Baseball
The first baseball game played on the new field was in May 1922 between Auburn University and Vanderbilt University. Shortly after its completion in 1922 the Philadelphia Athletics decided to move their spring training operations from Eagle Pass, Texas to Montgomery, Alabama. They used the facility for their 1923 and 1924 spring training and exhibition games before moving to a newer stadium in Fort Myers, Florida.
After the departure of the Philadelphia Athletics spring training, Minor league baseball's newly formed Southeastern League placed a team in Montgomery. They became known as the Montgomery Lions. The Lions played in Cramton Bowl from 1927 to 1930. There was no team from 1931 to 1936 due to problems within the Southeastern League. The team returned for the 1937 season as the Montgomery Bombers and garnered their first major league baseball affiliation with the Cleveland Indians. The Indians pulled out for the 1938 season and were replaced by the Philadelphia Phillies. After one season the Phillies dropped their affiliation, the team became a co-op franchise and were renamed the Montgomery Rebels. In 1943, the Rebels would disband due to World War II. On July 11 of that year, the Chattanooga Lookouts moved their Washington Senators farm club from Chattanooga's Engel Stadium to Cramton Bowl to play the out the rest of the season. The Rebels returned in 1946 through 1949 before moving to the newly constructed Paterson Field located just across the street.
Read more about this topic: Cramton Bowl
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“When Dad can’t get the diaper on straight, we laugh at him as though he were trying to walk around in high-heel shoes. Do we ever assist him by pointing out that all you have to do is lay out the diaper like a baseball diamond, put the kid’s butt on the pitcher’s mound, bring home plate up, then fasten the tapes at first and third base?”
—Michael K. Meyerhoff (20th century)
“How, in one short century, has this ersatz sport so strangled the consciousness of the country in the grip of its flabby tentacles that the mention of women’s baseball gets no reaction other than blank amazement?”
—Darlene Mehrer, As quoted in Women in Baseball. Ch. 6, by Gai Ingham Berlage (1994)