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Former names | Eclipse Park I (c.1874–1893) Eclipse Park II (1893–1899) Eclipse Park III (1902–1922) |
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Location | 28th and Elliott streets (I) 28th and Broadway (II) 7th and Kentucky (III) Louisville, Kentucky |
Tenants | |
Louisville Eclipse (MLB) (1882–1884) Louisville Colonels (MLB) (1885–1899) Louisville Colonels (MiLB) (1902–1922) Louisville Breckenridges Club (Ind) (c.1899–1906) Louisville Breckenridges (Ind./NFL) (1907–1922) Louisville Cardinals (NCAA) (1909–1912, 1920–1922) |
Eclipse Park was the name of three successive baseball grounds in Louisville, Kentucky in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were the home of the Louisville baseball team first known as the Louisville Eclipse and later as the Louisville Colonels.
The unusual name for these ballparks derived from the original name of the Association club, the Eclipse. The more local name "Colonels" eventually won out. Nonetheless, "Eclipse" was among the early team names to be a singular word, despite "sounding like" a plural.
Semi-pro baseball had been played at the first Eclipse Park as early as 1874. The Louisville Eclipse played there from 1882 to 1884. The team was then renamed the Louisville Colonels and continued to play under that name from 1885 to 1893. The team was a member of the American Association until 1891 when it joined the National League when the American Association folded. The park was destroyed by fire on September 27, 1892. The 1893 season started in what was left of the park.
The original Eclipse Park was located at 28th and Elliott streets in west Louisville.
The second Eclipse Park was built a block south of the original. City directories and local newspapers give the location as 28th Street (east) and Broadway (north). The Louisville Colonels played there from early in the 1893 season until well into the 1899 season. This is the ground at which Hall of Famer Honus Wagner made his Major League debut on July 19, 1897.
The second Eclipse Park was destroyed by fire on August 12, 1899. The club was on a road trip at the time. They returned to a partially-rebuilt park ten days later, but the stands were inadequate and the club played the final month as a road team.
The fire contributed significantly to the once-strong Louisville club being contracted after the end of the season. Team owner Barney Dreyfuss moved on to acquire the Pittsburgh Pirates. Instead of being scattered to the wind, the best players from the Louisville team roster were brought onto the Pittsburgh payroll, including Wagner, third baseman Tommy Leach, outfielder-manager Fred Clarke, and ace right-hander Deacon Phillippe. This influx of talent soon turned the perennial cellar-dwelling Pirates into a three-peat pennant winner, and a participant in the first modern World Series.
After a one-year absence of professional ball, a Louisville Colonels entry in the Western Association opened at the remnants of the park in 1901. The club drew poorly and transferred to Grand Rapids, Michigan near the end of June.
The third and final Eclipse Park was built on a block bounded by 7th Street (east); Kentucky Street (south); 8th Street (west); and Florence Place (north) in the Limerick neighborhood of Louisville. This ballpark was built by George "White Wings" Tebeau as the home for the American Association minor league Louisville Colonels who played there from 1902 through 1922.
The final Eclipse Park had better luck than the first two, remaining in operation for more than twenty years, until it too was destroyed by fire, on November 21, 1922.
All three Eclipse Park locations had been destroyed by fire of various origins. The Louisville Courier-Journal covered each of these events in the days following. After the 1922 fire, the paper editorialized that wooden ballparks were obsolete and should be replaced by steel and concrete. The ball club followed that advice, opening Parkway Field the following spring.
Riverside Park, located in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, was originally built in 1914 to serve as a spring training park for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1914 to 1917. Sometimes referred to as Tradewater Park, it is the only known baseball park in Kentucky to have hosted a major league team since the Louisville Colonels folded in 1899. While the original stadium was destroyed in a flood in the 1930s, it was later rebuilt in 1999. Like the original stadium, the rebuilt park is reconstructed out of wood. It is the only ballpark of its kind in Western Kentucky.
Louisville, Kentucky had two professional American football teams in the National Football League: the Louisville Breckenridges from 1921 to 1924 and the Louisville Colonels in 1926.
