Yankee Stadium Archives - The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Baseball, as American as apple pie, really is “the New York game.” While its precursors come from many places – from Jamestown to Prague – the rules of American baseball and the modern ways of enjoying it were born from the urban experience and, in particular, the 19th-century New York region.

The sport (in the form that we know it today) developed in the early 1800s, played in Manhattan’s many open lots or New Jersey public parklands and soon organized into regular teams and eventually leagues. The way that New Yorkers played baseball was soon the way most Americans played by the late 19th century.

But it wasn’t until the invention of regular ball fields – catering to paying customers – that baseball became truly an urban recreational experience. And that too was revolutionized in New York.

Just in time for spring and the new Major League baseball season, Tom and Greg are joined by the acclaimed Kevin Baker, author of The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City to discuss the early history of the sport and its unique connections to New York City.

This show is truly the ultimate origin story of New York baseball, featuring tales of the city’s oldest and most legendary sports teams – the Yankees, the Dodgers, and the Giants. AND the New York Metropolitans – a different team than today’s Mets located in Queens.

Where was baseball played? Kevin shares the secrets of New York baseball’s earliest venues – from the many Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn

This is a true five-borough origin story! With stops at Hilltop Park (Manhattan), Yankee Stadium (Bronx), Fashion Race Course (Queens), Washington Park (Brooklyn), and St. George Cricket Grounds (Staten Island) among many other sites.

FEATURING the surprising link between baseball and Boss Tweed and his notorious political machine Tammany Hall

PLUS How did segregation distort the game and where did Black ballplayers play the sport? What was baseball like before Jackie Robinson?

LISTEN NOW: THE NEW YORK GAME

Fashion Race Course in Flushing, Queens, from The Clipper of July 24, 1858 (and via John Thorn/Our Game)

Many hatted men at the Polo Grounds, 1911 (Library of Congress)

Elysian Fields in Hoboken, the site of America’s first baseball games (NYPL, image from Booth’s History of New York)

The entrance to Hilltop Park, 1912 (Library of Congress)

Washington Park taken September 13, 1911 from the intersection of 4th Avenue and 3rd Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, 1923 (Library of Congress)

The crowd outside Ebbets Field for Game 1 of the 1920 World Series, the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Cleveland Indians.

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New York considered the newly annexed region to be of great service to the over-crowded city in Manhattan, a blank canvas for visionary urban planners. Soon great parks and mass transit transformed these northern areas of New York into a sibling (or, perhaps more accurately, a step-child) of the densely packed city to the south.

The Grand Concourse embodied the promise of a new life for thousands of new residents — mostly first and second-generation immigrants, many of them Jewish newcomers. The Hall of Fame of Great Americans was a peculiar tourist attraction that honored America’s greatest. But the first time that many outside New York became aware of the Bronx may have been the arrival in 1923 of New York’s most victorious baseball team, arriving via a spectacular new stadium where sports history would frequently be made.

By the 1930s Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began looking at the borough as a major factor in his grand urban development plans. In some cases, this involved the creation of vital public recreations (like Orchard Beach). Other decisions would mark the beginning of new troubles for the Bronx.

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The burial vault of the Van Cortlandts was actually contained within the newly formed park. And it’s still there.

NYU’s former University Heights campus (now the home of Bronx Community College) contains one unusual tourist attraction — the Hall of Fame of Great Americans

Louis Risse’s vision of the Grand Concourse in 1892 obviously did not imagine automobiles using the boulevard.

Kingsbridge Road near the Grand Concourse, 1890. It was originally a dirt road of course.

The New York Botanical Garden inaugurated Bronx Park and created another reason for New Yorkers to head up to the vastly evolving area up north.

A romantic depiction of the Lorillard snuff mill on the Bronx River. The building is still on the river, contained within the Botanical Garden.

Jerome Park Reservoir, opposite a set of homes, pictured here in 1920 and (below) 1936.

The unveiling of the Heinrich Heine monument in today’s Joyce Kilmer Park on the Grand Concourse.

Lavish apartments like the Roosevelt (pictured here in 1924 and in 1937) were able to attract New Yorkers escaping the overcrowded Lower East Side.

Fordham Road in 1930 with the Grand Concourse East Kingsbridge Road steaming by.

A Yankee Stadium postcard circa 1945

Ruth was so integrally a part of the Bronx and Yankee Stadium that when he died in 1948, his casket was taken to the stadium where tens of thousands of people came to pay their respects.

A few selections from our Instagram account of things we discussed on this week’s show:

A photo posted by Gregory Young (@boweryboysnyc) on Aug 26, 2016 at 11:22am PDT

From the Grand Concourse:

A photo posted by Gregory Young (@boweryboysnyc) on Aug 26, 2016 at 11:22am PDT

Here’s Tom and our special guest this week — the great Lloyd Ultan

Just had a great afternoon w. Lloyd Ultan, Bronx borough historian. The next Bowery Boys episode is going to be fact-ion packed! #boweryboys

A photo posted by Gregory Young (@boweryboysnyc) on Sep 11, 2016 at 5:54pm PDT

LISTEN NOW: THE NEW YORK GAME

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PODCAST The story of how the Bronx became a part of New York City and the origin of some of the borough’s most famous landmarks.

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