Some Jazz-Age Ballparks

[asrivkin]

Yes indeed! I've hit a bit of a work crunch that has slowed me down, and I don't want to rush and make my usual issue of letting little mistakes slip through get even worse, but I have Holcomb Park in Des Moines basically done (c. 1915 and c. 1930), and am pretty close to having Sacramento from 3 eras (c. 1920, c. 1948, and c. 1974) finished...

After that I'm planning to tackle Bugle Park and mayyyyybe Ruppert Stadium in Newark. My medium-term list is some New England parks, still c. 1915-1920.

[asrivkin]

All right, next up is Holcomb Park (aka Western League Park) in Des Moines, Iowa. Its claim to fame is that it was the (alleged) site of the first night game in Minor League history in 1930. I say alleged because there's a recent story that there was one slightly earlier in Kansas that perhaps aimed to scoop the well-publicized Iowa game, but apparently since all the media was concentrating on the well-publicized game that's the one that kept the claim as first.

In any case, I have a 1910s version of the park but figured a version from 1930 would be of more general interest so that's what I'm posting. If you do want the earlier version, which differs in its billboards and not having light posts, let me know!

Google Drive link to Holcomb Park 1930

[sdw1000]

Nice! Thanks!

[asrivkin]

OK, it's another Sunday so here's another post. Today we go to Sacramento for the ballpark that served that city through most of the classic PCL era.

Buffalo Park was the home of the Solons in the 1910s and into the early 1920s, named for a local beer company . There's not a ton of photo documentation of the place, though there is a movie made of 1920 opening day against Seattle, which I put to use.

The stadium was expanded in 1922 and went through several name changes over the next quarter century, starting as Moreing Field and ending as Edmonds Field when it was (mostly) destroyed in a 1948 fire. It was rebuilt (but not renamed) after the fire, but had something of a different look/vibe. I aimed for a look just pre-fire, and used some of the photo documentation after the fire to use for the still-intact outfield wall.

Here's the c. 1920 Buffalo Park zip file

Here's the c. 1948 Edmonds Field zip file

Thanks to KCStengelJr for trying these out and fixing the grids. Next up will be Hughes Stadium, aka Sacramento Part 3. I have Bugle Field all-but-ready, then I'll try to get one of those AAGPBL parks done...

[asrivkin]

Since there's a 5 picture limit on posts, I didn't get to show the aftermath of the 1948 fire, but it can be seen here: https://sacroom.contentdm.oclc.org/d...id/2119/rec/28

[kcstengelsr]

Thank you so much for these Sacramento ballparks! This completes an important set!

One interested in the classic era of the Pacific Coast League may now find ballparks in the OOTP 3d Mods for all eight of the most well-known PCL teams.

Buffalo and Edmonds for Sacramento by asrivkin.
Oaks for Oakland by asrivkin.
Gilmore for Hollywood by eriqjaffe.
Lane for San Diego by eriqjaffe.
Vaughn for Portland by eriqjaffe.
Wrigley for Los Angeles by silvam14.
Seals for San Francisco by silvam14.
Sicks for Seattle by silvam14.

and the OOTP 3d mods also have:
Washington for Los Angeles prior to Wrigley and for Vernon Tigers by asrivkin.
Dugdale for Seattle prior to Sicks by asrivkin.
Recreation for San Francisco prior to Seals by asrivkin. (A personal favorite of mine. Check out the drunk cage area, haha.)
Bonneville for Salt Lake City by asrivkin.
*the Mission Reds frequently used Seals, by the way.

If one wanted to for example play OOTP for the historical 1937 PCL season which was Ted Williams' last year on the west coast one now has the necessary ballparks (I suggest using Sicks for 1937 Seattle a year earlier than the park's completion or use burned Dugdale). All the parks are now available for other important historical PCL years like in 1946 when the league pleaded to be officially accepted as the third major league. Thanks to all the 3D mods creators for finally making this dream a reality!

*One thing on some of these PCL ballparks from various creators which happens to me and I wonder if others have the same issue: after manually importing the prk file to the team I sometimes don't see the correct 3d model when I click edit 3d to set up cameras. What I next do is click on Pictures and Coordinates and check to see if anything is listed for 3d model and then make sure that the obj file of the park in question (found in the park's model folder) is on that line of Pictures and Coordinates to fix the problem.*

I am now looking forward to Bugle in Baltimore by asrivkin. As I mentioned in a previous post in this thread the 1946 historical Negro Leagues miss the parks for Baltimore and for Newark so that all of the 1946 Negro Leagues teams have at least one historic ballpark they actually used that year to complete yet another important set.

[nebben]

These are fantastic. I'm using a few in a custom league I'm building.

Do you have the .prk file for Parkway (Louisville)? It seems to be missing in the folder I downloaded.

Thanks for this excellent work.

[asrivkin]

Thanks for the kind words! I'll get a new version of Parkway field posted with the .prk file included, hopefully tonight. For now, here's the info from the relevant OOTP screen...

[nebben]

Awesome thanks

[asrivkin]

First, a bit of housekeeping. For various reasons including my travel along the ballpark-making learning curve over the last year plus (I'm still not at the top!), some of my ballparks don't necessarily load the right files automatically, or are missing .prk files, or don't have the grid set correctly, among other things. I'm happy to fix them, and so I'll point to three updated parks. I'll also update the original posts with these new links:

Parkway Field, Louisville (v. 1.2, c. 1920s)
Almendares Park, Havana (v. 1.2, c. 1910)
Mo'ili'ili Park, Honolulu (v. 1.2, c. 1917)

And for the main event today, here's the final part of the Sacramento Trilogy: Hughes Stadium c. 1974.

