Gill Stadium
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Gill Stadium is a sporting stadium located in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Built in 1913 at a cost of more than $30,000, the grandstand for what originally was known as Textile Field is one of the earliest examples of concrete-and-steel stadium construction in the United States outside of major cities.
The Amoskeag Textile Club, whose members belonged to and were funded by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, constructed the grandstand. It was built on the site of Varick Park, a mid-1890s wooden structure which itself occupied the site of a still earlier ballpark, the Beech Street Grounds. Baseball on the site can be traced to at least 1880, when the area east of the Valley Street Cemetery was known as "the Plains."
The Textile Club appears to have constructed the grandstand as part of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company's benevolence programs. Amoskeag, which employed about 17,000 people in a city of 65,000, included among its workforce a large number of immigrants. In the minds of Amoskeag managers, the most troublesome of this group were the most recent arrivals from Greece. Recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were being blamed for the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike in nearby Lawrence, Massachusetts, which resulted in much violence and the involvement of the radical Industrial Workers of the World union. Amoskeag, which was not unionized, wanted no such trouble, particularly in light of the fact that IWW operatives were seen in Manchester during the Lawrence strike. The company hoped to find a way to "Americanize" its workforce, thereby giving workers a stronger connection to the company and to the United States, and to find diversionary activities to keep them from unionizing in their free time. Baseball seemed an ideal solution.
Amoskeag, along with the McElwain Shoe Company and other industries in Manchester, organized the city Manufacturers' League in 1912. The league played at three locations in Manchester, of which Varick Park was the most important. In 1913, the company constructed Textile Field to make the league appear to be more authentically "professional." The field made its debut in July of that year, but the dedication game came in early September, when the World Champion Boston Red Sox—playing its major-league lineup for nearly the entire game—defeated the Manufacturers' League All-Stars, 3-1. A year later, the World Champion Philadelphia Athletics defeated the All-Stars, 7-1. The score and the "burlesque" act put on by the Athletics in the final inning caused Amoskeag to reconsider its professionalization activities. After briefly turning the field over to the short-lived Manchester Textiles of the New England League, the field became the sole domain of the city's manufacturers and schools until 1926. Ultimately, Amoskeag's experiment failed, and in 1922 Amoskeag employees unionized and conducted a nine-month strike which paralyzed the company and helped lead to its demise during the Great Depression.
Textile Field was purchased by the City of Manchester in 1927 and named Athletic Field. The name was changed to Gill Stadium in 1967, after former Parks and Recreation Director Ignace J. Gill.
Over the years, Gill Stadium has served as the home field for numerous high school and American Legion ballclubs. The stadium served as host for the American Legion World Series on five occasions.
Gill Stadium has also hosted professional baseball. The Manchester Blue Sox played at Athletic Field, as it was then known, from 1926-1930, winning multiple championships. The Manchester Giants of the New England League called the stadium home in 1946 and 1947, and the Manchester Yankees played there in 1948 and part of the 1949 season. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an Eastern League team, also called the Yankees played there. Additionally, the Eastern League's Nashua Angels played a game at Gill Stadium in 1983.
Most recently, Gill Stadium was the home of the Eastern League's New Hampshire Fisher Cats. The AA affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays captured the 2004 EL title while playing at Gill. In 2005, the Fisher Cats moved to the new Merchantsauto.com Stadium on the banks of the Merrimack River near downtown Manchester.
Gill Stadium continues to serve as the home of numerous amateur teams in Manchester's thriving baseball community.
It also serves as the field for Manchester's annual football thanksgiving football tournament, the turkey bowl. It pits all three school against one another and gives a huge amount of bragging rights to the winning school.
