Just Around The Corner

Just around the corner from Jeff Ruby's Precinct (featured in last week's Heavy Artillery posting "Fat Tuesday, Done Properly") is the Schmidt Recreation Complex.  125 years ago, during the wild and woolly years of National Pastime warfare between the National League, the American Association and the Players League, the city of Cincinnati fielded two major league teams, both then identified as the Cincinnati Reds (today, the AA club is better known as Kelly's Killers after its infamous manager Mike Kelly).  The AA version of the Reds played their home games in a little ballpark in the east end of the city, hard on the banks of the mighty Ohio River, called the East End Park.  This ballpark was featured years ago at the ol' web page in a blog post about Cincinnati's abandoned major league ballparks.  Below is a photo (ripped from the pages of Wikipedia, here) of the East End Park from the turn of the twentieth century.

Today, the area looks likes this (below; in yet another photo absconded from the same Wikipedia page):

What's that old saying?  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  To that point, in my examination of these two photos, I wondered if any of the buildings in the foreground of the first photo are still standing today.  With the able assistance of Google's Street View function, I have determined that some of them have survived.  To wit:

 

 

Here is the link to Google Street View which gives you an up-close look.  If you know anyone (in addition to me, of course) who has an interest in visiting such long-forgotten places, these images give you a better perspective on how and where the old ballpark was situated.

Below is a colorized version of the first photo used for a postcard from that era.  It might give you better detail of the old black-and-white image and of the three structures I've highlighted:

With the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues in full swing, Major League Baseball is also just around the corner.  As is the Kentucky Derby.  My favorite author on the sport, Steve Haskin, has an interesting and informative essay in The Blood-Horse titled "Welcome to the New Kentucky Derby."  He writes of the ways in which horse racing in general and the Kentucky Derby in particular has changed over the past 50 years and explains how this evolution serves as a contributing factor to the longest-ever span of time without a Triple Crown winner.  It isn't a long piece, so don't be intimidated by the webpage's great length; Haskin's column has elicited more than 150 impassioned comments to date.

One thing that isn't just around the corner is the 2015 Breeders' Cup.  If you are curious as to ticket pricing and availability for this year's event, held for the first-ever time at historic and picturesque Keeneland, click here.

Roll the credits!