On Day 35 (June 23, 2009) of our All the Ballparks Road Trip 2009 we celebrated my brother's 15th birthday with ice cream at Dairy Queen and then went on a driving adventure to locate some old ballpark sites in the Pittsburgh area before going to Game 18 of our trip. The two old ballpark sites we went to were West Field and Forbes Field.
The first old ballpark site we visited was West Field, which is kind of hidden and hard to find. It is, however, actually quite in tact. It is not exactly in the best condition, but it is in pretty good condition considering it seems to be neglected, although perhaps used now for softball, as the infield is dirt. West Field was used by the Negro League Homestead Grays.
The other former ballpark site we visited was Forbes Field, which is where the Pittsburgh Pirates played before moving to Three Rivers Stadium (the stadium before their current PNC Park). Not much remains of this ballpark. Pretty much all that is original is part of the outfield wall. There is, however, a brick line that marks the rest of the outfield wall and a recreation of the old gate. Not a ballpark anymore, but what is left is surely prettier than the remnant of West Field. Also, cool about this site is that it is one of the sites where the first World Series was played and later in the trip we visited the other site in Boston.
Read more about the Forbes Field part of our road trip in my post on my trip blog here. I am now back from the trip and I am trying to catch up on the photo essays, but still most of the in depth information on our various adventures is on the trip blog. If you are at all into baseball and ballparks I think you will enjoy taking a look at my All the Ballparks Road Trip 2009 blog.
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