There are few stadium in American sports as iconic as the Polo Grounds. The Grounds played host to the New York Giants (both of them), the Yankees, Mets, Jets, and dozens of other teams of varying importances and sports. In fact, the oldest know photograph of the field is of a memorial day football game between Yale and Princeton in 1882. There would not be much more time for more pictures. During an 1889 city-wide revamping, it is said that city workers "[showed] up suddenly one day and began cutting through the fence at the appropriate point for the new street." Despite public protest (the team had a large following even then) the stadium, which was, in fact, made for polo, was destroyed. The tenant ball club found a new site for a park very close to its present location (one Babe Ruth home run away, but I'll get to that later) and set about building a park that retained its original name, now called Polo Grounds II. This stretch of time was not particularly remarkable except for two things; the land was rented from the Coogan family (as in Coogan's Bluff) and the team was successful despite a stretch in which it did not really have a home ballpark. Shortly thereafter (1890) there was a dispute between players and the National League owners and many of the players left to form the so-called Player's League. Some Giants players moved (to their present location) to what was called Brotherhood Park and took the Giants name with them, while some stayed and continued to play in the National League. For an entire year, there were two Giants teams that were so geographically close that upper-level fans in one stadium could see the action in the other. The Players League went the way of the XFL and the NL team moved into Brotherhood park. The vacated Polo Grounds II then became "Manhattan Field" for its last few uneventful decades. Brotherhood Park's name was changed to… you guessed it. Thus was born yet another incarnation of the park, this time Polo Grounds III. This was on the very same location as the final version, and had many of the characteristics that we associate with the Polo Grounds of the 50's.
I was in New York for the week for winter break, and decided that I have to go see the Polo Grounds themselves. The historical yard (version 4) was torn down in 1963, of course, but this did not deter me from going to check out the area. At 155th street, the former location is pretty much as far north as you can go without leaving Manhattan and far away from any present-day Manhattan landmark except maybe the Harlem River. I woke up at noon one day and ventured off into the city without a plan. Impulsively, I hopped on a green line train- I don't remember the specific train route- and disembarked at the last stop in Manhattan, at 125th street. I began to explore the area. 125th is near the heart of Harlem and it is filled with apartment buildings, fast food restaurants, and cheap stores. People were everywhere, sitting on all the steps in front of buildings and flooding the sidewalks. I spotted someone wearing a Giants cap, but he was asleep, in a wheelchair, and looked homeless. As I continued eastward, I got a phone call and had to abort the mission, returning downtown on the same train. Resolving to go back, I took care of what I had to do and this time took another train that would take me to 125th, but further west and closer to the site. I took a city bus up to 148th, which would leave me about 15 blocks away. I began walking up a street lined with small apartment blocks and industrial shops and turned to follow a wide road that eventually became a bridge over the Harlem River. I passed a large complex of apartment buildings that looked a lot like the x-shaped brick towers I had seen in pictures at the Polo Grounds, but ascertained that they were not the ones I was looking for. Approaching the river, and seeing "The House That Steinbrenner Built" it struck me how close Yankee Stadium was to the Polo Grounds. I knew that in actuality there was very little to be gained by visiting the site of the ballpark and had been hoping that I would learn one or two things that I couldn't without physically being there. This realization was just the sort of this I was hoping for. The distance between the two stadiums was probably less that a mile. Another such realization is that the park was just like 3rd and King- on the water. The Harlem river runs just past center field.
