The accompanying image is of Nicollet Park, in south Minneapolis, where the Minneapolis Millers played from 1896 to 1955. Willie Mays and Ted Williams, among many other big leaguers, played for the Millers—in the case of the Hall of Famers mentioned, not for long before being called up to The Show. The site is a couple of miles straight north from my house. There's a Wells Fargo branch office there now; as you drive by on southbound 35W, you can see the bank's sign just to the west, out the passenger window.
I like the picture because I've always known the ballpark was there but have had trouble visualizing it—not enough real estate, it seemed. In this picture, you're looking south southeast. The street at the top, behind the first base line, is West 31st Street. The north-south arteries forming the east and west boundaries of the property are Blaisdell Avenue (behind third base line) and Nicollet Avenue (behind right field). West Lake Street is in the foreground, behind the left field fence. As you can see, there are stores on the south side of Lake Street that back up on the left field fence—a circumstance that, had I known it, would have made it even harder for me to believe that a ballpark could fit on the property. But it did. From home plate to the right-field foul pole was just 279 feet, which helps explain—in addition to how the ballpark could get shoe-horned in there—the 69 home runs that the rather undistinguished Joe Hauser hit for the Millers during the 1933 season. I've read that the Millers didn't like losing all the baseballs that would get jacked completely off the premises during batting practice, and would trade a returned ball for a game ticket.
The ticket office, shown below as fans walk up on a game day in 1955, stood at the corner of 31st and Nicollet, in the right-field corner. I like the attractive, Spanish-style roof. When you're getting up there in years, you start feeling nostalgic about things you never even experienced. My dad reports seeing Willie Mays in a game at Nicollet Park during the single month he played for the Millers in the 1951 season. He had a double, a homer, a walk, and, most memorably, a great catch in center field, chips flying out of the wooden fence that he climbed before lunging upward to snare the ball, robbing someone of an extra base hit. About a week later, the New York Giants called him up and he made his major league debut on May 25, 1951, in Philadelphia. The Millers moved to the new Metropolitan Stadium, in Bloomington, for the 1956 season, and Nicollet Park was razed after the 1955 season.
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