RICHMOND, Va. -- It can be daunting to write about baseball’s Negro Leagues. Photos and news accounts are scarce, are records and statistics. Most of the evidence is anecdotal.
In the case of Pittsburgh’s Greenlee Field, however, many of the facts are concrete, and impressive.
The park was built by businessman Gus Greenlee, owner of the Crawford Grill nightclub and the Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team, to alleviate the hassle of having to rent other facilities for games, and to address the insult of his players not being allowed to use the clubhouse and facilities such as Forbes Field.
Greenlee Field hosted a team with five eventual Hall of Famers in 1935, among the best ever assembled in the Negro Leagues. Lights were installed in September of 1932 and the Crawfords played night games there years before the Pirates began doing the same at Forbes, a decision necessitated by sizzling summer temperatures and lack of shade in the grandstand.
Then, in less than a decade, it was gone, along with the Crawfords themselves, the latter sold by Greenlee and moved to Toledo, Ohio, and the former demolished by the city to build the Bedford Dwellings public housing project.
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
For prints and books, visit my site here!
