page_title: Forbes Field
section_title: Playing field
hierarchical_section_title: Forbes Field / History / Playing field
caption_attribution_description: English: I took this photo of the Forbes Field flagpole on 6/6/1993. Wahkeenah 00:11, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
context_page_description: Forbes Field was a baseball park in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1909 to June 28, 1970. It was the third home of the Pittsburgh Pirates Major League Baseball team, and the first home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the city's National Football League franchise. The stadium also served as the home football field for the University of Pittsburgh "Pitt" Panthers from 1909 to 1924. The stadium was named after its adjacent street, Forbes Ave., itself named for British general John Forbes, who fought in the French and Indian War and named the city in 1758.
  The US$1 million project was initiated by Pittsburgh Pirates' owner Barney Dreyfuss, with the goal of replacing his franchise's then-current home, Exposition Park. The stadium was made of concrete and steel in order to increase its lifespan. The Pirates opened Forbes Field on June 30, 1909, against the Chicago Cubs, and played the final game against the Cubs on June 28, 1970. The field itself featured a large playing surface, with the batting cage placed in the deepest part of center field during games.
context_section_description: Barney Dreyfuss "hated cheap home runs and vowed he'd have none in his park", which led him to design a large playing field for Forbes Field. The original distances to the outfield fence in left, center, and right field were 360 feet (110 m), 462 feet (141 m) and 376 feet (115 m), respectively.
  In 1925, in order to increase seating capacity, the right field grandstand was extended into the corner and into fair territory, incidentally reducing the foul line distance from 376 feet (115 m) to 300 feet (91 m). Dreyfuss made no secret of his mixed feelings regarding this move, and in May 1930, in response to American League President E. S. Barnard's proposed plan to stem the recent flood of sub-350-foot home runs, Dreyfuss readily complied by erecting a 28-foot (8.5 m) high screen.
  Even at this long distance from home plate, the wall stood 12 feet (3.7 m) in height all around the field, with the right field wall reduced to 9.5 feet (2.9 m) following the 1925 construction (later topped by the screen). The backstop was set at 110 feet (34 m) behind home plate, larger than the average of 60 feet (18 m) in most stadiums of the time. Additional seating eventually cut down the plate-to-screen distance to a still larger-than-average 75 feet (23 m).
  With such a large outfield space, triples and inside-the-park home runs were common. The Pirates hit a record eight triples in a single game, on May 30, 1925. Conversely, the stadium was one of the most difficult to hit over-the-fence home runs. The closeness of the right field line from 1925 onward was the only area that compromised Dreyfuss' original design concept. Even at that, the right field wall angled sharply out to 375 feet (114 m), a typical distance for a major league power alley. The final three home runs of Babe Ruth's career were hit in Forbes Field on May 25, 1935; the third of these cleared the 89-foot (27 m) right field roof and was considered the longest home run in the park's history.
  Although Forbes Field developed a reputation as a "pitcher-friendly" ballpark, there was never a no-hitter thrown in the more than 4,700 games at the stadium.
  The field itself consisted of natural grass grown in Crestline, Ohio.
  Until 1942, Forbes Field's batting cage, when not in use, was stored on the field, in front of the stands directly behind home plate, a bare-bones but viable solution rendered obsolete by the introduction that season of a new, considerably larger cage. During that season and part of 1943, the new cage resided in foul territory, down the right field line, near the Pirates' bullpen. At some point prior to July 26, 1943, evidently prompted by numerous instances of the relocated cage continuing to impact balls in play, the Pirates finally settled on what would become its permanent and, by far, best-remembered home: in fair territory, just to the left of the 457-foot (139 m) marker in deepest left-center. The open part of the cage faced the wall, its rear effectively serving as a convex fence, somewhat akin to that surrounding the base of the light tower standing just to the left (as well as those surrounding the left field and right-center field towers). Unlike the batting cage and the flagpole just to its right, the light towers themselves—as opposed to the aforementioned fences—were not in play; a batted ball striking any one of them, or landing inside the surrounding fence, was a home run.
  In 1947, well after Dreyfuss' death, and upon the arrival of veteran slugger Hank Greenberg, the bullpens were moved from foul territory to the base of the scoreboard in left field and were fenced in, cutting 30 feet (9.1 m) from the left field area, from 365 feet (111 m) to 335 feet (102 m) down the line and 406 feet (124 m) to 376 feet (115 m) in left-center field. These were not abnormal major league outfield distances, but the obvious attempt to take advantage of Greenberg's bat led the media to dub the area "Greenberg Gardens". Greenberg retired after the season, but by then Ralph Kiner was an established slugger with the Pirates, and the bullpen was redubbed "Kiner's Korner"
caption: Forbes Field outfield wall and flagpole in its original location in Oakland
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