A Fun Night at the Ballpark of My Boyhood

My son, Philip, and I trekked up to Columbus yesterday afternoon, picked up my Dad, had a great dinner at Schmidt's Sausage Haus in German Village, and then headed to Cooper Stadium for a game between the Columbus Clippers, Triple A farm team for the Washington Nationals, and the Richmond Braves, part of Atlanta's farm system.

For me, the trip was a sentimental journey. When I was a young boy, my family lived in the section of Columbus known as the Bottoms, on Thomas Avenue, just west of Central Avenue. Our house, which set across the street from the home of my Great Grandmother, was less than a half-mile from the ball park, then known as Jet Stadium, home of the Columbus Jets. Dad and I often walked to the Jets games.

Later, after we moved to the Westgate section of Columbus--I was two months shy of my ninth birthday when we did that in 1962, we still went to ballgames. But we drove to them. Dad parked our car at Roger Wassmuth's Marathon station, a place he once worked, at the corner of Central and Mound Street. We then walked the block to the stadium.

Going to see the Jets was always magical! Jet Stadium, as it was then called, was the first venue to which I went in which there were lights. Seeing them increase in brightness as the sky grew darker seemed almost miraculous to me, as though it was possible to banish the night and make the summer day last forever.

I loved being able to hear pitched balls hit the leather of the catchers' mitts, as well as the cracks of bats making contact with the ball. My friends and I never were able to duplicate that latter sound, even when we swung our bats as hard as we could!

I loved all that you could see on the field: dust on the legs and backsides of a base runner; the close plays at home.

I loved the smell of the hot dogs and the sound of the concessionaires as they yelled, "Beeeeeer here. Ice cold beer here!"

During evening games, I loved sitting in the gathering night, when the first wafts of the evening breeze carried the day's heat and humidity far away.

I even loved it when rain delays came, forcing us to run for the shelter of the stadium's underbelly, with its concession stands and rest rooms, and then, sometime later, being able to emerge, part of a much smaller crowd, members of a small but lucky company who'd patiently waited for the resumption of the game.

The play on the field at a minor league park is rarely of major league caliber. After all, these are players either on their way up to the majors...or ones who've been there and been sent back down...or ones who never will make it to the Bigs. But there's an intimacy and immediacy in a minor league park that compensates for whatever deficiencies may exist in the quality of play. It was in Columbus' minor league ballpark, as well as on the playgrounds of my youth, that I fell in love with baseball, a love affair that continues to this day!

A real advantage of living in the Bottoms as a young boy was that we could stand in our backyard on the Fourth of July, look a few blocks to our east and see an amazing post-game fireworks display at the stadium every year. (For those of you familiar with Columbus' annual Independence Day Red, White, and Boom, which always draws at least a half-million people, this was years before that event was inaugurated.)

The stadium in which the Clippers presently play was built seventy-five years ago by the Saint Louis Cardinals. It was identical to a stadium they built in Rochester at roughly the same time. The Columbus team was originally called the Redbirds and the place they played was known as Redbird Stadium. (My Mom says she once saw a Roller Derby "match" there.)

By the time I became aware of baseball as a little boy--around 1957, the Jets played in the stadium. At the end of each school year, through forms distributed by our elementary teachers, children could join the Junior Jets, entitling them to a large white badge with the blue logo of the team imprinted on it. When you wore the badge to a game, you got in for a reduced rate, something like fifty-cents.

The Jets were affiliated with the Pittsburgh Pirates, owned by Mount Sterling-native and Columbus-area developer John Galbreath.

The team gave up on Columbus in the early-seventies and for nearly a decade, the city had no minor league team. For me, a baseball fan with happy memories spent going to games with my Dad, it was sad to drive by Jet Stadium and see it becoming overgrown and seedier with each passing month. A myth developed that because "Columbus is a football town," there was no interest in baseball. I was convinced that Columbus could be interested in more than one sport...and that it was. The huge number of baseball and softball diamonds which dotted the city seemed to attest to that.

