Almost a Century of Baseball

Monument to Sportsman’s Park outside the Boys & Girls Club, Sep-2021.

Much of the site is now taken up by a youth football field.

This Little League-dimension ball field sits one block away.

• Location: Grand Avenue (now Grand Boulevard) at Dodier Street, St. Louis, Mo. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1867 as Grand Avenue Ball Grounds (stadiums built 1881, 1902, 1909)
• Additional names: Sportsman’s Park (1881), Busch Stadium (1953)
• Demolished: 1966
• Home teams: St. Louis Brown Stockings, National Association (1875), National League (1876-77), American Association (1882-92); St. Louis Browns, American League (1902-53); St. Louis Cardinals, National League (some games in 1901, 1920-66); St. Louis All Stars (1923), Gunners (1924), Cardinals (1960-65), National Football League

After a hiatus of nearly a decade, major league ball returned to the site in 1902, when, in one of the many moves instigated by American League president Ban Johnson to relocate clubs to challenge existing National League entities, the Milwaukee Brewers relocated to St. Louis, becoming the Browns, and built a new structure on the opposite corner, thus having the field face just east of south. A new steel grandstand was built at the corner of Dodier Street and Spring Avenue in 1909, and with minimal enhancements over the years, this orientation, facing just north of east, was the ultimate relocation.

The Cardinals, who had played several blocks away on Natural Bridge Avenue for about thirty years, became tenants of the Browns during the 1920 season and, just before the Browns relocated to Baltimore for the 1954 season, took over possession of Sportsman’s Park under the overall ownership of August Busch. The commissioner of baseball blocked a renaming of the facility to “Budweiser Stadium”, but the park officially became Busch Stadium that year – a name that also appeared on the facilities that followed for the Cardinals, in 1966 and 2006.

Sportsman’s Park saw its last baseball game in the spring of 1966, with the Cardinals moving downtown before a quarter of the season had been played. The deteriorating stadium structure was torn down before the year was out, and a Boys & Girls Club now occupies the block. A Little League-sized ball field named Sportsman’s Park sits one block farther northwest on Dodier Street, at the corner of Hyams Place.