“People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game. It’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good…and it could be again. People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.” – Terrance Mann to Ray Kinsela in the movie “Field of Dreams”, talking about the baseball field that Ray built on his farm where ballplayer heroes from the past came to play.

While the premise in the movie is far-fetched, the words in those lines certainly could be applied to what has happened in major league baseball in the past two decades.  It could be argued that teams adopted the notion from the movie that if you build it, they will come.  From the teams’ perspective, the “they” of course would be the fans.  Since the 1992 opening of Camden Yards, the home of the Baltimore Orioles, over half of the major league baseball teams have opened new stadiums.   I picked Camden Yards as my starting point since that is the ballpark that most observers credit as being the one that set the design standard for future parks to follow.  It was replacing Memorial Stadium, a rather bland stadium that lacked any identifiable character.  Camden Yards was considered to be the first stadium design that tried to incorporate features of some of the old, classic ballparks of the past while implementing modern architectural design elements that provided outstanding sightlines, wide and open concourses and other fan-friendly amenities. I have been to three of the newest stadiums – Camden Yards, Nationals Park and PNC Park in Pittsburgh.  All three are outstanding places to watch a ballgame.  But my focus in this blog is not to discuss the new, but rather to talk about the old.

My fondest memories growing up as a young boy in Western Pennsylvania in the late 1950′s and through the 1960′s are of playing baseball and watching the game be played.  Pro football had not quite yet claimed the title of being America’s favorite spectator sport.  So watching the Pittsburgh Pirates was what excited me the most.  Back in those days, teams didn’t televise all their games like they do today.  The Buccos would only televise about 20-25 games a year and only away games would be televised.  Fortunately, I got my love for baseball from my dad and despite our limited economic means, I could always count on him to be willing to take in a few Pirate games every season down at old Forbes Field.  Additionally, his brother was a season ticket holder and he occasionally would send tickets our way.  So I got to attend my share of games at Forbes Field.

Forbes Field was opened in 1909 and was considered the Camden Yards of it’s day – a state-of-the-art facility.  But 50-some years later when I was taking in games there, I remember thinking that it was just old.  Like many Pirate fans, I wished that a new stadium could be built for the Bucs.  Other cities were building these neat multi-purpose stadiums that could accommodate both baseball and football.  Ahhh…beware of what you wish for!  We got our Three Rivers Stadium relatively around the same time that Cincinnati got Riverfront Stadium and Philadelphia got Veterans Stadium.  Not much difference among them with their enclosed circular footprint and symmetrical  field dimensions.  I remember thinking the first time I set foot in Three Rivers – this is it?  I’m sitting on plastic seats surrounded by concrete with a green carpet in front of me.  Yeah, there weren’t any girders holding up the upper deck that blocked my view, but it sure lacked the coziness of Forbes.  Don’t get me wrong.  Three Rivers was new and exciting and the Pirates had two World Series-winning seasons there in 1971 and 1979 and a bunch of other very successful seasons there.  But it made me appreciate the character, intimacy and even quirkiness of Forbes.

One of the most obvious, interesting characteristics of Forbes Field was the playing field itself.  It measured 365 feet down the left field line and 300 feet down the right field line.  But there was a tall 28-foot high screen running from the right field foul pole toward right center.  A 12-foot high, ivy-covered brick wall ran out for several feet from the left field foul pole to the 27-foot high manually-operated scoreboard.  The ivy-covered brick wall picked up on the other side of the scoreboard and ran out to a point just to the left of straightaway center field where it then angled back toward the right field  grandstand.  The distance from home plate where the wall changed direction was 457 feet!  The distance to straightaway center was 435 feet and to right center it was 416 feet.  Forbes was certainly not a homerun hitter’s paradise.  Because of the vastness of the outfield however, you had a better chance of seeing more doubles and triples than normal and experiencing the excitement that comes with those kinds of plays.  I do recall seeing Bill Mazeroski hit a homer in the first game of the 1960 World Series that just cleared the wall between the left field foul pole and the scoreboard.  Of course forever etched in my memory is the highlight replay showing his more dramatic Game 7 walk-off homer (unfortunately, I wasn’t at that one) where the ball disappears over the head of Yogi Berra and the left center field wall at the 406 mark.   Both would be considered significant clouts in today’s more homer-friendly ballparks.

On top of the left field scoreboard was a 14-foot high Longines clock that was considered out of play – if you hit it, it was a home run.  There were three massive light towers on the field in left center, center and right center, the bases of which were enclosed by wire cages that were in play.  If a batted ball went into the cage, it was a ground rule double I believe.  Also in play out around the 457 mark was the flagpole – I don’t recall that it was even padded.  Neither was a granite monument to Barney Dreyfuss, the owner of the Pirates who built Forbes Field, that was located in right center field in the field of play.  Could you imagine stuff like that in today’s parks?

Another interesting feature at Forbes was the huge roll-up metal gate in the right center field wall that would be opened after the game to allow fans to walk across the field to exit the ballpark directly into Schenley Park.  Even the grounds crew had a unique feature at their disposal.  Along the third base line in foul territory was an underground vault (for lack of a better term) that housed the tarpaulin.  It was covered by a long, narrow plywood door, painted green to match the grass and it was mechanically operated.  When activated, the cover would raise, the tarp would rise out of the ground and then automatically roll the tarp forward to cover the infield.  I do believe that there were a few game delays over the years when the automated device would get stuck.

The seats at Forbes, although very close to the field, were not all that comfortable.  They were wooden slatted seats that I remember being covered with numerous coats of paint.  Of course if you were out in the left field bleachers, that was bench-type seating with lines painted on the benches delineating the seat area.  If you had the misfortune of sitting next to a hefty fan, you would spend the whole game struggling to maintain a reasonable seating area.  So maybe the plastic seats at Three Rivers weren’t so bad after all!  I do remember my dad and I sitting out there for a twi-night doubleheader in 1965 against the Dodgers and watching the Bucs beat Koufax in the first game and Drysdale in the second game.  The battle for seat space that night was well worth it.

These are just some of the things that made going to games at Forbes memorable.  But I know from watching some of those televised away games as a kid that some of the other National League ballparks. had their own unique characteristics.  I remember watching games coming from Crosley Field in Cincinatti which legendary Pirates radio & TV announcer, Bob Prince, used to call the “bandbox” because it’s field dimensions were just the opposite of Forbes.  The distance from home plate to the center field wall was just 387 feet!  Out in right field they had a uniquely-shaped bleacher section called the “sun porch” (I think at night they may have called it the “moon porch”??)  The really interesting thing about Crosley Field was that in the outfield, they didn’t have a warning track approaching the wall.  Instead, the field was inclined at about a 20 degree angle and that served as the warning to outfielders that they were nearing the wall.  The relatively new ballpark in Houston employs that same design in center field as a way of trying to incorporate something old into that facility.

One other away ballpark that sticks in my memory is Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.  While I think that ballpark had generous outfield dimensions in right and center, there was a “short porch” in left field.  It had a two-tiered, roofed  grandstand in left.  What I remember most about that was that the Phillies’ third baseman, Dick Allen seemed to hit a couple of homers over the roof every year against the Pirates.

There is no question that the newer ballparks offer so much more to ensure a wonderful fan experience.  Certainly, they are head and shoulders above the multi-purpose stadiums of the 60′s and 70′s.  But I wouldn’t trade my memories of Forbes Field for anything.   Paraphrasing the words of Terrance Mann – that field, that game, they’re part of my past and they remind me of all that was once good!