Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Pirates home for more than 60 years opened on this day a century ago.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Roberto Clemente’s first hit and Babe Ruth’s parting shot occurred within the confines of the most spacious ballpark any major league baseball team called home.
So did Bill Mazeroski’s 1960 World Series Game 7 homer, one so improbable, so magical that it seems certain to live in baseball’s memory bank as long as the sport exists.
The first fireworks night and last tripleheader? Chuck Noll’s first home game as the Steelers’ coach? The first live broadcasts of major league baseball and college football? Forbes Field was home to all of that and much more during 61 eventful years that helped launch not one but, eventually, two ballpark-building construction binges.
Baseball’s modern ballpark era was ushered in 100 years ago today when Forbes Field was christened in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. Its treasures live on in a modern-day gem named PNC Park that copies much of Forbes’ coziness, charm and quirkiness.
Forbes Field was the National League’s first modern concrete-and-steel park, a massive-for-its-era structure that towered above a picturesque city park and was so innovative that many of its touches can still be found in ballparks from coast to coast.
While the Philadelphia Athletics’ Shibe Park (later, Connie Mack Stadium) predated Forbes by two months, nothing in baseball’s brief history to that time rivaled the two-tiered palace that Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss dedicated before a Cubs-Pirates game on June 30, 1909. Fittingly, the Cubs will honor the anniversary by playing in Pittsburgh tonight.
Built so the Pirates could abandon flood- and fire-prone Exposition Park, Forbes cost approximately $2 million for land and construction — about $48 million today — or more than three times Shibe’s estimated cost. The opening day crowd of 30,338 was five times larger than for Game 5 of the Cubs-Tigers World Series the year before.
“This is the happiest day of my life,” Dreyfuss said then, albeit he was initially criticized for building his baseball showplace a 10-minute trolley ride away from downtown.
Five days later, Dreyfuss invited fans attending an Independence Day doubleheader to stay for a post-game fireworks show. More than 40,000 did, and another tradition was born.
To preserve baseball’s best grass playing field, Pirates manager Fred Clarke designed and patented the first infield tarp. The ballpark also was the first with elevators and padded outfield walls, later, and the batting helmet was invented there by Pirates executive Charlie Muse.
Dreyfuss disliked the long ball, and it showed in every one of Forbes’ nooks and crannies.
The left-field line was 360 feet from home plate and center field was 457 feet. The grandstands towered 85 feet above the right field wall and a huge scoreboard had to be cleared in left.
The Pirates were so certain no player could hit a ball out to center, the batting cage was stowed inside the playing field during games. It remained there even after Dick Stuart carried it with a 1959 drive.
As cavernous as a national park, 35,000-seat Forbes Field didn’t play host to a single no-hitter during the more than 4,700 major league games played there, including the last tripleheader in 1920, when the Reds took two of three. All that open space helped the Pirates’ Chief Wilson hit a record 36 triples in 1912.
Forbes’ first tape-measure drive was Ruth’s 714th and last, a May 26, 1935, shot for the Boston Braves that was his third of the day and the first to clear Forbes’ right-field roof.
“I didn’t think anyone could hit a ball that hard,” Pirates pitcher Guy Bush said.
He should have known better. Ruth and Lou Gehrig put on such a home run exhibition during a 1927 World Series workout that it clearly intimidated the home team, and the Yankees promptly swept the Pirates.
“That World Series was over before it started,” Ruth said.
The 1960 Series was much different. Led by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, the Yankees were big favorites who flashed their prodigious power during victories of 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0. The Pirates countered by winning all the close games, and Mazeroski finished it off on Oct. 13, 1960, with the only homer to end a World Series Game 7.
Forbes Field was more than baseball, although the Negro Leagues’ Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords also occasionally staged games there. The Steelers played there from 1933 until the mid-1960s, returning for a Noll-coached 1969 exhibition against the Bengals. Pitt football and the pro soccer Phantoms also briefly called it home.
For all of Forbes’ charms — seats close to the action, no playing field signage, a right field screen that Clemente peppered for 15-plus seasons with line drives — the so-called House of Thrills was showing its age when it closed on June 28, 1970. Fittingly, Mazeroski made the final putout during a doubleheader sweep of the Cubs.
The entrances were narrow and dimly lit, the bathrooms tiny, onsite parking was nonexistent and, remarkably, a ballpark located near the Pitt and Carnegie Mellon campuses did not sell beer.
Still, Clemente marveled as Forbes shut down, “I spent half my life there.”
Not long after Forbes was razed to make way for the Pitt Law School, Pittsburghers who initially embraced Three Rivers Stadium’s spacious concourses and comfortable seats began longing again for a baseball-only park with grass, fewer seats and better sight lines.
Once baseball’s retro-era ballpark boon began with Baltimore’s Camden Yards in 1992, nearly every one of the 21 ballparks built since has incorporated qualities first seen in Forbes Field and Shibe Park. PNC Park, opened in 2001, copied Forbes’ rectangular light towers, picturesque skyline, left-field bleachers and expansive outfield. The section of left-field wall over which Mazeroski’s homer traveled was erected behind PNC’s right-field stands.
In Oakland, Forbes’ center-field wall still stands, and home plate is preserved under glass. A historical marker denotes Mazeroski’s homer.