Columbia Park was the first home of the Athletics

For a ballpark that had such a short lifespan, Columbia Park played a prominent role in the evolution of major league baseball in Philadelphia.

The park functioned as a major league stadium for just eight seasons starting in 1901. During that period, however, it helped to give birth to a new league, was the site of one World Series and was the ballpark in which numerous future Hall of Famers launched their careers.

Located on a rectangular lot bordered by 29th Street, Columbia Avenue, 30th Street and Oxford Street in North Philadelphia, Columbia Park was the first home of the Philadelphia Athletics. As such, it was also the first American League stadium in Philadelphia.

When Connie Mack arrived in Philadelphia after being appointed manager and minority stockholder of the Athletics by American League president Byron Bancroft (Ban) Johnson, he not only had to find money and players, he also had to build a ballpark.

Mack and his partner Benjamin F. Shibe considered several plots for the park before finding a suitable property in the Brewerytown section of Philadelphia. After taking a 10-year lease on the grounds–at the time a vacant lot with houses surrounding it on the adjacent streets–Mack initiated construction of a ballpark.

Columbia Park was erected at a cost of $35,000. Its original seating capacity was 9,500 with covered, wooden grandstands extending on either side of the field from home plate to first and third bases. A wire screen ran along the top of the grandstand roof, an apparent attempt to keep foul balls from leaving the park. Open bleachers continued from the grandstands down both foul lines. There was another small bleacher section that ran across left field. A small press box sat atop the bleachers behind home plate.

Home plate at Columbia Park was at the corner of Oxford and 30th Streets. Above the wall bordering 29th Street, 25-foot high chicken wire extended from the right field bleachers to center field.

The Athletics dressed in a small clubhouse under the stands. Visiting players changed into their uniforms at their hotel, and generally rode trolleys or horse-drawn carriages to the ballpark. There were no dugouts. Players sat on wooden benches in front of the grandstands.

When games were taking place at Columbia Park, the aroma of hops and freshly brewed beer from nearby breweries often wafted across the stadium. Beer, of course, was not sold at the ballpark.

While his team played at Columbia Park, Mack lived in a house across the street from the field at 2932 Oxford Street. Eventually, many players moved into the neighborhood, too.

The late Emil Beck lived as a youth in the neighborhood. When discussing the park a decade ago, he clearly remembered those days. “Rube Waddell, Chief Bender and a lot of others lived in the area,” he said. “You could often see Connie Mack and some of the players walking through the neighborhood. We used to chase after them as they walked to the ballpark.

“It cost a quarter to see a game,” Beck added. “You had to pass through big steel turnstiles to get into the park. There weren’t many vendors in there, but you could get a hot dog and a soda.

“The crowd was pretty refined. Everybody rooted for the Athletics. It was a good park for watching a game. The playing field was always in very good shape.”

The playing field was put to its first test on April 26, 1901. That’s when the first game was played at Columbia Park.

The opener had been postponed twice because of rain. But it was finally held with an overflow crowd of 10,524 in attendance, including people standing atop the outfield walls and on the roofs of neighborhood houses. After the First Regiment Band played before the game and Mayor Samuel Ashbridge threw out the first ball, the Athletics lost to the Washington Nationals, 5-1. Nap Lajoie had three hits while Chick Fraser was the losing pitcher.

Despite the loss, an account in the Philadelphia Public Ledger gushed ecstatically about the event.

“Another epoch in the history of local baseball was written yesterday afternoon at Twenty-ninth and Columbia Avenue when the stamp of public approval was inscribed upon the escutcheon of the American League, the occasion being the opening championship game between the Athletics and Washington,” the article babbled. “The later won by the score of 5 to 1, but considered purely from a local point of view, it is doubtful if the great national game ever received such a tribute from the sport loving populace.”

The lead article in the Philadelphia Inquirer was more subdued. “The game itself will never be recalled as a sample of the National pastime at its best estate,” it said, “and yet but for the fact that it was witnessed by such a tremendous crowd, the chances are that it would have been voted a pretty entertaining affair.”

Curiously, the locals’ enthusiasm was not maintained. Despite a winning record (74-62) and fourth place finish by the Athletics, just 206,329 fans passed through the turnstiles, an average of slightly less than 3,300 per game.

That would turn out to be the Athletics’ lowest season’s attendance at Columbia Park. They drew 442,473 in 1902, and only one other year attracted less than that during their eight-year stay at the park. The crowd reached a high of 625,581 in 1907.

