A Brief History of Parkway Field

Ballplayers with Parkway Field wall and Eastern Parkway in the background

Parkway Field began as a professional baseball park. In the early 1920s the University decided to consolidate many of its programs on a new main campus at Third and Eastern Parkway. What became known as the Belknap Campus was purchased from the Louisville and Jefferson County Children's Home (better known as the Industrial School of Reform) in January, 1923. To help finance the purchase, the trustees at the same time agreed to sell about eight acres of the thirty-nine acre tract to the "Louisville Base Ball Company." That group needed a new home for the Louisville Colonels, whose Eclipse Park at Seventh and Kentucky had burned down the year before. The new stadium at Parkway Field opened on May 1, 1923, complete with a grandstand that was reported to accommodate 18,000 fans.

Nearly thirty-one years later, on December 31, 1953, the University bought Parkway Field from the "Louisville Baseball Club" and agreed to lease it to the club for ten years. The Colonels stayed at Parkway Field until the 1956 season, when they moved to Fairgrounds Stadium.

Several star major leaguers played at Parkway Field, including Babe Ruth in 1924, 1928 and 1932, and Jackie Robinson in 1946. On June 2, 1924, in an exhibition game that saw the Colonels beat the New York Yankees 7-6, the Babe, according to Bruce Dudley, then sports editor of the Courier-Journal, "socked the gosh-awfullest ball that ever has been croaked in the history of the game in Louisville." Though that seventh-inning blast went foul, "Louisville never can believe that any foul ever has gone higher or farther. For many moments it seemed that the ball would drop on the grain elevators across the road beyond the right field barrier." Then "in the ninth inning everybody stood, seemingly in a farewell salute to a national hero, and Babe Ruth, the hero, merited that mark of homage by crashing the ball over the Louisville Provision Company's sign in right center field." According to a more recent account by Mike Barry of the Louisville Times, the homerun ball landed in the Thomason Oil Company service station, which was on the southeast corner of Brook and Eastern Parkway.

Parkway Field in the early 1950s

Parkway Field also served as a home for the Cardinal Football team from 1952-1954. As a result, football great Johnny Unitas played at Parkway Field, as well.

Parkway Field, 1976-1977 academic year

U of L baseball was played on Parkway Field until 1996. U of L next used Derby City Field and the Old Cardinal Stadium at the Kentucky Fair and Expo Center for baseball games until April 2005 when Patterson Field opened at Third and Central. Parkway Field lives on in Patterson Stadium, however. Green bricks from Parkway Field's left field wall were used in the roof supports, and the new stadium's batter's box contains dirt from the old stadium's infield.

Adapted from Morison, William: "Reflections: Has Parkway Field Always Been Part of U of L?" Inside U of L, June 1, 1982; Cox, Dwayne and William Morison, The University of Louisville (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky: c2000), pp. 67, 133-134; Johnson, Katherine Burger, "Parkway Field," unpublished manuscript, 1998.

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