Historical Markers
Baker Bowl/National League Park Historical Marker
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Baker Bowl/National League Park

Philadelphia and its Countryside/Lehigh Valley


Marker Location:
Broad Street and Lehigh Ave

Dedication Date:
August 16, 2000

Behind the Marker

Fans line up outside the gates of the Baker Bowl.
Outside Baker Bowl
By 1886, the Phillies were drawing fans so well that owner and president markerAl Reach decided that Recreation Park -designed to seat only 6,500 people - was inadequate for the team's needs. When the new Philadelphia Base Ball Park opened in 1887, it accommodated 12,500 fans, and featured such ball park construction innovations as pavilion seating for customers and brick exterior walls instead of wood. Located at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue, the park cost what at that time was an impressive $101,000 to build.

The park's location also seemed ideal. Situated in a residential area just north of the commercial center of Philadelphia, fans could reach the ball park by trolley and rail lines. Its brick exterior seemed to blend in with the community, and an enormous crowd of 20,000 fans, almost half women, turned out for Opening Day festivities. To mark the occasion, the Phillies and the Giants paraded up Broad Street in open carriages, and a military band played before the first pitch. Then, the first nine Phillies hit safely, all scored, and the home team was in line for a 19-10 victory. For the moment, the Phillies and their new ballpark were hot.

Jimmy Foxx and Chuck Klein standing side by side, leaning on bats.
Jimmy Foxx and Chuck Klein
But not as hot as it would literally become on the morning of August 6, 1894. While the team was practicing, fire broke out in the grandstand and raced through the park, burning the wooden structure right to the ground, and leaving nothing standing but the brick exterior walls. No one was seriously injured, but the first incarnation of Philadelphia Base Ball Park was gone.

Undeterred, Reach built a new, state-of-the-art baseball stadium that a number of historians have recognized as the first of the modern ballparks. Officially called National League Park, the new structure seated 18,800 people and was the wonder of the baseball world when it opened in 1895. Utilizing new materials and technology, the stadium was a marvel of steel and brick, and its cantilevered pavilion was the first of its kind ever built.

Built on an oddly shaped parcel of land, the park also had unusual dimensions. Left field was a respectable 341 feet from home plate, and dead center was a healthy 408 feet. The right field wall, however, was only 280 feet from home plate, which made the ballpark a paradise for left-handed batters. This cozy feature also led to the ballpark's description as a "cigar box" and "band box." The Phillies' batsmen, whose hitting skills seemed far more honed in their own park than on the road, held a distinct home-field advantage for another reason, too. One of the park's most clever features was an underground wire that telegraphed catcher's pitch calls from the Phillies' outfield clubhouse to their third base coach, who then relayed what pitch was coming to hitters. The ruse was uncovered - and stopped - in 1898.

Grover Cleveland Alexander
Grover Cleveland Alexander
In 1903, tragedy struck again at the stadium when an overhanging balcony collapsed, killing twelve and injuring more than 230. And another cloud named William F. Baker hung on the horizon. Haughty and imperious, the former New York City police commissioner became the Phillies' president in 1913. During his seventeen years at the helm, the Phillies dropped from their position as a consistently competitive club to become a doormat of the National League. Never a baseball man, Baker believed the team should pay for itself. To accomplish this, he traded stars for lesser players and large sums of cash, incurring the wrath of Phillies' fans. Baker also allowed the ballpark to deteriorate badly. And at the same time, he renamed the park in his honor and called it the "Baker Bowl."

The Phillies won their only Baker Bowl pennant in 1915, then played the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Though the Phillies lost the Fall Classic, the series did have its memorable moments. In that first game, a young Babe Ruth made his first World Series appearance, grounding out as a ninth inning pinch hitter for the Red Sox (Ruth would appear often in future World Series contests, but in the uniform of the New York Yankees). Woodrow Wilson became the first sitting U.S. president to see a World Series in person when he attended the second game at Baker Bowl. He even threw out the ceremonial first ball.

But this shining moment did not last long. Both the team and the ball park deteriorated precipitously on Baker's penny-pinching watch, which lasted until his death in 1930. Bad teams meant low attendance, and low attendance led to red ink. To meet expenses without spending any of his own money, Baker sold off the Phillies' best players, including two future Hall of Famers. Baker sold Grover Cleveland Alexander to the Chicago Cubs for $60,000, and sent Dave Bancroft packing to the New York Giants for $100,000. To save a little money, Baker had his groundskeeper maintain two ewes and a ram to keep the grass down.

Baker's disastrous ownership of the team was measured in ways besides the team's poor standings. During a game in 1927, the stands behind first base collapsed when people crowded under the grandstand's pavilion roof during a rainstorm; killing one and injuring fifty. The city coroner deemed Baker Bowl "the worst constructed place I ever saw," and ordered it closed for inspection. The press corps dubbed Baker Bowl the "Toilet Bowl," and the Phillies referred to it sarcastically as "Baker's Bowels." Time and technology had clearly passed it by.

Still, out on the diamond, some memorable baseball history was carved at the Baker Bowl. Ed Delahanty, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Chuck Klein earned most of their Hall of Fame credentials while playing with the Phillies at Baker Bowl. markerHonus Wagner notched his 3,000th hit here in 1914, the first player of the twentieth century to do so. In 1935, Babe Ruth stepped up to the plate here and took the final at-bat of his brilliant career. And in a moment that perfectly melded the park's hitter-friendly nature with its poorly tended infrastructure, Klein once powered a drive right through the rusted right field fence.

Photograph of the First Colored World Series at Baker Bowl 1924
First Colored World Series at Baker Bowl, 1924.
In 1923, an event occurred at Baker Bowl that had far-reaching implications for baseball fans. It began when an eleven-year-old boy caught a foul ball in the stands during a game. In those days, a ball club could insist that a foul ball be returned so that it could continue to be used in play, and the Phillies was one of those clubs. So when the boy refused to part with his prized possession, the team had him arrested for larceny and hauled to jail for the night. The next day, a judge dismissed the charge, stating that it was the "natural impulse" of fans to keep foul balls as souvenirs. The public uproar created by the incident quickly led to a ruling from the baseball commissioner's officer that, henceforth, any fan who caught a foul ball in the stands would be allowed to keep the ball.

From its beginnings, Baker Bowl was home to more than just the Phillies and baseball. When bicycle racing was all the rage, Reach built a bicycle track around the field. Over time, religious crusades erected tabernacles here, and both circuses and boxing promoters set up their rings. The Eagles used the site for football, and so did area high schools and colleges. When the Phillies were out of town during baseball season, the Hilldale Daisies of the Negro League rented the park from the early 1920s through the 1930s. Between 1924-1926, Negro League World Series games were played here. Players from high school baseball teams, the American Legion, and fire fighter and police leagues also used the Baker Bowl.

Despite its many problems, Baker Bowl was always an intimate venue for a ball game. As former Phillies' pitcher Bucky Walters recalled, "We could sit in the dugout and smell the peanuts in the stands." Unfortunately, they could also smell the decay. Columnist Red Smith called the Bowl "a cobwebby house of horrors." He was, perhaps, being kind.

In 1938, after a loss to the Giants, the last-place Phillies dusted themselves off and left Baker Bowl for markerShibe Park, which they shared with markerConnie Mack and his A's. The Depression and losing teams had conspired to leave both of Philadelphia's major league ball clubs financially reeling. By sharing one ball park, they reasoned, they could at least cut down on costs.

For a while, Baker Bowl had a new life as a skating rink, but it was also victimized by continued neglect and three more fires. The once great stadium, with a short right-field wall every hitter dreamed of facing, was finally torn down in 1950.
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