The Baker Bowl
- David Hegler
- 18 hours ago
- 7 min read
Not all state-of-the-art ballparks are home to the best teams in the game. Although Philadelphia's Baker Bowl was the crown jewel of baseball when it first opened, in time, the cracks began to grow around the stadium as the Phillies remained mired in their own disrepair. This is the story of the Baker Bowl.
A Promising Beginning
Ever since they were established in 1883, the Philadelphia Phillies Base Ball Club had played in a tiny 6,500 seat venue called Recreation Park. Foreseeing how quickly the game was growing, Phillies owner Alfred J. Roach and his partners decided to look elsewhere to build a ballpark that was suitable for the times to come.
They settled on an ugly speck of land on 15th and Broad Street that dangerously brushed against the nearby railroad tracks. The former brickyard was littered with branches from the nearby Cohocksink Creek and a large, smelly pond sat glumly right in the middle of where the Phillies hoped to play.
Undaunted, crews got right to work, dumping more than 120,000 wagon loads of dirt into the seemingly hopeless environment and building on top of the filament. In a flash, the site was transformed from ruin to splendor.
Led by the architectural firm of Deery and Keerl and builder Joseph Bird, a two-tiered brick and wood combo pavilion sprung from the dust. With the main entrance through a massive dome-topped structure being the first attraction, it was as wondrous as the area had once been desolate.
Once fans stepped inside the ballpark and passed the maze of ticket offices and restaurants that adorned the ground floor, they often felt as though they had wandered into a castle by mistake. In that era, corner turrets on either side of the pavilion were quite common for newer ballparks, with each bringing its own unique personality to the game. In this case, these turrets contained toilet rooms with running water on all three levels.
With right-field's 290 feet being larger than Recreation Park's 247, the new ballpark was larger in scale too as it could fit nearly 13,000 spectators. Deep in left-field, an ascending terrace rose as high as five feet along a 40-foot slope as developers had to make do with train tracks being so very close to the ballpark. The ballpark's operators were not too concerned with the spectators that gathered in that make-shift overflow section as the entire ballpark was enclosed in a 20-foot wood and brick wall.
On April 30, 1887, the Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds opened for business. A massive crowd of 18,000 jammed into the ballpark to watch their Phillies beat the New York Giants 15-9. The game could have been even more lopsided but it was called for darkness in the seventh inning.
The city thoroughly loved their new ballpark and expansion on the site must have been considered when disaster struck. On August 6, 1894, the Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds burned to the ground.
National League Park
The fire moved quickly. Starting in the left-center field bleachers, it rampaged across the pavilion. Within half an hour, the ballpark was rubble. To make matters worse, a stiff breeze had carried the flames over to the nearby Omnibus Company stables west of 15th Street. While the horses managed to escape, the stables were ash within minutes.
Bummed that his seven year old ballpark had burned to a crisp but enlivened having seen the attendance numbers, Alfred Reach and his partners wasted no time reconstructing the Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds, forever grateful that it was just the wooden parts that were turned to rubble, not the brick.
As the Phillies played their next 10 home games at the University of Pennsylvania, crews worked around the clock to build temporary stands on the site of the burnt ballpark to finish the year.
Soon after the 1894 season concluded, Reach and his partners hired architect John D. Allen and builder R.C. Ballinger to build a baseball palace.
Unlike the first ballpark, this new one was made of steel, iron and brick with virtually the only wood being that of the support beams. But these were no ordinary beams. Having heard the public outcry time and again of obstructed views, Reach had Ballinger construct an entirely different grandstand.
They rid themselves of the obstructing posts and pioneered a cantilever design that would hardly be seen in any new ballpark construction for at least the next 50 years. Instead of support beams sitting up front, blocking people's views, they placed the beams in the back and at an angle. A total of 15 columns cantilevered the second level of the pavilion.
The main entrance at 15th and Huntingdon Avenue featuring a massive, six-sided three story structure greeted the 20,000 that crammed into the new ballpark on Opening Day, May 2, 1895.
In front of one of the largest crowds in Philadelphia history to watch a ball game, the Phillies lost to the New York Giants 9-4. Before a much smaller crowd of just 4,200 the following day, the Phillies won their first game in their new ballpark, beating the Giants 8-5. The newly opened National League Park looked to have a promising future in the City of Brotherly Love.
