Addie Joss Day

Here are some photos I saw up for auction on the internet. They're from the first all star game, a benefit game for the widow of Addie Joss. The old wooden version of League Park is clearly seen in the background.

League Park

Here are two photos from the Cleveland Public Library of early League Park. Some great detail here.

League Park

These are blueprints for the (then) planned demolition of League Park. I obtained a copy of them from the Parks department of Cleveland . You can see where the wall was capped off. That current wall is still standing, along with the ticket office. By the way, these are the only blueprints that feature the ticket office, as when Osborne engineered the brick and steel version of the park in 1910, the office was already standing and wasn't included in those drawings.

League Park

Phew, it's been a while since the last post. My apologies. I'll try to do better. A new initiative was announced last week to save what exists at League Park at Cleveland and expand upon what's there. Here's the full story at the cleveland.com's blog . Some people have linked to the cleveland.com article that doesn't have any images. The blog entry that's linked here includes this image. Will it happen? Who knows. There have been proposals before for townhouses associated with the site and a museum. One thing's for sure... League Park deserves better than what's been happening to it for the last ten years (although it did get a paint job that stripped it of the previous Pepto Bismol pink).

Unfortunately, the city of Cleveland doesn't have a lot of money to throw around to such projects. Forty three per cent of the seniors in its school system couldn't pass the state graduation exam and have to return to High School next year! However, when you hear about how poor Cleveland is, remember that its boundaries are fixed and when the population shifts and moves outward, those people are gone from the tax rolls and aren't counted in the city's population. Whereas a city such as Columbus, Ohio keeps on annexing the surrounding land year after year, giving a skewed picture as to how affluent the citizens are in each of the cities.