Crosley Field (Images of Baseball)

Redland Field opened in 1912 and hosted its first World Series seven years later. It was renamed Crosley Field in 1934 and the club made history that year by becoming the first major league team to use an airplane to travel (from Cincinnati to Chicago). The first night game in major league history was played in Crosley Field on May 24, 1935, and it was three days later that Babe Ruth played under the shadows of the light towers on his last road trip as an active player. Crosley Field was the site of the 1938 All-Star Game and the 1939 and 1940 World Series. In the late 1950s, Reds' stars Ted Kluszewski, Gus Bell, Wally Post, Jim Greengrass and Smokey Burgess all played at Crosley Field. The Reds won 93 games in 1961, when Crosley Field saw its last World Series. The Reds played their final game in Crosley Field on June 24, 1970, before a near capacity 28,027 paying fans, and finished their pennant-winning season in Riverfront Stadium as the old ballpark faded into history.

Irwin J. Cohen is a baseball historian and member of the Society for American Baseball Research. He has assembled a wonderful collection of images from Crosley Field, many seen here for the first time. He is the author of two other books in Arcadia's Images of Baseball series, Tiger Stadium and Comiskey Park.