Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-09-26
PARK WILL
SEE WIDE VARIETY
OUTDOOR SPORTS
Owners of Plant Lay Plans to
Have Other Income Sources
From Investment.
By [. E.

Although the Yankee colonies. Rup-
pert and Huston. have announced
plans for realizing return on the NAM
moth new baseball plant now being
erected in the Bronx from other
sources than baseball, Squire Ebbets
of Brooklyn remains the only big
league club owner who makes his ball
park work the year round.
Winter sports, at least of the in
door variety, are not feasible for a
baseball field, as no way has yet been
found to put n dome over it to keep
out Jack Frost. But Ebbets conceived
the idea during the world war OF
equipping the waste domain beneath
the bleachers and part of the grand
stand for storage purposes, OF which
there then was a great shortage. From
that it was an easy step to convert the
space into cold storage rooms. which
require no artificial cooling apparatus
during the mid-winter months. There
is nothing that absorbs more cold OF
holds il longer than a concrete grand
stand.
Outside Sports Are Help
The majority of the major league
club owners have found it necessary to
cut down their overhead by sub
letting their parks, when not IN use
for baseball games. to the promoters
of other branches of sport.
When a capitalist erects a 81 .00O.-
900 office building, he figures that it
will work for him 800 days in a year if
he succeeds in renting all the space in
it. But a 81 100000 baseball plant, II
used for no other purpose, works only
"a days in a year if all the home games
scheduled for il are played. Allowing
for rain and holiday double-headers
the average is nearer 40 days a year
that the turnstiles are working to pay
interest on the big investment. Where
two major league clubs use the same
grounds, the number of income-pro-
ducing days is doubled. of course.
Football Games Add Coin
Still there are open dates, and as q
rule the weather is suited to outdoor
sports for a few weeks after the base
ball season closes. Football has been
a revenue producer for ball parks for
n number of years. Boxing contests
also have been staged frequently either
by twilight or by artificial lighting
later in the evenings. Barney Drey-
fuss allowed a circus to give night per-
formances for several summers with
acceptable result all round.
The owners of the New York
Yankees plan to 60 r little further by
providing accommodations for many
different kinds of outdoor sports, IN
Guiding the installation of a cinder
path for track events. Moreover, their
scheme calls for obviating one of the
chief objections hitherto made against
staging other branches of sport in
baseball parks. That has been the
difficulty of providing sufficient seats
close to the ring in case of Il glove
match or parallel to the gridiron for
football contests.
Novel Plan for Yanks' Park
At the Yankee park it is proposed
to obviate much of this objection by
means of portable stands of sufficient
soIidity to be safe under the weight of
n large number of spectators and still
not too clumsy to be moved at m0der-
ate EXPENSE. For n boxing card the
stands can be set so as TO surround
the arena on all sides, using part of
the permanent stands. For a football
match the portable stands can be To-
Gated along one side of the gridiron
using the main stand for the other side
and n end and leaving the other end
open.
In that way n satisfactory view of
the contests can be provided the same
as if the field was equipped for that
particular brand of sport.
The erection of the new Yankee
park is a step opposite to the recent
trend of things in major league cities
which has been toward Capitalization
There has been no serious objection to
the occupancy of one baseball plant by
two teams representing the same city
1t has worked out well in New York
for years and also in st. Louis for q
shorter period. There has been seri-
Gus talk of combining forces in Boston
and Philadelphia. The sole obstacle
has been the fact that the club which
did not own or hold the lease on the
grounds was at the mercy of the club
which did, in case of war.