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| From Baseball's Canadian-American League by David Pietrusza: The Colonels played their first year in West Rome’s League Park, formerly Murray’s Park. The structure had served’industrial league teams and needed a lot of fixing up to raise it to minimal standards. Additional fill was added to the outfield. Management installed a cinder warning track, a grandstand roof, a new scoreboard and concession stand, and additional bleachers. A high wire fence was erected in right to cut down on homers. The outside of the fence was painted, and a sign, “League Park, Fort of the Rome Colonels,” was hoisted. Despite these improvements (Hal White terms it “an old, rundown place near the railroad tracks”), in 1938 the new management built Colonels Park on Black River Boulevard and Pine Street for $15,000. Closer to downtown, it featured all sorts of plusses such as 80 box seats, a press box, dressing rooms, showers, and public restrooms. It seated 2,500, and would boast “an imposing front entrance with two main gates and aisles. The ticket office and concession booth will be set in the fence which will be decorated with lattice work and painted. Shrubbery will be planted near the fence to increase the general attractiveness.” Interest ran high. An estimated 10,000 Romans came to view construction, but the new park wasn’t ready for Opening Day, and the site was ironically moved from Rome to Carthage. That proved no solution, either, as the next two contests were called due to bitter cold. “It had a skin diamond, hard as a rock, clay,” recalls Cornwall’s Joe Gunn. “Boy, was that hard. Just like artificial turf today.” “It was a hitter’s park,” contends Blue Jays and Colonels hurler Lynn Lovenguth—”short left, short right. I think I hit three or four homers there myself.” “I loved Rome, that was my favorite park,” adds 1947 Oneonta backstop Steve Salata. “It was built like Boston, okay, but if you were a right-center field hitter, it was a piece of cake, because that was the shortest park.... You did everything you could to keep the ball away from a left¬hand hitter who could pull it.” But in his eyes the park had one drawback: “The lights were terrible. They were so low, if the ball went over them it was an adventure to go and get it.” Night ball was not played there until August 1941, when a portable system was installed for five contests. Attendance averaged 1,581, and a fixed system was installed the following year. Rumors of the park’s sale had preceded the league’s demise, and it was torn down in 1952 to make way for a housing tract. The Rome Sentinel gave a sorry report of its end: The developer built a home for himself in what was left field. Also on the site is a senior citizens center and an armory. A plaque from the park honoring three Colonels who died in the World War was moved to a local veterans’ post. |
| Colonels Park Rome, New York |
| Where outfielders once roamed, smooth green turf is now overgrown with high patches of weeds and marked by low depressions filled with water. The infield ... no longer presents its well-groomed appearance. Tire tracks from vehicles moving around inside the fences to remove the lights have made large grooves in the clay loam surface. Underground conduit pipe, running from the south end of the grand¬stand to the scoreboard, has been dug up. Fixtures in the concession stand have been ripped out with no thought given to possible restoration. Doors to the rest rooms have been taken off and the floors in the players’ showers have been pulled up. The overall scene presents concrete evidence that professional baseball is through in Rome.... |