62 Seasons in the Sun

North Philly's Shibe Park servedNorth Philly's Shibe Park servedthe Athletics, Phillies, Eagles andNorth Philly's Shibe Park servedthe Athletics, Phillies, Eagles andothers from 1909 to 1971 During the summer months, many members of the Penn community will choose to amuse themselves at one time or another by taking in a baseball game. After taking the Orange Line or driving to South Philadelphia, they'll enter the city's baseball/football ground, Veterans Stadium. But the home of Philadelphia baseball hasn't always been so anti-septic. For the 33 years before the Phillies moved into the "Vet", all major league action in the city was played at a very different sort of place -- Shibe Park. Opened in 1909, Shibe Park was a model of the parks of the early 20th century era, just as Veterans Stadium typifies the multi-purpose facilities that proliferated around 1970. The main entrance, at the intersection of Lehigh Avenue and Twenty-First Street in what is now called Lower North Philadelphia, but was then known as North City, let in millions of fans through 62 baseball seasons. The story of the park's rise and fall is as much about its section of the city as it is about baseball. Until 1955, Philadelphia was the home of two major league franchises. By 1909, the younger, more popular, and better of the two, the Athletics, had outgrown their existing park. The team's president, Ben Shibe, found a new location and financed the building of a new, state-of-the-art ballpark. Prior to the turn of the century fans had sat in flimsy wooden bleachers to watch most games. But Shibe, who wanted "a lasting monument", put his financial muscle behind a plan to build a ballpark of reinforced concrete. Taking up a city block, the new stadium reflected the idiosyncracies of the land it was located on. The centerfield fence was originally an astronomical 515 feet from home. Internally, it resembled the other parks of its generation, of which Boston's Fenway Park (the large wall) and Tiger Stadium (double-deck bleachers) are the most comparable survivors. With a seating capacity of about 33,000, Shibe Park was a suitable home for a progression of excellent teams. Legendary manager Connie Mack, later the A's owner, brought World Series titles to Philadelphia in 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929, and 1930. Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, Lefty Grove, and Eddie Collins are a few of the best-known players of Mack's teams, and all four are now enshrined in the Hall of Fame. During these early years, the ballpark was at the center of a vibrant working class community composed mostly of second and third-gerneation Irish and Italians. But Shibe Park's place in local history is larger than baseball. In those days, baseball stadia were the only facilities capable of hosting truly large-scale gatherings. Boxing matches and political rallies featuring the likes of Frankin Roosevelt just scratch the surface of the park's users. The stadium's owners, the Shibes and Mack, had two key tenants in the later years. The first was the Phillies, who moved in halfway through the 1938 season and stayed for 32 years. Traditionally the doormat of the National League, the Phillies would bring Shibe Park its eighth and final World Series in 1950, a sweep by the Yankees. That team, dubbed the "Whiz Kids" did much to turn the tide of local fandom toward the Phillies, a development that would combine with general inability of the city to support two teams in pushing the A's away. The other prominent tenant was the National Football League's Eagles. Shibe Park, built for baseball, was unsuitable for football in every way but seating capacity. In addition, the Eagles had trouble scheduling early season games since the one of the baseball clubs was almost always at home. For those reasons, the football team jumped at a chance to move to Penn's Franklin Field in 1958. After Connie Mack's forced retirement from baseball after the 1950 campaign, the A's days in Philadelphia were numbered. In fact, the ancient manager's longest mark in the city would be the name of the stadium, which was re-christened Connie Mack Stadium in 1953. The very next year, his club was sold and taken to Kansas City. That left Phillies' owner Bob Carpenter in control of the real estate, a situation he needed, "like a hole in the head." Carpenter saw many inadequacies in the old ballpark, not the least of which was location. Although originally prized for its proximity to streetcar lines, the old neighborhood was not conducive to the ever-swelling suburbanites who wanted to drive to the city and park their cars. Places were hard to come by and the crime rate in the area, always a negative, was becoming increasingly less tolerable. Another factor was the demographics of North Philadelphia. As so often happened during the 1950s, upwardly mobile groups vacated the city leaving behind poorer elements. To the Phillies' dismay, that left the neighborhood almost all black. "Let's just say, we knew things weren't getting any better," Carpenter said later. Carpenter noticed the Eagles' success in West Philly and came close to choosing a site at 30th and Arch Streets, near the train station. Ultimately, the Phillies would spend 15 years bickering with city officials before the Vet was constructed. In the meantime, with little incentive to maintain it, the owners (Carpenter had sold the park) let Connie Mack Stadium rust and deteriorate. Quite a comedown from the early years, when the park's owners claimed, " Shibe Park is watched with same zeal that a good captain watches a battleship. No ballpark is kept cleaner." In 1971, a year later than scheuled, the Phillies got their wish -- a clean new ballpark with plenty of parking in South Philadelphia. Fans embraced the Vet and gave little thought to the anachronistic stadium on the other side of town. The park was allowed to rest undisturbed. Grass grew waste-high and the scoreboard fell apart. A fire in 1974 precipitated the end, which finally came in 1976, the same year that Veterans Stadium hosted the All-Star Game for the first time. Gone and largely forgotten, Shibe Park never captured the hearts of Philadelphia fans the way Fenway Park did Bostoners or Wrigley Field did Chicagoans. Today a church and its parking lot occupy the block. But the first stadium of its generation does live on today -- in spirit. Like the other abandoned 20th century grounds, Shibe Park has helped inspire the wave of new, old-time themed stadia that have sprouted up from Baltimore to Texas. That's a legacy Ben Shibe and Connie Mack could still be proud of.