{"id":29961,"date":"2016-04-04T08:50:37","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T13:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=29961"},"modified":"2019-12-21T11:55:41","modified_gmt":"2019-12-21T16:55:41","slug":"opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=29961","title":{"rendered":"Opening Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of Opening Day, I’ve changed my desktop background at the office (which was the Rock of Cashel<\/a> in Ireland) to this image of Swampoodle Grounds, a 19th-century baseball field that, as you can see, was quite close to the Capitol Building, roughly (about a block away) from where Union Station stands now. Here, in a single image, are three of my passions combined — baseball, politics, and history.<\/p>\n

Swampoodle was Washington’s Irish neighborhood, and the ballpark was open for four seasons 1886 to 1889. (My great-grandfather Allyn and his family moved from Washington, DC to Baltimore during that period.) It could hold about 6,000 people, about the capacity of a decent minor league park. (York’s baseball field and Harrisburg’s FNB Field each hold about 6,000.) I know of one other image of Swampoodle Grounds, and baseball scholars believe that Connie Mack, who would be associated with the Philadelphia A’s, is in the photo.<\/p>\n

I don’t know of any images of the grandstand. Ballparks of that era had an interesting feature — pavilion turrets — such as in Boston (South End Grounds<\/a>), Pittsburgh (Exposition Park<\/a>), and Brooklyn (Eastern Park<\/a>). I’m not saying Swampoodle did, but it’s certainly an intriguing possibility.<\/p>\n

For more on Swampoodle Grounds:<\/p>\n

The House History Man<\/a>
\nThe White House Historical Association<\/a><\/p>\n

Opening Day! Play ball!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honor of Opening Day, I’ve changed my desktop background at the office (which was the Rock of Cashel in Ireland) to this image of Swampoodle Grounds, a 19th-century baseball field that, as you can see, was quite close to the Capitol Building, roughly (about a block away) from where Union Station stands now. Here,Continue reading “Opening Day”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4070,4832,4410,4517,704,24],"class_list":["post-29961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball","tag-capitol-building","tag-capitol-park","tag-opening-day","tag-swampoodle-grounds","tag-washington","tag-washington-nationals","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}