May 24, 1935: First Night At The Ballpark
Remember that scene in Field of Dreams where Shoeless Joe was surprised by Ray Kinsella turning on the lights in the field and he said “What’s with the lights?”
This day in baseball and technology history, going back to 1935, the first ever major league baseball game played at night happened in Crosley Field (formerly Redland Field) in Cincinnati. Built around the same time as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, the stadium only seated 30 000, the smallest in the league.
Around the park, 632 lights were housed in 8 lighting standards. The lights went bright and 21 422 fans watched as the Cincinnati Reds beat out the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1. The last team to join the rising popularity of night games was the Chicago Cubs - flipping the switch in 1988 on their hometurf (coincidentally also playing against Philadelphia) after a consecutive 5 687 day games at Wrigley Field.
In the previous year (1934), the Reds and the Cubbies also marked another major league bookmark as the Reds became the first major league team to air travel (to Chicago) for a game on June 8th.
Click the photo for the wired.com article.
*May 24, 1935 was not the first ever game to be played under lights. That happened in 1930 during a Western league game in Des Moines IA. This game had a record attendance of 12 000, a whopping 20 times the average spectators.
The Champagne of Blogs: This is why Brandon Phillips is one of the best guys in all of baseball... »
The other day, a young fan on twitter, probably just throwing a shot in the dark and not expecting anything to come from it, suggested to Brandon Phillips that he attend his baseball game that night… here is the series of tweets from Brandon following the kid’s request.
DatDudeBP Brandon…
