Dwayne Isgrig sent me the above photo of the marker that was placed by the local SABR chapter at the site of the Union Grounds. Click on the photo to get a better view and you can see how the grounds were laid out. While we don't have a photo of the ballpark, from what Dwayne told me, Joan Thomas put this together based on newspaper accounts. Our Bob Broeg chapter of SABR had done a great job placing these markers around town to commemorate the location of historical ballparks in St. Louis.
One thing of note here is that this marker shows the short left field fence at the Union Grounds. Also, it looks like dead center is a bit short as well. However, right-center looks really deep and there appears to be a lot of foul territory along the outfield foul lines. So based on this and the fact that Baseball-Reference lists the park as run-neutral, I'd hesitate to call the place a bandbox, as some in the press did in 1884.
Much thanks to Dwayne for passing the photo along.
No comments:
Post a Comment