Mention 21st and Lehigh to any Philadelphia baseball fan of yesteryear, and there is never a doubt what that means. It was the address of Shibe Park.
Before there was artificial turf, before there were retractable roofs, exploding scoreboards, mascots, dancing girls, and designated hitters, Shibe Park was one of Philadelphia’s special treasures. The ballpark was as much a part of Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell, the Mummers Parade, and cheese steaks.
For much of its life, the storied ballpark was known as Shibe Park. Eventually, it was renamed Connie Mack Stadium. It was an integral part of the local sports scene for 62 years, serving most notably as the home of the Athletics and later the Phillies.
Back in the days when a ballpark was really a ballpark, Shibe Park (as we will refer to in this essay) was to Philadelphia what Forbes Field was to Pittsburgh, what Ebbets Field was to Brooklyn, and what Griffith Stadium was to Washington. The ballparks were synonymous with hometown baseball, and to generations of fans from each city, they represented a local field of dreams.
Those ballparks, of course, were far from perfect. They lacked the amenities of the multi-million dollar stadiums of today. In Shibe Park’s case, there were some obstructed views, there was little parking, and in later years the location became less than desirable. But the grass was always green, the hotdogs were always delicious, and the playing field was close enough to the stands that fans could actually see what the players looked like.
“It looked like a ballpark. It smelled like a ballpark. It had a feeling and a heartbeat; a personality that was all baseball,” Richie Ashburn once said. No one could argue with that. Shibe Park was indeed meant for baseball, and it represented the best parts of the sport.
The gates to Shibe Park opened for the first time in 1909. With the Athletics having outgrown Columbia Park, their first home, the team’s principal owner, Ben Shibe, and his manager and part-owner Connie Mack, had decided it was time to build a bigger ballpark. Land in a mostly isolated part of Philadelphia was purchased, and ultimately the stadium was built at a cost of $315,248.69.
Shibe Park, the first of 11 steel and concrete baseball parks built over a five-year period, originally had a seating capacity of 23,000. The park featured a domed tower at the main entrance, a 12-foot high wall that extended from the right to left field corners, and a lower and upper deck that was located between third and first bases with bleachers paralleling the rest of each foul line. It was 515 feet from home plate to dead center field, 378 down the line in left, and 340 to the wall in right.
The first game was played April 12, 1909. A line began forming for tickets at 7 a.m. Ultimately, a crowd in excess of 35,000 jammed the park well beyond its capacity, many fans standing behind ropes across the outfield. The Athletics, behind the six-hit pitching of Eddie Plank, defeated the Boston Red Sox, 8-1.
In the ensuing years, Shibe Park underwent a variety of changes. In 1913, upper decks were added to the bleacher sections that extended down the left and right field foul lines, and bleachers that ran across the outfield from the left field foul line to dead center field were added, raising the capacity of the ballpark to 33,500. A mezzanine with 750 seats was built behind home plate in 1928, and one year later, more seats were added to the grandstand.
Tired of fans watching games for free from rooftops along 20th street, Mack in 1935 added 22 feet to the top of the existing 12-foot wall that ran across the outfield from right to center fields. Called the “spite wall,” fans took the A’s to court, but a young lawyer named Richardson Dilworth represented the team and won the case for Mack and his cohorts.
The Athletics acquired a new tenant in 1938 when in mid-season the Phillies moved to Shibe Park from their dreary home at Baker Bowl where they had played for 51 1/2 years. In 1927, the Phillies had played 12 regular-season games at Shibe Park after a section of stands had collapsed at Baker Bowl. But once Shibe Park became the regular domain of the Phillies, fans were treated to the rare luxury of being able to watch a home game nearly every day of the season.
Mack raised the ire of fans again in 1939 when he announced that lights would be installed at the park. Again, nearby residents protested, but the lights went up anyway. The American League’s first night game was played at Shibe Park with the Athletics losing to the Cleveland Indians, 8-3.