The irony is that as Columbus' participation in the Triple A International League receded further into the past, the league's offices remained in Columbus, led by president Harold Cooper.

In 1968, Cooper and Mike Dorrian, Democrats, were elected Franklin County Commissioners. In Ohio, each county is led by a three-member commission, which has both executive and legislative functions. Not long after Cooper and Dorrian were elected, they introduced a somewhat unique plan to bring baseball back to Columbus. In a nutshell, the county would acquire a franchise in the International League and play in the old Jet Stadium.

In 1977, the Columbus Clippers, affiliated with the Pirates, began play in the newly renamed Franklin County Stadium. While the place looked a lot like it had in former days, changes were made. The press boxes were updated. Old wooden seats were replaced with new metal ones. An additional 3000 seats were added in a bleacher section that stretched next to the left field foul line. AstroTurf, then the rage, was installed. The old ballpark was, for the late-70s, a gorgeous and up-to-date venue. It was said at the time that only the New Orleans Super Dome, home field for the Zephyrs, was a better minor league park. In 1985, the stadium was rededicated as Cooper Stadium.



It's always been a great place to watch a ballgame. Through the years, whenever I've taken friends who had previously only seen professional games at major league venues, their response has been enthusiastic. The experience is like a revelation to them.

And for good reason! At the stadium now affectionately called 'The Coop,' you're right on top of the games. You can see every pitch and because your angle of vision is usually so good, you even have a legitimate bases for arguing with the umps' calls.

In the early 80s, I took a buddy from seminary, an avid fan and a former high school star, to a game. He couldn't stop talking about how incredible it was being able to see everything that transpired on the field.

When I was a kid sitting in Jet Stadium with my mitt at the ready, I had an excellent shot at snaring a foul ball lofted into the stands, something that you can little hope to do in most major league parks.

Nowadays, I'm inclined to sit behind the netting that stretches from the stadium roof down to the rail behind homeplate to avoid foul balls.

There's a reason for that. You may have noticed the sentence on the ticket stub from last night's game that says:

The holder of this ticket assumes all risk and danger incidental to the game of baseball, including specifically but not exclusively, the danger of being injured by wildly thrown and batted balls and agrees that the management is not liable for injuries resulting from such causes.

I think that precise sentence has been on every ticket stub I've ever seen in Columbus. I never gave it too much thought until sometime in the 80s. A high school classmate of my wife's and mine had never been to a baseball game. "You ought to go at least once," I told her several times, urging her to take her little boy. Some months after I'd last lobbied her, she called us up.

"I went to a Clippers game with Andy," she told me after I answered the phone.

"Oh, that's great!" I enthused. "Did you have a good time?"

"We did for awhile," she told me.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, a foul ball was hit toward us and I didn't really see it coming."

"Oh, no!"

"It hit me on the chin and knocked me flat on my back. They stopped the game for ten minutes, brought in the EMS, and carried me off on a stretcher. I got a standing ovation. They offered free tickets to me and couldn't have been nicer. But I don't think that I'll be going to another game."

Cooper Stadium will, sometime late next year, be demolished. A countdown sign in left-center field announced last evening that there would be just 93 more Clippers games there. I suppose that, because of my inexplicable love affair with my hometown and my happy baseball memories, I could be wistful about that. But I believe in progress. The cramped seating of 'The Coop' no longer suits post-modern crowds, if for no other reason than that people, on average, are taller than they were back when the place opened up in 1932. (Like Wrigley Field, of which I once wrote here.) The new Huntington Stadium will probably be a great venue.

Any forward-looking city will want to have professional baseball in its midst. It knits communities and families together, as it has mine over the generations. It can do that in new ballparks at least as easily as in old ones...and the good memories can stay with us for a long time.

[Watch for pictures and videos from our trek to Cooper Stadium and Columbus later.]

[THANKS TO: Brian of Columbuser.com for linking to this post.]

[THANKS TO: Michael Meckler for linking to this post.]