How It Came to Be

My, how the anniversaries just keep piling up. Thursday marked the 120th birthday of major league baseball as we know it with the advent of the American League. A story in yesterday’s Tribune noted that Charles Comiskey laid the groundwork for getting his St. Paul Minnesota-based team big league status in 1899. Comiskey and the Cubs negotiated an agreement that allowed him to relocate his team to Chicago with the proviso these future White Sox would not play north of 35th Street in Chicago; at the time, the Cubs were based on the West Side. They moved north to the corner of Addison and Clare, taking over the home of the failed Chicago Whales of the Federal League, in 1916. Thus began the North Side-South divide in Chicago baseball that continues to this day. A few miscellaneous notes here, if I may. When the Sox opened Comiskey Park in July of 1910, the surrounding area was more industrial than residential; it was easier to walk to the park than live by it. An aerial photo, taken some time after the outfield was double-decked in 1927 and before lights were installed in 1939, shows ample parking east and west of the ballpark with a city park just to the north. There were Black-occupied homes across 35th Street that, for people in need of an excuse, long fueled talk about Comiskey Park being located in a “bad” neighborhood. But African-Americans tended to be Sox fans, if only because of the relative closeness of Black neighborhoods to the park vs. faraway Wrigley, and they also watched the Chicago American Giants play Negro Leagues’ games there. In other words, the ballpark was one of the few public spaces in Chicago shared by both races. All that parking from early-on made it doubly easy to get to Comiskey. Things changed in the 1960s because of white flight, but not around the park. The neighborhoods of Bridgeport and Armour Square stayed white, but places fans drove from or took the streetcar (and, later, the bus) from didn’t. Once those fans moved, it was a challenge to get them back to watch the Sox, no matter how much parking there was. Now, for Wrigley Field—day baseball may have saved it from the eventual fate of Comiskey Park. Anyone who’s been to a game on the North Side knows there’s little to no parking adjacent to the park or walking distance from it; better to take public transportation. Had P.K. Wrigley followed through on his plans just before the start of WW II to install lights, he likely would have set into motion his ballpark’s demise. After 1945, the demographics around Wrigley changed markedly, not so much by color but class. Those blocks and blocks of two-flats and apartments became what at the time was referred to by the euphemism of “seedy,” not exactly the environment fans wanted to traverse on their way to the bus or “L” after a game. Day baseball, though, didn’t come with the same fears. A certain somebody I know often went to Wrigley Field from her suburban home because her parents weren’t worried about their daughter getting home late, I’m pretty sure my in-laws would’ve felt differently in 1969 or ’70 about games with a 7 PM starting time. All this talk about ballparks makes me want to take my future grandchild to a game. But first I’ll have to explain why there’s only one real ballpark in town.