Google Drive link to Hughes Stadium

Big thanks to Ty Cobb and KCStengelJr for helping out with this one!

Hughes Stadium was a bit before my time, but apparently quite the infamous park, with the AAA team awarded without a suitable venue and the baseball field constructed inside a football stadium that was actually a bit too small. While officials were assured the left field line was 250+ feet, some investigative reporting during the season found the distance was rather shorter, and even a big screen couldn't cut down on home runs. After a tweak in 1975-1976 to allow the dimensions to be the required minimum distance, the Solons moved out of Sacramento and the city did without minor league baseball until 2000.

There's not as much documentary evidence as one might like, but I'll point to a movie showing the parent Milwaukee Brewers (including Henry Aaron!) visiting the stadium, a link to a scorebook used that year, and include a few photos below, which drove a lot of the advertising choices on the outfield walls.

As you might imagine, it's something of a crazy ballpark. Left field is too small for the left fielder to actually start out anywhere sensible (I think he's embedded beneath the stands and emerges when relevant), but it is what it is if you want to play out a game here. Several other very small parks have the same issue, as some of us have discussed elsewhere. Other than that known, unavoidable issue, please let me know if there are problems!

[asrivkin]

Ugh, and now I see I kept a pitching lane there like it's 1914 or something. :P I suppose I should fix that...

[Ty Cobb]

Gives it a bit of flair IMHO.

All of these are just great additions. I'm particularly grateful for Hughes, as it fills in a big gap from my youth. They're all going to be fixtures in my game. Thank you so much for your effort!

[asrivkin]

Hello all,

Here's Bugle Field, home to the Baltimore Elite Giants throughout the 1940s and occasional home to the Baltimore Black Sox at times in the 1930s. There was a decent amount of photo and other documentation to work from, if not as much as I'd like (there rarely is as much as I'd like, though, and when there is it's mutually exclusive as often as not, so maybe this is for the best!). The pictures below include an action shot from a game by beta tester KCStengelSr, and a picture of a young Roy Campanella.

As always, I hope you enjoy it and please let me know of problems!

Google Drive link to Bugle Field

I'm actively working on Beyer Stadium, the home of the Rockford Peaches of the AAGPBL, then I'll try to tackle Ruppert Stadium for your Newark Bears needs!

[The Game]

thats a cool park

[thehef]

Some really awesome stuff here! Thank you!

[thehef]

Originally Posted by kcstengelsr

One interested in the classic era of the Pacific Coast League may now find ballparks in the OOTP 3d Mods for all eight of the most well-known PCL teams.

Buffalo and Edmonds for Sacramento by asrivkin.
Oaks for Oakland by asrivkin.
Gilmore for Hollywood by eriqjaffe.
Lane for San Diego by eriqjaffe.
Vaughn for Portland by eriqjaffe.
Wrigley for Los Angeles by silvam14.
Seals for San Francisco by silvam14.
Sicks for Seattle by silvam14.

and the OOTP 3d mods also have:
Washington for Los Angeles prior to Wrigley and for Vernon Tigers by asrivkin.
Dugdale for Seattle prior to Sicks by asrivkin.
Recreation for San Francisco prior to Seals by asrivkin. (A personal favorite of mine. Check out the drunk cage area, haha.)
Bonneville for Salt Lake City by asrivkin.
*the Mission Reds frequently used Seals, by the way.

I'm using the parks listed above and they are awesome! However, I'm having an issue with Dugdale. When I go to play a game there, I get:

Unable to load the 3D stadium model.
Please ensure that the paths for the stadium are correct and restart the game... (etc, with some debug instructions)

Anybody experience this? I've tried re-loading the park. No dice.

[asrivkin]

Hi,

I know at least one person other than me has successfully played in Dugdale Park, though I also know that after loading the .prk file they had to add the .obj file by hand in the Pictures and Coordinates section. I've honestly had mixed success in getting things to load automatically vs. not, I'm not sure what works and what doesn't.

If you go to the park in the Ballpark Editor section of the League Reports and go to the 3D Model tab for Dugdale, what happens?

[thehef]

Originally Posted by asrivkin

If you go to the park in the Ballpark Editor section of the League Reports and go to the 3D Model tab for Dugdale, what happens?

Not sure about the path you're suggesting but if I got to Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Functions > Edit Ballparks > 3D Models and select Dugdale, I see a pic of Dugdale.

[kcstengelsr]

when I was testing Dugdale for asrivkin there may have been some changes in the original since my working Dugdale also is in the Dugdale_Park(I) folder. anyway, you might want to download this mediafire folder of Dugdale and make sure that it is placed in ootp/data/ballparks/models.
let me know if this works: https://www.mediafire.com/file/cmddq..._Park.zip/file

[thehef]

Originally Posted by kcstengelsr

when I was testing Dugdale for asrivkin there may have been some changes in the original since my working Dugdale also is in the Dugdale_Park(I) folder. anyway, you might want to download this mediafire folder of Dugdale and make sure that it is placed in ootp/data/ballparks/models.
let me know if this works: https://www.mediafire.com/file/cmddq..._Park.zip/file

Nope, does not work. Same error message. Thanks, tho.