Scene at Opening Day, Braves' Field, showing some of the floral decorations and silver

trophies presented to the owners

The World's Greatest Baseball Park

The New Home of the World's Champions—A Mammoth
Amphitheatre Seating 43,500 People—"The Last
Word"—A Record Crowd
BY F. C. LANE

Braves' Field is the greatest park ever dedicated to the National Game. It is ideally
located, an architectural triumph, the last word in up-to-date equipment. T h e largest
crowd in baseball history greeted opening day at Boston, a pretty good showing for 1915.

"I T is the last word in baseball parks,

its building was the biggest single
event in ten years time." So said
President Tener, of the National league
in commenting upon the colossal new
park recently dedicated to the World's
Champions.
Outside the pages of an architects'
journal, the erection of any structure
might seem an unentertaining feat, but
the grand new park in Boston is not
merely a structure, it is an event, one of
the big events of the decade. And it is
a crowning refutation to the argument
that baseball has suffered materially
through the bickering and squabbles of
the Federal league war.
President Gaffney, of the Braves, is a
man with faults. We have not always
approved of his methods and the build-
ing of an additional park in a city which
already boasted of the Fenway, the Red
Sox grounds, lays the owner open to
criticism. But the courage which pro-
jected so vast an undertaking in a season
of treacherous business tendencies makes
the project all the bolder, since it stands
out in clear relief against a dark back-
ground of financial depression.
When the Polo Grounds were built,
baseball enthusiasts claimed for it the
distinction, not only of the greatest park
ever completed, but the greatest park
that would ever be projected. Brush

29
 30 THE BASEBALL MAGAZINE

A STATEMENT BY OWNER GAFFNEY

I have wanted a new park ever since I owned the Club. We had the park with
the smallest seating capacity in the National League a year ago. N o w we have the
park with the largest seating capacity. T h e last shall be first you know. Nothing,
however, is too good for the W o r l d ' s Champions or for Boston, the best baseball city
on the map. T h e y say business is poor just now, and that I am taking a gamble in
building so large a park, but poor business won't last. There are good times coming
and I want to be ready for them when they come.

Stadium is indeed graceful and impres-
sive. There is a charm in its very
ornateness which is pleasing to the eye.
The wide, crescent sweep of the stands,
the lofty roof fretted with spires and
points of stucco, the cool gleam of white
marble boxes, the imposing display of
lofty banners, are still unique. It is im-
possible to compare the Polo Grounds
with the Braves Field, without doing in-
justice to both, since both are so utterly
unlike. The Polo Grounds are immense,
ornate, impressive through their very
wealth of decoration. The field at Bos-
ton is vast, simple in its line, Grecian in
its architecture. There is something
wonderfully imposing in the huge field,
the stupendous sweep of the grandstand,
and yet in all its multiform complexity,
there is a quiet, harmonious unity. It
seems as though an old Greek amphi-
theatre had been torn bodily from the
Attic hills in the days when Athens ruled
the world and been transported (allowing
merely for the changed configuration of
the landscape), to the low knolls and
rolling valleys of the environs of Boston.
The new field which has been chris-
tened Braves' Field, unlike the Polo
Grounds, consists of a single stand, al-
though it seats far more than the tower-
ing edifice of Brush Stadium. Provision
has been made for a second story to the
grand stand, should it prove to be neces-
sary, but the mind falters under the im-
pression of the enormous crowd which
would justify such an expansion at
Braves' Field. Baseball unquestionably
has a bright prospect, but Gaffney has
already looked far into the future in de-
termining the needs of the present struc-
ture.
The City of Washington has been
christened the "City of Magnificent Dis-
tances." The Braves' Field is certainly
a baseball park of magnificent distances.
In the spacious dimensions of that field
there is no more excuse for the criticism

