Parkway Field is the name of a
baseball park
A ballpark, or baseball park, is a type of sports venue where baseball is played. The playing field is divided into two field sections called the infield and the outfield. The infield is an area whose dimensions are rigidly defined in part ba ...
that stood in
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...
on the University of Louisville campus. It was home to
college
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') may be a tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further education institution, or a secondary sc ...
,
minor league
Minor leagues are professional sports leagues which are not regarded as the premier leagues in those sports. Minor league teams tend to play in smaller, less elaborate venues, often competing in smaller cities/markets. This term is used in Nort ...
, and
negro league
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relativel ...
teams, with the longest stints by the
Louisville Colonels
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 th ...
of the
American Association from 1923 into the mid-1950s, and the
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public university, public research university in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. Chartered in 1798 as the Jefferson Seminary, it became in the 19t ...
baseball team for several decades until they abandoned it in 1998 in favor of
Cardinal Stadium. The grandstand that allowed professional baseball to be played at the venue in the first half of the 20th century was torn down in 1961.
Dimensions
In the Louisville ''Courier-Journal'' of August 16, 1936, p. 41, the dimensions were given as follows: home plate to left field ; center field ; right field ; backstop . Later, signs were posted on the fences, stating left field 329, center 507, right 345. The Louisville ''Courier-Journal'' of June 10, 1944, p. 13, reported that the ballpark had been re-surveyed, and that centerfield (whose wall had been moved inward a few years earlier) was "only" from home plate; the foul line distances of 329 and 345 were confirmed.
University of Louisville baseball
Prior to its demolition, Parkway Field had become a homerun haven for
University of Louisville Cardinals head coach Gene Baker's "Over the Wall Gang." The Cardinals led NCAA Division I in homers in 1991 and 1992 while finishing second in 1995. The 1991 team featured six Cardinals who tallied at least 15 homeruns 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.
Remnants
The ballpark site is south of
Eastern Parkway
Eastern Parkway is a major east–west boulevard in the borough (New York City), New York City borough of Brooklyn. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it was built between 1870 and 1874 and has been credited as the world's fir ...
and west of Brook Street, near the university campus. The field itself remains, and is still used for intramural football and soccer at the university. The stadium seating has long since been demolished. In the early 2000s there were still some visible remnants of the ballfield, including the poorly kept diamond, backstop, dugouts and outfield walls. Those have since been removed, leaving just a chain-link fenced, rectangular football/soccer field.
See also
*
Sports in Louisville, Kentucky
References
* ''Ballparks of North America'', by Michael Benson.
External links
Parkway Field remnants
Defunct baseball venues in the United States
Defunct NFL venues
Minor league baseball venues
Defunct Negro league baseball venues
Louisville Cardinals baseball
Louisville Cardinals football
Demolished buildings and structures in Louisville, Kentucky
American football venues in Louisville, Kentucky
Baseball venues in Louisville, Kentucky
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