a couple of IPAs whilst you wait.


https://www.mediafire.com/folder/7mtuv3r8o1nug/Parks

[asrivkin]

For those who are more interested in small, more modern-day parks, I just made Stitzel Field in Poughkeepsie, New York by request. You can find the link and discussion in this post, and I've put a picture below for visual learners.

[zappa1]

Is there a Maple Leaf Stadium available?

[lightgrenade07]

Originally Posted by asrivkin

Here's another New England park from c. 1920: Savin Rock Park in New Haven. As was the style in many parts of North America, this ballpark was adjacent to/associated with an amusement park. As was the case with Worcester, New Haven was one of the 20 largest metro areas in the US c. 1920 but went for several decades without minor league baseball. In New Haven's case, the demise of the Eastern League during the depression was the culprit.

There were a few different parks used in New Haven during this period depending on the day of the week, plus some of them went by different names. I tried not to make this park an amalgamation of several New Haven parks, but I might have accidentally done so anyhow. Otherwise, while I don't have any teams regularly playing in this park in my sim, I have used it and it seems more or less fine. I'm not crazy about the way the amusement park beyond the CF-RF fence looks, but perhaps it's good enough for now...


Google Drive link to Savin Rock Park

Does this one have a .prk file?

[asrivkin]

Hi all,

Sorry for being scarce of late. To answer the last couple of questions:

1) Maple Leaf Park is on my to-do list, but I haven't gotten to it yet. If anyone else feels like tackling it, I do not consider myself as having dibs on it.

2) Savin Rock does have a .prk file, not sure why I didn't stick it in the folder (or check to see that I hadn't done so). I'll update that when I can, but for now see the screenshot, which should have all the relevant info...

[zappa1]

Thank you for the replies.

[asrivkin]

I'm going to try to post a few parks before my next bout of work travel hits. I'll start with Portland's Bayside Park. There's not a lot of documentation for it--some interior shots that are too tight to get much of anything, a couple of exterior shots, and an aerial of the field when it was used for amateurs after the grandstand came down. I didn't find it on any insurance (or other) maps. But I think it came out OK anyhow.

Google Drive Link to Bayside Park zip file

Here's an article about the stadium from a Portland history blog

A mix of historical and model photos are below, per usual practice!

[asrivkin]

Next up, here's West End Park in Houston. This was the home to the Houston Buffaloes minor league team from 1905-1927, as well as host to the Cardinals, Browns, and Yankees at various times from 1906-1915. It's pretty close to where downtown Houston is today, though admittedly it may be the present-day sprawl making me think that. There's a historical marker at the site today, and the application with supporting information is available online (pdf).

Here's the Google Drive link for the ballpark etc.

I'm not 100% satisfied with how it came out--my modeling bete noire is usually balancing the background/horizon with building models I want to include. Since the view with the church is one of the few contemporary views I found I wanted to include that (though the steeple is wrong), and when I made this I didn't have a great sense of how to grade that into things further out. I stuck the cityscape in since I think it would have been visible. Given infinite spare time I might try and revisit the background, but realistically I think this is what it is! I'll also note for what it's worth that the extended covered grandstand is inspired by the aerial photo below--the picture with the church clearly doesn't have it extended that far down the LF line...

[Ty Cobb]

I'll enjoy this one as I'm turning to a more small market feel for my personal play. The league I'm currently rabbit-holed in is entirely small market and regional and a park like this will be a great asset!

[asrivkin]

OK, continuing to post some of my backlog--here's Wearn Field in Charlotte:
Google Drive link to Wearn Field

Wearn Field (also known as Hayman Park) operated from 1912-1940, with a minor league team usually called the Charlotte Hornets in the Sally League about half of that period and in other leagues the other half. The park also hosted spring training and MLB exhibition games, and at least some Negro League baseball (though none of the teams that have been recognized as MLB as far as I can tell). Charlotte was the largest city in NC during this period (though Winston-Salem was only a hair smaller), but was not one of the 100 biggest metro areas in the USA until it got to #95 in 1940, just as the field's usage was ending.

It's reported to have had attendance at 4,000 for Babe Ruth, so the capacity is probably more like 3,500-4,000 than the 5,000 I have in the .prk file. As always, change as you need. I'm reasonably content with how this one turned out, there wasn't a lot of interior material to work with so I tried to guess what the view would be like from period maps. Next up will be Tulsa and Wichita, and I've actually been seeing if I can get Skeeters Park in Jersey City done...