Left to right: Pres. Gilmore, George S. Ward, Owner Gaffney, Architect Comstock, and
Harry Sinclair
 Owner Gaffney showing a party of friends the new park. At the extreme left is Clark
Griffith, who pitched the first ball; at the right, Pres. Tener of the National League
of short right field fences, which produce
pop home runs, or constricting barriers
that prevent a hit from travelling its al-
lotted distance, before rebounding into
the pursuing fielder's hands. From home
plate to right field wall is 375 feet. It is
an equal distance to the left field wall.
Through second base a line might be ex-
tended for four hundred and forty feet
before meeting with any tangible barrier.
Some herculean batter in days to come
may line out a tremendous wallop, which
would soar through the air five hundred
and twenty feet to the foot of the flag-
pole in centre field.
Even at that remote distance a lofty
wall girdles in the grounds.
Ty Cobb stood at home plate and sur-
veying the ample space of that field said
with the emphasis of conviction, " N o
home run drive will ever go over that
fence." Then, lost in admiration which
the field inspires in every observer, he
31
added, as though to himself. "This is
the only field in the country on which
you can play an absolutely fair game of
ball without the interference of fences."
It used to be the fashion to build base-
ball parks in vacant lots, with the most
squalid surroundings, simply because
vacant land could be had there at a cheap
figure. Even in the modern days of the
game most parks are situated, either on
the remote outskirts of town, or in some
district where breweries or freight yards
have their station. But Gaffney chose
for the site of his park a place on Com-
monwealth Avenue, which is to Boston
what Fifth Avenue is to New York. N o r
is the frontage a meager one, six hun-
dred and seventy-four feet, the park ex-
tends along Commonwealth Ave., a
lavish showing on a most exclusive street.
Distance is a relative thing. It is much
better expressed in terms of time than
in terms of miles. The excellent tran-
32 THE BASEBALL MAGAZINE
Walter Hapgood, Business Manager of the
Braves
sportation service furnished by the new
Beacon Street Subway, through the most
fashionable residential district of the
city, has brought Braves' Field within
fourteen minutes ride of Park Street, the
transportation centre of Boston. The
business man in N e w York thinks noth-
ing of riding forty or fifty minutes to
the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan.
To him a fourteen minute ride would be
the most desirable, though least attain-
able, of ambitions.
Since Gaffney's field is the last word
in every respect, he went the rest one
step further in the method of transporta-
tion. Several parks have been criticised,
because they did not take their patrons
to the very door, but compelled them to
walk a short distance. The trolley cars
run directly into Braves' Field, where
they occupy a space neatly lined off with
concrete walls, capable of accommodat-
ing sixty-two cars. The retiring patrons
enter this inclosed space by paying their
fare at the entrance, as they would do
in the subway. They then board the par-
ticular car they want, for transportation
facilities are excellent to all parts of the
city, and are escorted out with the mini-
mum of delay.
To understand the park it is necessary
to understand something of the condi-
tions which existed when the park was
built. The location is on the old Allston
Golf Links. When the links were to be
sold a sweeping valley in the centre made
the site undesirable for building pur-
poses, through the tremendous expense
entailed in filling in. Feeling this, the
owners were constrained to accept a
price considerably less than they wished,
and then Gaffney proceeded to make
capital out of the so-called disadvantage.
The valley which made the property so
undesirable for building purposes was
made to order for such a park as he
projected. It seemed as though nature
had conspired with man to render the
locality eminently fitting for the great-
est of all baseball fields with the smallest
possible expense. The valley was itself
a natural amphitheatre with the filling in
a little here, and excavating a little there,
the enormous concrete stand was made
to fit into the depression. Its tier on
tier of seats rested on the side hill with
the minimum of iron construction work.
Its bleachers and pavilions clothed the
natural slope with a serried covering of
seats. The diamond, rolled and turfed,
was seventeen feet below the level of
the street. A natural reservoir, a lake in
a thunder shower, is the first thought of
the person who has not seen Braves'
Field. Not at all. From the outer barri-
ers of the field the slop is steep and sud-
den right down to the banks of the his-
toric Charles River. The natural drain-
age of the plot is ideal. After the hard-
est rain, the ground is dry and firm in
an hour. Scarcely another field in the
country is so quickly dried as this dia-
mond which lies seventeen feet below the
level of the pavement outside.
The structure of the stands minimizes
the post nuisance which so irritates the
fans on the days of record breaking at-
tendance. It is not very consoling to the
spectator who gets but few opportunities
a year to see a game, to find that he has
purchased his seat behind an opaque
piece of steel which shuts off the pitchers
(Continued on page 104)
104

