A look at a long-defunct stadium with history, after-the-jump …..
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Although it was demolished over fifty-five years ago, the Polo Grounds meant a lot to my late father, who grew-up as a fan of the NY Giants baseball team (before they moved to San Francisco in 1958) and having a neighbor who worked in the team’s ticket office: this stadium in upper Manhattan was a regular visit for him. And at various times, it also hosted both of NYC’s current baseball teams (the Yankees and Mets) plus both NFL franchises (Giants and Jets).
Yet I never gave it a second thought until someone recently noted about my previous profile (of the four incarnations of Madison Square Garden) that the Polo Grounds also had four incarnations…. and only in the first was polo ever played there, even as the layouts all were more suited for a polo field, less so baseball.
Regular readers of mine know that when I write about sports … it cannot be purely “X’s” and “O’s” — it needs a human interest aspect. Yet that idea of four iterations whetted my curiosity and — to paraphrase a famous television show — “There are eight million back-stories …. in the naked city …….. this …….. will be one of them”.
Polo Grounds I (1876-1888) — 110th Street between 5th & Lenox Avenues
This venue (across the street from the north end of Central Park) was not formally named; merely called “the polo grounds” for its early tenure. The first baseball tenant was the NY Metropolitans, an independent team who began play in 1880 and later joined the American Association.
In 1883, baseball’s National League awarded a franchise originally named the NY Gothams (relatively soon afterwards, renamed Giants) and a second field was constructed on the site to accommodate both teams. Eventually, the Giants’ success led to the folding of the Metropolitans in 1887 (whom the present-day NY Mets were named after in 1962). The Giants won the National League pennant in 1888 and continued there until 1889, when NYC (eager to expand West 111th Street to accommodate a growing population) ordered the park closed via eminent domain. So they moved further north.
Polo Grounds II (1889-1891) — 155th Street @ 8th (Frederick Douglass) Ave.
This site became the permanent street location for the venue, located in a valley with a promontory called Coogan’s Bluff above it (enabling fans to get a distant view without a ticket) named after propety owner James Coogan. Like its predecessor, it consisted of two fields: Brotherhood Park (which a franchise in the fledgling Players League played) and the second one named Polo Grounds (for continuity’s sake). The Giants won another National League pennant in 1889.
In 1891 the Player’s League folded: and the Giants moved into Brotherhood Park (having more space to expand it with) which they re-named the Polo Grounds. (Polo Grounds II was later razed to become a parking lot for Polo Grounds III).
Polo Grounds III (1891-1911) — same location, different field
This became the site for the rest of the Giants’ tenure in NYC, winning the pennant in both 1904 and 1905 (and also winning the relatively new World Series in 1905). Yet just after the 1911 season started: this nearly all-wooden stadium met the same fate as others similarly constructed during this era ….. catching fire.
The Giants began rebuilding it like the other newer parks of the era were: with concrete and steel. The Giants became the temporary second tenants of a stadium even further north (Broadway @ 168th Street) called Hilltop Park, which was the home of a team that was in the original birth of the American League in 1901: the NY Highlanders (later re-named the Yankees in 1913). In those days of largely unregulated capitalism, the basic stadium overhaul was completed by late June, enabling the team to resume play (while other rebuilding continued during the season).
Polo Grounds IV (1911-1963) — same location
This version is what most people consider the true Polo Grounds, with the Giants winning additional World Series titles in 1921, 1922, 1933 and 1954 (plus several National League pennants). As the stadium seated 34,000 (vs. only 10,000 at Hilltop Park), the NY Highlanders signed a lease to play at the Polo Grounds beginning in 1913 (whereupon they changed their nickname to the Yankees) through 1922, when they moved into the newly-constructed Yankee Stadium in 1923. Without traffic: one could walk across a bridge over the Harlem River between the two stadiums in less than twenty minutes.
Ballparks of that era were constructed to fit the land on which it rested in each city. Yet the dimensions of the Polo Grounds still resembled that of a polo field, with two very-short left and right field fences … and a huge center field. Only four ever hit home runs over the center field wall: Luke Easter in a Negro Leagues game, Lou Brock, Joe Adcock …. and the recently-deceased Hank Aaron.
There are two baseball moments that define the Polo Grounds.
1) The three-run, walk-off homer (into the short left-field seating) by the Giants’ Bobby Thomson (who was actually born in Glasgow, Scotland) in a 1951 playoff game against the crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers — after the Giants made an amazing late-season comeback to finish in a first-place tie with Brooklyn — that my father said was his happiest moment as a (then) thirty-two year-old Giants fan.
