Recreation Park (Pittsburgh)

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Recreation Park was a baseball park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where from 1884 to 1890 it served as the home field for the fledgling professional baseball team later known as the Pittsburgh Pirates. It also hosted early football games of the Western University of Pennsylvania, now known as the University of Pittsburgh from 1889 to 1924.

The ballpark site was a five-sided property bounded by Grant (later Galveston) Avenue, North Avenue, Allegheny Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue and the Fort Wayne railroad tracks in Allegheny City, which since 1907 is a part of the city of Pittsburgh.

The site had first been used for professional baseball in 1876, by the Allegheny entry in the International Association, a minor league that paralleled the National League in the latter's inaugural year.

The Allegheny club of the American Association transferred here from the first incarnation of Exposition Park, starting in 1884 (the park was also home to the short-lived Pittsburgh Stogies. Flooding had been a problem at Expo, and this new park was sufficiently uphill to stay dry.

The club joined the National League in 1887 and continued to play here through 1890, after which they moved back to a refurbished Expo Park. In 1890 the club also changed its name from "Allegheny" to "Pittsburg", in the spelling of the day. During the 1890-1891 off-season they were tagged as "Pirates" after allegedly "pirating" second baseman Louis Bierbauer away from the Philadelphia Athletics American Association team during the Players' League settlement process. The nickname stuck and eventually became official.

After the Pirates abandoned Recreation Park, it was used for other sports such as football, and also bicycle racing which was a national craze during the 1890s. Part of the site eventually became the home of the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

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[edit] Reference

Lowry, Philip J. (1992). Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of All 271 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present. Reading: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-56777-6.