THE WORLD'S GREATEST BALL

PARK
(Continued front page 32)
box or some other equally interesting
part of the diamond. In Braves' Field
while the evil is not wholly abolished as
some support is necessary to uphold the
roof, it is minimized. There are but six-
teen posts in the entire structure.
In the grandstand front there are three
tiers of boxes seating fourteen hundred
persons. There are sixteen thousand,
five hundred other seats. In the first
base pavilion there are ten thousand seats,
at third base there are nine thousand, in
the bleachers there are, roughly, forty-five
hundred seats. The total seating capacity
is approximately forty-three thousand,
five hundred, and there is room for the
addition of temporary wooden seats in
centre field, in world's series time, to
make the entire capacity at least sixty
thousand.
As the observer stands on the diamond
and gazes up into the vast ocean of seats
that swarm about him, he is lost in the
immensity of the scene. In the grand-
stand, forty-six rows of seats rise tier
on tier, above the triple row of boxes, in
the first base section this soars in the far-
ther corner to seventy-six rows. The
bewildered fan who undertook to walk
from one end of the wide sweeping stand
to the other would traverse along the
outer edge of the crescent a full quarter
of a mile before he reached the last seat
on the other side.
Upon this great stand a small army of
laborers, aggregating nearly a thousand,
toiled for five months. Gaffney, himself
a contractor, handled the work. It is
safe to say that he made every dollar go
as far as it would, in cost of construc-
tion, since that is his business. But when
the park was completed not a sign of
recent work was visible. This is all the
more remarkable since in most parks that
are rushed to completion and played in
on schedule date, there are numerous
evidences of the presence of workmen.
Still nothing was slighted, everything
was done in severe simplicity, but in a
good taste verging on the elegant. Not
a defect was anywhere visible in stand or
landscape, nothing remained to be de-
(Continued on page 106)
106

THE WORLD'S GREATEST BALL

PARK
(Continued from page 104)
sired anywhere in that vast sea of seats.
Since the whole plan of the stand is
massive, there is an entire absence of
stairs; runways carry the crowds in thou-
sands to their respective places and bear
them out again in the same ample space.
All entry is made through the main floor
of the office block; here there are twenty-
eight turnstiles and twenty-four ticket
offices.
The press box is a triumph. On the
roof, it commands a grand view of every
part of the field. The seats, of which
there are two hundred, are arranged in
steep rows, four high. There are a hun-
dred desks with drawers for manuscript,
each desk accommodating two persons.
The whole looks not unlike the house of
representatives, at Washington.
From the press box, one sweep of the
eye embraces the major part of the two
cities of Boston and Cambridge. At the
extreme left is the spire of Memorial
Hall, Harvard at the extreme right, the
lofty tower of the New Old South
Church, in Cofley Square. In the fore-
ground, in a broad semicircle, is the
silver blue current of the Charles River
with numerous craft scudding hither and
thither. Beyond, a wilderness of build-
ings extends street after street as far as
the eye can see.
The 18th of August dawned clear and
cool, it was an ideal opening date, though
a mid-week day did not seem very pro-
pitious for so mammoth a structure as
the new Braves' Field. But let the pessi-
mist who says this is a bad baseball sea-
son go to Boston. The galvanism of the
National game is in the air. From the
four quarters of the city and its endless
suburbs came the baseball enthusiasts.
They gathered before the imposing en-
trance in the morning; one o'clock found
a sea of faces upturned to the offices,
At two o'clock the vast caverns under the
stand reverberated with the din of thou-
sands of hurrying feet, like the roar of
the sea. No one walked, every one hur-
ried, most ran. This way and that titanic
eddies swirled the crowd. They came,
an ever increasing army, they stormed

(Continued on page 108)

108

THE WORLD'S GREATEST BALL

PARK
(Continued from page 106)
the gigantic wings and centre of that
park in thousands and tens of thousands.
Outside the grounds, was a seething pan-
demonium, inside a pennant crazed mob
that cheered when the club came, when
the officials came, when the bands played,
at the slightest provocation. When time
was called the grand-stand was a solid
wall of black. The first base bleachers
were a mass of humanity.
The bleachers were thronged to the
point of overflowing. Only in the third
base pavilion was there a few scattered
seats, but every part of the grandstand
was crammed with humanity. They
hung from the girders of the roofs like
swarming flies. They choked the run
ways and thronged the stairs of the press
box. They stood in rows at the back of
the grandstand and craned their necks
for an occasional view of the field.
Forty-seven thousand people surged
within the stands. Ten thousand people
outside clamored vainly for a chance to
get within. It was the largest crowd in
all baseball history, not by a niggardly
margin, but by a generous scope of thou-
sands. Good, was it not, for a bad finan-
cial year, for a mid-week crowd, in a
city not worthy to rank in size, with New
York, or Chicago, or Philadelphia. Pretty
good augury for the future, pretty good
evidence of the faith of the owners in the
prosperity of the game? Pretty good
argument for the croaker that 1915, in
spite of its drawbacks, has witnessed the
closest, the most thrilling, the most en-
grossing race in all history. That the
same despised 1915 has seen the largest
baseball crowd which was ever as-
sembled together, since the days when
the first rough baseball met the first
crude imitation of a bat, pretty good that
it has witnessed the dedication and con-
struction of the most colossal park in its
own inflated history? Not such a bad
baseball year after all—1915?
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