In those early days, the crowd grew to love the expansive 408 feet of center field while cheering on some of the greatest outfielders of the day such as Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson, Billy Hamilton, Elmer Flick and Nap Lajoie, each of whose legacy now resides in Cooperstown.
All was going well until disaster struck the ballpark. During a game in 1903, an adoring throng of fans crowded the left field bleacher balcony until it collapsed onto 15th Street 50 feet below. A dozen were killed and another 232 were injured. Amazingly, the Phillies argued that they were not responsible and in fact it was the fans who were guilty. After all, they should have known better than to overcrowd a place so high off the ground.
After a long process of lawsuits and public inquiries, the court agreed with the Phillies. Still it was up to the team to repair the damage done, which they whole-heartily finished before losing too much revenue.
In 1910, a group of investors led by Horace Fogel and including Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss bought the Phillies and their ballpark from Reach. Although Fogel was the face of the operation, he wasn't the money man. Rather, it was Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati and Charles Murphy of Chicago who were the chief financiers.
The Baker Bowl
Three years later, William Baker bought the club and leased the land from the Taft/Murphy group. In 1915, the Phillies made it to the World Series where they faced off against the preeminent dynasty of the day, the Boston Red Sox. They opened the Fall Classic at National League Park where the Phillies beat the Red Sox 3-1 in the opening game behind the reliable arm of Grover Cleveland Alexander.
With a World Series appearance in hand, many felt that the Phillies were right on the cusp of winning it all. Instead, they traded Grover Cleveland Alexander after the 1917 season and from that moment on, it felt like the Phillies had been cursed. They only finished with a winning record once in the next 21 years, losing 700 more games than they won during that dreadful stretch. It was here where the Baker Bowl's ultimate downfall began.
In general, William Bakers was quite frugal and hardly ever reinvested any profits back into his team and his ballpark. Within the next two decades, it would become evident to all just how far he let his ballpark go.
Still, all if his frugality did little to deter the Philadelphia Inquirer from naming National League Park after its owner in July 1923. While initially unofficial, the name caught on in the public eye and from then on the ballpark would be known as the Baker Bowl.
Since William Baker's main source or revenue was through the stadium, he had no problem with the venue being used for the Negro Leagues. The ballpark hosted a total of four Negro League World Series games between 1924 and 1925.
The Baker Bowl was a popular spot for rodeos, religious crusades and boxing matches. In 1905, when it was still known as National League Park, it hosted the first open air boxing match in the city's history, with "Philadelphia" Jack O'Brien defeating Bob Fitzsimmons for the light heavyweight title. While only 6,000 showed up for that match, 35,000 packed the Baker Bowl in 193 when Primo Carnera beat George Godfrey.
Despite all the hustle and bustle, the Baker Bowl saw very little changes in that era. There was no parking, lights or an electronic sound system. Deferring maintenance with the Great Depression looming in the horizon only made things worse. It didn't help matters that Baker never did buy the land from the Murphy estate, choosing to rent the land from the Chicago-based family rather than pay the hefty fees to get out of the now less than ideal area.
At one point, William Baker even had grazing sheep cutting the grass to save on expenses. The usually meager-minded wooly creatures were "fired" when a ram butted Phillies official Billy Shettsline during a game.
On May 14, 1927, the rotting timbers that held the lower pavilion up collapsed due to over exuberance from the small crowd that had gathered. 50 people were injured and one died of a heart attack.
By 1938, the Phillies decided to move to nearby Shibe Park. Their last game at the Baker Bowl on June 30, 1938 was nothing like their first. Just 1,500 scattered around the 20,000 seat venue as the Giant demolished the Phillies 14-1. The Baker Bowl stood for the next 13 years before it was demolished. Today, a historical marker sits next to the Broad Street Garage, Philadelphia School District, commemorating all that was and all that could have been.
The famed sportswriter Red Smith said it best: "Baker Bowl in Philadelphia was a stately pleasure dome when Al Reach built it for his Phillies in 1887, but by the 1930s and '40's it bore a striking resemblance to a rundown men's room."
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