A little on-line searching and a trip down memory lane:
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100 years ago today, Forbes was baseball's first true palace
ALAN ROBINSON AP Sports Writer
Roberto Clemente’s first hit and Babe Ruth’s parting shot occurred within the confines of the most spacious ballpark any major league baseball team called home.
So did Bill Mazeroski’s 1960 World Series Game 7 homer, one so improbable, so magical that it seems certain to live in baseball’s memory bank as long as the sport exists.
The first fireworks night and last tripleheader? Chuck Noll’s first home game as the Steelers’ coach? The first live broadcasts of major league baseball and college football? Forbes Field was home to all of that and much more during 61 eventful years that helped launch not one but, eventually, two ballpark-building construction binges.
Baseball’s modern ballpark era was ushered in 100 years ago Tuesday when Forbes Field was christened in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. Today, its treasures live on in a modern-day gem named PNC Park that copies much of Forbes’ coziness, charm and quirkiness.
Named for British Gen. John Forbes, who forces captured Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War in the mid-18th century, it was the National League’s first modern concrete-and-steel park, a massive-for-its-era structure that towered above a picturesque city park and was so innovative that many of its touches can still be found in ballparks from coast to coast.
While the Philadelphia Athletics’ Shibe Park (later, Connie Mack Stadium) predated Forbes by two months, nothing in baseball’s relatively brief history to that time rivaled the two-tiered palace that Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss dedicated before a Cubs-Pirates game on June 30, 1909.
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