While they played at Columbia Park, Athletics players won six home runs titles. Second baseman Lajoie won the Triple Crown in 1901 while setting a still-standing American League record with a .422 batting average. Right fielder Ralph (Socks) Seybold led the league in home runs in 1902, and team captain and first baseman Harry Davis won the home run title four straight seasons between 1904 and 1907 while twice leading the circuit in RBIs. Little 5-5 left fielder Topsy Hartsel topped the league in bases on balls five times.

As good as they were with the bat, the Athletics had equally fine pitching. Their Columbia Park days were marked by the outstanding hurling of particularly Waddell and Eddie Plank. Waddell won more than 20 games four years in a row, and in 1904 set a major league strikeout record that stood for 42 years by blowing away 349 batters. Plank, the first 20th Century pitcher to win 300 games, also enjoyed his best seasons at Columbia Park, five times winning 20 or more games.

Chief Bender and Jimmy Dygert also produced outstanding seasons on the mound while Columbia Park was their home field. Bender, as well as Plank, Waddell, Lajoie, second baseman Eddie Collins, and Frank (Home Run) Baker, who played in nine games in 1908, all ascended to the Hall of Fame.

Shoeless Joe Jackson launched his career at Columbia Park. Signed originally by Mack out of the backwoods of South Carolina, the ill-fated batting titan played briefly in 1908 with the Athletics before jumping the club and returning home, a stunt he repeated the following year.

During their residence at Columbia Park, the Athletics won two American League pennants and finished second twice. The first flag flew in 1902 when the A’s posted an 83-53 record and danced home five games ahead of the St. Louis Browns. The A’s clinched the pennant on September 20 at home, defeating Boston, 7-2, as a crowd of 23,897 jammed every square inch of Columbia Park. Thousands of fans were turned away at the gate.

Because the National League still refused to recognize the American League, there was no World Series that year.

A World Series was held at Columbia Park in 1905. With the capacity of the park increased to 13,600, the Athletics rumbled to the American League pennant with a 92-56 record, edging the Chicago White Sox by two games. Late in the season, a record crowd of 25,187 watched an Athletics-White Sox game

The Series opened October 9 at Columbia Park with the Athletics facing the New York Giants in what was the first best-of-seven series format.

The Giants arrived at Columbia Park wearing black uniforms, an attempt by manager John McGraw to intimidate the opposing A’s. The ploy was probably unnecessary, as the Giants’ record of 105-48 for the season was intimidating enough.

In perhaps the most magnificently pitched Series in history, the Giants won, four games to one with all five games being won by shutouts. The redoubtable Christy Mathewson, who had signed a contract in 1901 with the Athletics but jumped to the Giants before playing a game in Philadelphia livery, hurled three of them.

Mathewson, a Bucknell graduate, defeated his old college rival, Gettysburg’s Plank, 3-0, with a four-hitter in the first game. After Bender four-hit the Giants for a 3-0 decision at the Polo Grounds in the second game, Mathewson came back with two days rest and hurled the Series’ third straight four-hitter, beating the Athletics, 9-0, at Columbia Park.

Back in New York, Joe McGinnity and Mathewson tossed 1-0 and 2-0 shutout victories in the fourth and fifth games to give the Giants the Series.

Although they lost the Series, the Athletics were feted with a massive parade along Broad Street when they returned to Philadelphia. Amateur and semipro players from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware took part in the parade. The A’s and some of the Giants players rode in open cars.

“Broad Street was an impassable mass of human beings when the parade started,” wrote H. Walter Schlichter in the Philadelphia Evening Item, “and the greatest difficulty was experienced by the police, which headed the procession, in forcing a passage for the marchers and floats. It was past midnight when the route laid out was covered by the great army of marching fans, but the crowd waited to the end, and the enthusiasm was kept up to the last.”

An estimated 300,000 fans lined the parade route. When the players came into view, fans broke past the police barriers in a frenzied effort to get closer to their heroes.

There was no other World Series at Columbia Park. But there would continue to be plenty of excitement. Brilliant individual performances and memorable games were common at the ballpark.