In 1911, Polo Grounds III burned to the ground, leaving only the metal uprights and piles of ash. The cause of the fire that consumed the 21-year old stadium has never been discovered, but, at any rate, another New York based baseball team named the Highlanders let the Giants share their field. So the Giants packed up their bats and moved to Hilltop park until the 34,000 seat Polo Grounds IV was completed. It was only the second concrete-and-steel stadium in the National League, and had an unusual horseshoe shaped field short to the sides and a center field wall 483 from home plate. In 1913, the tables were turned and the Highlanders moved in to the Grounds as well. As their name was no longer relevant after their move from Hilltop Park, the Highlanders changed their name. And so the Yankees came into existence. In 1920, Babe Ruth was traded to the pinstripes from Boston and so then called 155th street his home ballpark. Ruth's first home run as a Yankee allegedly landed in the previously-mentioned and then-vacant Manhattan Field, aka Polo Grounds II. I just love this fact- Babe Ruth hit such a long homer that it landed in more or less the same park except two generations previous. The distinct time-travel science-fiction note is very fitting with Ruth's mythical demigod legacy, I think. He didn't have the chance to hit many more (a relative term, to be sure) out of Coogan's Bluff. The two teams coexisted for a while, but in 1922 John McGraw, no longer feeling magnanimous, sent the Yanks and their star outfielder packing.
I finally approached the bridge and had to double back and cross the street in the direction of a mechanic's shop on a wedge-shaped street corner. I looked up and, with a perhaps overdone sense of wonder considering that I was looking at public housing buildings, realized that I was staring at the Polo Grounds Towers. The four buildings are massive and thirty stories high, and I still had a ways to go to get there. I passed the mechanic down a narrowish road that ran for two blocks until it ended abruptly at a dirty-ish hill, with what looked like an old hospital above. It was getting dark and I was eager to quicken my pace, and was not really concentrating on my surroundings. It was only just before I got there, that it occurred to me that I was looking at Coogan's Bluff. The Bluff was small and dirty, although not so insignificant as to cause wonder as to why it deserved a name. I am not really good at judging heights, but the hill towered over the three and four-story buildings across from it. It was covered with trees and dark rocks and dirt and copious amounts of garbage and dark dead leaves. To my right, an overpass of white-painted metal stood. Past that, the towers and their parking lot stood, waiting for the impeding sunset.
In the old days, the sun would have set over a large Chesterfield Cigaret advertisement over the center field wall of the Polo Grounds that supposedly puffed real smoke into the air. The ad was set over a curious nook in the centerfield wall, maybe 50 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The playing area was more or less shaped like a horseshoe, 280 and 258 feet down the left and right field lines, respectively, and a booming 450 (approximate) feet to most of the outfield wall. The very back of the indented area was at 483 and was made up of windows that gave a limited view into the clubhouses. Over a sign marking the distance from home plate and a column supporting the overhanging clubhouses, a plaque remembers Eddie Grant, a Giants player killed in World War One (the plaque was later lost and recreated in AT&T Park). The clubhouses are raised and under the windows the playing area goes another few feet. Two flights of stairs lead up to each of the clubhouse doors, in Game 2 of the 1936 World Series Joe DiMaggio caught a long fly ball and ended up on the steps. These same stairs would have been in Willie May's line of sight, just to his left, when he made the legendary catch in the 8th inning of the first game of the 1954 World Series. No player ever hit the clubhouse, and only five players ever hit a ball into the center field stands since the remodeling of the park. It was just as well that no baseball ever reached the clubhouse window. Rumor has it that a Giants coach, Herman Franks, would sit at the clubhouse windows with a telescope and steal signs. According to his 2009 obituary in the New York Times, "Franks was said to have had an electrician alongside him activate a buzzer in the Giants’ bullpen in right-center field, one buzz for a fastball and two for a curveball. Sal Yvars, a reserve catcher in the bullpen, would listen for the buzzes. If Yvars held on to a baseball, the Giants batter glancing at him knew a fastball was coming. If Yvars tossed a ball in the air, it meant a curve could be expected." The section of center field was iconic and an unmistakable symbol of the Polo Grounds and the Giants. It would have been great if the Giants had tried to recreate this, even subtly, in San Francisco. If part of the center field fence was just a few feet indented from the rest of the wall (the rest could be brought in by 2 feet), if the plaque for Eddie Grant still stood there, if the Giants installed an old facade in the area above center field that currently has nothing, the Giants could have made AT&T more beautiful and interesting and saluted their past. There is still time for some minor remodeling.