Growing up in the NY suburbs, the historian/baseball fanatic Doris Kearns Goodwin described it as the end of the world as an eight year-old Dodgers fan. She tells visitors from the NY area coming to see her at her home in Massachusetts who ask to see the location of the Shot Heard Round the World (meaning Lexington and Concord) — that it is actually situated back in NYC, as many refer to the Bobby Thomson home run using that phrase. (There is an interesting secret coda to that game fifty years later … that will be recounted in a future essay).
2) Three years later, in the first game of the 1954 World Series: a long drive to center field by Cleveland’s Vic Wertz that was caught by the Giants’ twenty-three year-old center fielder Willie Mays— running with his back to home plate. Willie Mays is still alive at age eighty-nine.
Other Sports at Polo Grounds IV (from 1925-1960)
In 1925, two years after the Yankees moved, the Giants replaced the Yankees with a second tenant (this time, after the baseball season). The NFL expansion team New York (football) Giants played in the Polo Grounds through 1955… then (as the NFL became popular than college football) they moved to the larger Yankee Stadium. The loss of the rent they paid to the Giants had a notable effect shortly thereafter.
College football was also played there, with the Army-Navy game taking place there for several years. Other events held there included international soccer matches and even the rodeo.
In heavyweight championship boxing: it was the site of the 1923 Jack Dempsey title defense vs. the Argentinian challenger Luis Firpo and in 1960: it was the site where Floyd Patterson regained the heavyweight title he had lost to the Swedish champion Ingemar Johansson a year earlier …. across the river at Yankee Stadium.
Demise of the Polo Grounds
During the 1950’s, the fortunes of the Giants baseball team began to decline. Unlike many other sports team owners (who either had private wealth or other sources of income) the Giants owner Horace Stoneham had no other income, and the loss of rent from the departure of the NFL team had an effect. The team owned the stadium, yet not the land on which it was built — and paying rent was an additional cost to the team. Parking was always scarce, maintenance had been allowed to deteriorate, and the region had begun to suffer from urban neglect — which the Yankees’ perennial success enabled it to endure, yet not the up-and-down fortunes of the Giants, whose attendance tumbled from the 1940’s. I cannot locate it, but there was a quote about how the success of the Yankees and Dodgers led the Giants to become ….. “The #3 horse in a two-horse race”.
After considering moving his franchise elsewhere, he was advised by his cross-town rival Walter O’Malley (who was contemplating moving his Dodgers to Los Angeles) to contact city officials in San Francisco, in order to maintain their National League rivalry. As such: when both teams relocated to California in time for the 1958 season, it was O’Malley who took the brunt of criticism (as his team was still quite profitable). At the press conference announcing the move, Horace Stoneham said of his dwindling attendance, "Kids are still interested ... but you don't see many of their parents at games."
Final tenants at Polo Grounds IV
Two years later in 1960, when the upstart American Football League (AFL) began operations: NYC was awarded a franchise known as the New York Titans (with a blue-and-gold uniform scheme) and they began playing at the Polo Grounds. They changed their nickname in 1963 to Jets (with a new green-and-white color scheme).
Then in 1961-62, as baseball began to expand its previous eight teams in each league: the National League awarded a franchise to a new version of the NY Metropolitans, as a replacement team for both the Dodgers and Giants. The Mets uniforms were a hybrid of the departed franchises: blue (from the Dodgers) and orange (from the Giants) with the home uniforms styled after the Dodgers and the road uniforms after the Giants.
They both departed the Polo Grounds in late 1963, as the (municipally-built) Shea Stadium opened in 1964, on the site of the (then) ongoing NY World’s Fair. The Polo Grounds were demolished in the spring of 1964 and — as with the Dodger’s old stadium Ebbets Field — were replaced by apartment buildings.
One of the few surviving aspects of the Polo Grounds are is the John T. Brush staircase (named after the owner of the Giants from 1903-1912).
And finally, a requiem for an old ballpark.
Now, on to Top Comments:
From Elizawhig1:
In the front-page story about the internal GOP Senate vs. House battle over Q — this comment made by zharlane.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about Jenny Cudd, the capitol rioter who (after being arraigned and released on recognizance bond on a misdemeanor) requested permission to attend a work vacation in Mexico — and yet now has been hit with five felony counts — fromberkeleytocville has an idea for her to appear in a new country music song.
TOP PHOTOSFebruary 1st, 2021 Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
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