Seybold once hit a ball that was said to have hit a telegraph pole on Hollywood Street, which paralleled the left field wall behind Columbia Avenue. Waddell made his debut in 1902 with a two-hit shutout of the Baltimore Orioles in a game in which he faced just 27 batters (one was caught stealing, the other was picked off first base). Center fielder Ollie Pickering hit a dramatic 14th inning home run on June 12, 1903 to give Waddell a 2-1 victory over Addie Joss and the Cleveland Naps. Waddell set a one-game strikeout record on July 14, 1903 by fanning 14 Chicago batters. And Plank pitched and drove in the only run September 10, 1904 in a 13-inning, 1-0 victory over Boston and Cy Young.

No doubt, the most memorable game occurred at the park on September 30, 1907. At the time, the Athletics, Detroit Tigers and White Sox were locked in a tense battle for the pennant. The A’s were in first place three points ahead of the Tigers when Detroit came to town for a crucial three-game series starting Friday, September 27. The New York Times said it would be “the greatest struggle in the history of baseball.”

In the first game, the Tigers beat Plank, 5-4, before a crowd of 17,926. Rain cancelled the game the next day, and with no Sunday baseball permitted, a doubleheader was scheduled for Monday, September 30.

A huge crowd that included 24,127 paid and another 2,000 who got in free by climbing the fences, packed the grandstands and the outfield. Thousands more stood on ladders, hay bales and the roofs of nearby houses to watch the battle. “If it had been possible to accommodate them, 50,000 people would have attended the game,” said the Philadelphia North American. What the massive throng saw was a fiercely played 17-inning game that ranks with one of the most memorable in Philadelphia baseball history.

The Athletics jumped on Philadelphia native Wild Bill Donovan, later to become a Phillies manager, taking an early 7-1 lead. Waddell replaced A’s starter Dygert in the second inning, but the Tigers narrowed the deficit to 7-5. Finally, in the ninth inning, Ty Cobb socked a Waddell pitch over the right field wall to tie the score at 9-9.

Plank replaced Waddell as the game went into extra innings. Donovan, with a large contingent of family and friends in the stands, continued to pitch for Detroit. Then in the 14th inning, the A’s Davis hit a drive into the crowd behind the ropes in left-center field. Although such a hit would normally have been ruled a ground rule double, Detroit center fielder Sam Crawford claimed that a policeman interfered with him, preventing him from making the catch.

Umpire Silk O’Loughlin deliberated for several minutes, and as he did, a fight broke out after Cobb told teammate Claude Rossman that the A’s Monte Cross had called him a “Jew bastard.” Other players soon joined the melee before order was restored by the police. Finally, O’Loughlin called Davis out.

The Athletics were outraged, and even Mack protested vigorously. The decision, of course, was upheld, and when Danny Murphy followed with a single that would have scored Davis with the winning run, the A’s were even angrier. The game lurched on for three more innings before it was called because of darkness after nearly four hours and 17 innings with the score still tied at 9-9. Naturally, the second game was not played.

Mack was so incensed that for one of the rare times in his career, he issued a blistering statement. “If ever there was such a thing as crooked baseball, today’s game would stand as a good example,” he said, asserting that he thought the umpires had conspired against him.

No other game at Columbia Park produced such controversy. But there was another set of games that annually generated widespread interest among the local fans. This was the City Series, which pitted the Athletics and the Phillies.

The first City Series game was played April 6, 1903 at Columbia Park. In it, Fred Mitchell pitched a four-hitter to lead the Phillies to a 2-0 victory in 10 innings. Waddell took the loss, allowing just two hits and striking out 11.

Altogether, there were 26 City Series games played at Columbia Park with each team winning 13.

The Phillies briefly used the park as their home field in 1903 after a balcony collapsed at the club’s Philadelphia Park, resulting in the deaths of 12 fans and injuries to 232 more. That forced the Phillies to find new quarters while their park was being repaired.

Nine consecutive rainouts prevented the Phillies from making their debut at Columbia Park until August 20. From then until September 10, they played 16 games there, winning six, losing nine and tying one.

Although the Athletics drew well at Columbia Park, the little wooden stadium didn’t hold enough people to suit Mack and Shibe. Often, as the park filled to capacity, the gates had to be shut, leaving thousands of fans on the outside. Envisioning higher profits based on larger crowds at a bigger park, the A’s owners left Columbia Park after the 1908 season, moving to the newly constructed Shibe Park.

The final game at Columbia Park was held October 8, 1908. In the second game of a doubleheader, Boston defeated the Athletics, 5-0

“Columbia Park stood for another three or four years after the A’s left,” recalled Emil Beck. “The circus and a few other events were held there. But finally the park was knocked down, and houses were built on the site.”

An era that had been brief but eventful had become just a memory.