Walking to the opening of the huge parking lot, I noticed a long stairway dug into the side of the hill. It had been part of the stadium complex and, unlike the stairs in the outfield, had survived into the new millennium. It was the historic John T. Brush stairway, which had been used by untold thousands of patrons on their way to catch ballgames at the Grounds. The several sports teams that made up its still-in-business former tenants, including the Giants (yes, both), have pitched in to help preserve and restore the dilapidated stairs. According to a recent New York Times article, which itself sites a "Times article from July 9, 1913, retrieved by the Parks Department, says that on that day the baseball club would be formally presenting the 'John T. Brush Stairway' to the city. The Giants’ team president, H. N. Hempstead, was to present the gift to the city parks commissioner, Charles B. Stover, to honor Mr. Brush, the Giants owner who had died in 1912." I crossed the mall-sized parking lot and passed a few people who did not seem to notice me. The four buildings lie within a complex that will be marginally familiar to someone who has played the video game "Grand Theft Auto IV", which is based around a fictional New York and has levels near the fictional towers. Between the bases of the buildings there is a confusing maze of walkways, fenced-off grass zones, and small concrete open areas.
More or less since the Second World War, the Polo Grounds were in decline. The stadium was horribly maintained, the neighborhood had once boasted the "darling of the jet-set" was destitute, and the Giants teams were awful. Ticket sales and fan following were abysmal, not just by premier-franchise-that-is-in-New-York standards but by any measurement. We all know the story, and the Giants and Dodgers moved west. The grounds were empty for three years, until the newly-formed Mets and NY Titans (soon to be NY Jets) moved in. This was only temporary, as the stadium was extremely undesirable, and the city decided to tear it down and replace it with public housing in 1961. The Polo Grounds were demolished in 1964 by workers in Giants jerseys and the very same wrecking ball that destroyed Ebbets Field in 1960. The wrecking ball was painted like a baseball.
The end of my mission was to find a plaque that marked the approximate spot of home plate. I asked a UPS driver out in front of the first building if he knew of any plaque, and he didn't, but he did confirm that the stairs I had seen were the famous ones. I started off, moving around and exploring the grounds. I tried several doors, retraced my steps a few times and wondered where everyone was. The sun was just about to come down, and it seemed like there was nobody around. I saw an old man sitting on a chair outside. I asked him, trying not to sound to interested, lest he think me a stupid eager tourist that had come without realizing that the field had become a slum. He answered affirmatively, he knew where the plaque was, and pointed me around the corner. I walked over, and there it was. It was bigger than I thought, on the side of a building in a nondescript location. It read:
POLO GROUNDS
APPROXIMATE LOCATION
OF HOME PLATE
HOME OF THE NEW YORK GIANTS
NATIONAL BASEBALL LEAUGE
1890 - 1957
WORLD CHAMPIONS
1904 1905 1921 1922 1933 1954
THE GIANTS SHARED THIS FIELD
WITH THE NEW YORK
YANKEES
1915-1922
THE NEW YORK METS PLATED HERE
1962-1965
I resisted the urge to add "2010" to the 8th line and took a picture, including one with my hand on the writing to prove I was there. I took off the way I had came. The UPS man was still there and asked me if I found it. I told him I had, and left through the parking lot. I ascended the famous steps, and came out on top of Coogan's Bluff. I crossed the street was walked atop the bluff, victoriously sending a few people pictures. The hill was just as dirty and unattractive from above. I looked back at top of the brick towers. I imagined all the people that had been right where I was, taking in a game down below. Watching Babe Ruth hit a home run into Polo Grounds II from Polo Grounds IV. Watching Willie Mays catch a fly ball facing away from home plate and fire in to keep the runner from tagging up. The view must have been fantastic. The poorest corner of Manhattan stretched out below, as far as I could see.