The American Association (AA) was a professional baseball league that existed for 10 seasons from 1882 to 1891. Together with the National League (NL), founded in 1876, the AA participated in an early version of the World Series seven times versus the champion of the NL in an interleague championship playoff tournament. At the end of its run, several AA franchises joined the NL. After 1891, the NL existed alone, with each season's champions being awarded the Temple Cup (1894–1897).
The Louisville Colonels were a Major League Baseball team that played in the American Association (AA) throughout that league's ten-year existence from 1882 until 1891. They were known as the Louisville Eclipse from 1882 to 1884, and as the Louisville Colonels from 1885 to 1891. The latter name derived from the historic Kentucky colonels. After the AA folded in 1891, the Colonels joined the National League and played through the 1899 season.
The Indianapolis Indians are a Minor League Baseball team of the Triple-A East and the Triple-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. They are located in Indianapolis, Indiana, and play their home games at Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis. The team's mascot is Rowdie the Bear.
South Side Park was the name used for three different baseball parks that formerly stood in Chicago, Illinois, at different times, and whose sites were all just a few blocks away from each other.
Parkway Field is the name of a minor league baseball and college baseball park that stood in Louisville, Kentucky. It was home to the Louisville Colonels of the American Association from 1923 into the mid-1950s, the Louisville Buckeyes of the Negro American League in 1949, and then of the University of Louisville team for several decades until they abandoned it in 1998 and moved to Cardinal Stadium. Prior to its demolition, Parkway Field had become a home run haven for U of L Head Coach Gene Baker's "Over the Wall Gang." The Cards led NCAA Division I in long balls in 1991 and 1992 while finishing runnerup in 1995. The 1991 squad featured six Cardinals who tallied at least 15 roundtrippers each, Richie Hawks, Rob Newman, Greg Gooding, Dan Kopriva, Charlie Allen, and Darren Oppel. The 1992 club also topped the nation in team batting average and team slugging percentage.
The Cleveland Buckeyes were a Negro league baseball team that played from 1942 to 1950 in the Negro American League. The Buckeyes played in two Negro World Series, defeating the Washington Homestead Grays in 1945, and losing to the New York Cubans in 1947. They were based in Cincinnati for their first season and Louisville for their second-to-last season.
Louis Rogers "Pete" Browning, nicknamed "Gladiator" and "The Louisville Slugger", was an American professional baseball center fielder and left fielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1882 to 1894. He played primarily for the Louisville Eclipse/Colonels, becoming one of the sport's most accomplished batters of the 1880s.
Bernhard "Barney" Dreyfuss was an executive in Major League Baseball who owned the Pittsburgh Pirates franchise from 1900 to his death. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Limerick is a neighborhood one mile south of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
Harry Clay Pulliam was an American baseball executive who served as the sixth President of the National League. He served from 1903 until his death in 1909. He was president during the period in which the National League and the fledgling American League settled their hostilities and formed a National Agreement which led to the creation of the World Series.
Herald Park was a baseball park located in Houston, Texas and was the home of the Houston Buffaloes from 1888 until 1904. It also served as the spring training facility for the Louisville Colonels and the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League of Major League Baseball in 1895 and 1904 respectively.
Oriole Park, often referred to as Terrapin Park, opened in 1914 and closed after a fire on July 3–4, 1944. "Oriole Park" was the name of multiple baseball parks in Baltimore, Maryland, all built within a few blocks of each other.
McCulloch Park is the largest community park located in Muncie, Indiana. The park is named after for local newspaper industrialist, George F. McCulloch, who gave the 118 acres of land to the city for a park in 1892. The park later consisted of a baseball field that hosted two professional teams; the Muncie Fruit Jars and the Muncie Reds. The park also served as the spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1943–1945.
Warwick Village is a neighborhood located in Louisville, Kentucky. Warwick Village is just outside the Watterson Expressway and part of the City of St. Matthews, Its boundaries are roughly New La Grange Rd, Washburn Ave, and Columbia Ave. Many of Warwick Village's streets are surrounded by Warwick Park also known as Warwick-Villa Park Playground.
The Saginaw Bears was a primary name of the minor league baseball teams that played in Saginaw, Michigan in various seasons between 1884 and 1951.