Changes continued to occur at the ballpark. Some 2500 box seats along the first and third base lines were added in 1947. The park was renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953. In 1954, Phillies owner Bob Carpenter bought the park for $1,657,000.00. And in 1956, a scoreboard that had been used at Yankee Stadium was purchased and installed in front of the wall in right-center field.
The Athletics left Philadelphia after the 1954 season, but by then the ballpark had been the scene of numerous significant events. It had been the home of seven pennant-winning Athletics teams, five of which were World Series winners. In one of the most famous games in baseball history, the Athletics scored 10 runs in one inning to beat the Chicago Cubs in the fourth game of the 1929 World Series. Another pennant-winner was produced by the Phillies in 1950. And All-Star games in 1943 and 1952 were played at the park.
Shibe Park was the home field for Hall of Famers including Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Plank, Chief Bender, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, and Al Simmons of the Athletics and Robin Roberts and Ashburn of the Phillies. Grove, Foxx (twice), Bobby Shantz, and Jim Konstanty won Most Valuable Player awards while playing their home games at Shibe Park.
Bender, Joe Bush, Dick Fowler, and Bill McCahan of the A’s pitched no-hitters there, as did visitors Sam Jones, Howard Ehmke, Sandy Koufax, George Culver, and Bill Stoneman. Foxx hit his 500th home run, and Dick Allen hit a 529-foot homer at Shibe Park. In their years of suiting up for the home team, Baker won four home runs titles and Foxx won three. Simmons, Ashburn, and Ferris Fain each won two batting crowns. Grove won 31 games in one season and Roberts bagged 28.
Also at Shibe Park, Ted Williams went 6-for-8 in a doubleheader on the last day of the season to wind up with a .406 batting average in 1941. Babe Ruth hit his record-setting 54th home run in 1920. In 1936, Tony Lazzeri drove in 11 runs with three homers, including two grand slams, to lead the Yankees to a 25-2 win over the A’s. Lou Gehrig in 1932 and Pat Seerey in 1948 each hit four home runs in one game. Bob Feller won his 20th game in 1941. And Willie Mays made his big league debut in 1951.
In 1947, 41,660 fans packed every inch of the ballpark to watch Jackie Robinson’s first game in Philadelphia in a doubleheader in which the Phillies swept the Brooklyn Dodgers. Two years later, Phillies batters slugged five home runs in the same inning. Phillies reliever Konstanty made a surprise start in the first game of the 1950 World Series. And the Phillies’ 10-game losing streak near the end of the 1964 season began with Chico Ruiz stealing home in a 1-0 win by the Cincinnati Reds.
The Athletics played their last game at what was by then called Connie Mack Stadium on September 19, 1954 before a scant crowd of 1,715 fans. With fans not realizing that it would be the A’s last game in Philadelphia, the team bowed to the Yankees, 4-2. Only 305,362 fans had come to the stadium to watch the A’s that season.
Over the years, Shibe Park served many other purposes in addition to housing major league baseball. It was the home of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1940 to 1942 and again from 1944 to 1957. In 1948, the Eagles won their first NFL championship as Steve Van Buren’s touchdown led to a 7-0 win over the Chicago Cardinals in a game played in a raging snowstorm at Shibe Park. In another big football game played there in 1926, the Frankford Yellowjackets won the NFL title with a 7-6 victory over the Chicago Bears.
Shibe Park also served as a venue for college and high school baseball and football games, Negro League baseball games, boxing matches, and many other activities, both in and out of sports. Several title fights were held at the ballpark. So were some major jazz concerts as well as two presidential campaign meetings.
The last game played at the old stadium was in 1970 when the Phillies defeated the Montreal Expos, 2-1, in the season finale. The following year, much of the ballpark was destroyed by a fire. The remainder of Connie Mack Stadium was demolished in 1976, and the land was sold to a developer. A number of uses of the site were proposed, but none materialized until 1990 when a church with a 5,100-seat sanctuary was built.