[zappa1]

These are terrific old time parks you've done. Thank you. I like the ads, too.

[asrivkin]

Here's my take on Tulsa's McNulty Park:

Google Drive Link to McNulty Park.

McNulty Park was home to the Tulsa Oilers from 1919-1929, a very successful period for that team as they won 6 Western League pennants in that stretch. It is likely best known these days as a detention site for Black residents of Tulsa during 1921's Tulsa Race Massacre, which nearly led to me abandoning this model while I was doing the research for it. But I figured since the Chicago American Giants and Kansas City Monarchs were willing to play there 5 years later, I should be willing to model it 100 years later.

It's a hitter's park for sure, with home runs inflated by about a factor of 2 thanks to short fences. I couldn't find a Sanborn map with it, but its dimensions are in Green Cathedrals, and it's present in a 1924 aerial shot of downtown Tulsa (show below)...

Enjoy!

[micropterus58]

Thanks, it looks like another great addition.

[asrivkin]

Happy Autumn, everyone! Unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case Happy Spring!

Today I'm posting Wichita's Ackerman Park, aka various other things including "Island Park". It combines two relatively common features of 1910s-1920s ballparks: A location at/near an amusement park (like Toronto, Tucson, and LA among others), and a location taking up most of a river island (like Richmond and Harrisburg, again among others). Ackerman Island itself (to say nothing of the ballpark) had a pretty short existence--it was a sandbar in the Arkansas river that formed in the 1870s, and was removed/joined to the river's west bank in the 1930s due to flooding concerns.

There's not a ton of info about the ballpark out there, but there are a few photos (which I've put below). One of the anecdotes that seems to be mentioned with all of the mentions of the ballpark is how in 1925 a KKK team played a Black team for charity. The KKK lost.

I've never quite been happy with the background, which was taken from one of the aerial photos, but it was fun to make a ballpark with a bit of landscape around it.

Google Drive link to Ackerman Park Zip File

[asrivkin]

Hi all,

Here's one that took a bit of extra research--Skeeters Park in Jersey City, also called West Side Park. This was the home of the Jersey City Skeeters and the local park prior to Roosevelt Stadium being built, and so was used until 1934. The available Sanborn Maps, my usual go-tos, don't cover the right place at the right time. However, there are other local atlases that are useful, as well as an aerial photo from 1930!

Google Drive link to Skeeters Park

After playing a bit with Google Earth, it didn't look to me like the NYC skyline was visible from the park, and it looked out toward the (in)famous swamplands (which inspired the team's name, I believe). As usual, I'm happy to provide the Sketchup file itself to anyone out there who'd like to play around with backgrounds etc.

In the near future (so...next few weeks?) I'll try to upload some more, plus I'm planning to tackle some of the missing Federal League parks by request.

Enjoy!

[asrivkin]

OK, nobody asked for this one and it's pretty niche, but some of you might enjoy it--it's the c. 1920 ballpark in Anchorage, Alaska. In one of those quirks that I've run into a few times researching parks, there's a _lot_ more photo documentation of this random park in a newly-established town way out on the fringes of the North American frontier than there is of the previous park I posted, which was a contemporary AAA park that sat less than 5 miles from the Brooklyn Bridge as the crow flies. Anyhow, my quest to have a c. 1920 park in every US state and territory means there has to be an Alaska one, so here it is. If you're generally interested in the history of baseball in Alaska, there are a few good sites out there, I'll just point to this one from the state library.

Google Drive link to Anchorage Base Ball Park

I don't know that this park was ever used for anything other than local amateur games. The famous Midnight Sun game is played in Fairbanks, I had a hard time finding much info about even the present-day ballpark. There was also a park near Juneau in 1920 in a gorgeous setting, but Anchorage has the most info. Per usual, I put various model and historical views below!

[Braden]

Kind of curious why you put the big brick building around this park when there were obviously, from the pictures, there were none. Just looks odd to me.

[asrivkin]

Yeah, I went back and forth a bit. As I've noted, I'm rarely satisfied with the backgrounds in my parks, and really struggle with the non-home plate views in particular. I put the buildings in so that there was _something_ there rather than a sharp edge or a backdrop that I'd spend too long dwelling on and still be unhappy with.

I'm happy enough if folks what to try their hand with the Sketchup file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y1R...usp=share_link

[Ty Cobb]

Except for my Great Lakes themed leagues, I always drop a team in Alaska. Nice addition!