page_title: League Park
section_title: Structure
hierarchical_section_title: League Park / Structure
caption_attribution_description: English: Postcard of League Park in Cleveland, Ohio
context_page_description: League Park was a baseball park located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was situated at the northeast corner of E. 66th Street and Lexington Avenue in the Hough neighborhood. It was built in 1891 as a wood structure and rebuilt using concrete and steel in 1910. The park was home to a number of professional sports teams, most notably the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball. League Park was first home to the Cleveland Spiders of the National League from 1891 to 1899 and of the Cleveland Lake Shores of the Western League, the minor league predecessor to the Indians, in 1900. From 1914 to 1915, League Park also hosted the Cleveland Spiders of the minor league American Association. In the late 1940s, the park was also the home field of the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League.
  In addition to baseball, League Park was also used for American football, serving as the home field for several successive teams in the Ohio League and early National Football League during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as for college football. Most notably, the Cleveland Rams of the NFL played at League Park in 1937 and for much of the early 1940s.
context_section_description: When it originally opened in 1891, it had 9,000 wooden seats.  A single deck grandstand was behind homeplate, a covered pavilion was along the first base line, and bleachers were located at various other places in the park.  The ballpark was configured to fit into the Cleveland street grid, which contorted the dimensions into a rather odd rectangular shape by modern standards.  The fence in left field was 385 feet (117 m),  460 feet (140 m) away in center, and 290 feet (88 m) down the right field foul line.  Batters had to hit the ball over a 40-foot (12 m) fence to get a home run (by comparison, the Green Monster at Fenway Park is 37 feet (11 m) high).
  It was essentially rebuilt prior to the 1910 season, with concrete and steel double-decker grandstands, expanding the seating capacity to 21,414.  The design work was completed by Osborn Architects & Engineers, a local architecture firm that would go on to design several iconic ballparks over the next three years, including Comiskey Park, the Polo Grounds, Tiger Stadium, and Fenway Park.  The front edges of the upper and lower decks were vertically aligned, bringing the up-front rows in the upper deck closer to the action, but those in back could not see much of foul territory.
  The fence was reconfigured, bringing the left field fence in 10 feet closer (375 feet (114 m)) and center field fence in 40 feet (420 feet (130 m)); the right field fence remained at 290 feet (88 m).
  Batters still had to surmount a 40-foot (12 m) fence to hit home runs. The fence in left field was only five feet tall, but batters had to hit the ball 375 feet (114 m) down the line to hit a home run, and it was fully 460 feet (140 m) to the scoreboard in the deepest part of center field. The diamond, situated in the northwest corner of the block, was slightly tilted counterclockwise, making right field not quite as easy a target as Baker Bowl's right field (which had a 60-foot (18 m) wall), for example.
caption: Postcard of League Park
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