Before Yankee Stadium…

there was Hilltop Park.

With scant few games left at one of baseball’s true monuments, Yankee fans and haters alike are pausing to reflect on The Stadium’s storied past. Millions of baseball fans have passed through the gates in the Bronx since its first year in 1923. By that year, however, the Yankees had already been around for twenty seasons. Before Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig pulled on the pinstripes, old-timers Hal Chase, Wee Willie Keeler and Jack Chesbro had already put together impressive careers at the Yankees’ first home, Hilltop Park.

As many fans know, the history of the New York Yankees starts in Baltimore, and in the National League. During the last decade of the 19 ^th century, the Baltimore Orioles were perennial contenders in the senior circuit—the only circuit, at that point. Nonetheless, they were contracted in 1900 as the league went from twelve teams to eight. In 1901 a new group of Orioles was assembled, an expansion entry into the new American League. The original preference had been to place a team in New York, but the National League’s Giants vetoed that proposal. It was not until just before the 1903 season that an agreement was reached allowing the Orioles to migrate north to Manhattan. Behind the move were New Yorkers Frank Ferrell and Bill Devery, new owners of the club.

As a result of the last minute move to New York and the recent enmity with the Giants, the New York Americans had no park to play in. In March, just six weeks prior to opening day, construction began on American League Ballpark on the north end of Manhattan, at 168 ^th St. and Broadway. It cost about $300,000 to put the wooden stadium up; much of the expense went towards quarrying the rocky site and toting away piles of debris. Since the stadium sat upon a hill overlooking the Hudson River, it came to be known as Hilltop Park. Its occupants, the New York ‘Americans’ (distinguishing them from the National League Giants), were similarly dubbed the Highlanders. The name ‘Yankees,’ a variation on the ‘Americans,’ became more and more widespread until, by 1914, it was nearly universally accepted.

Hilltop Park stumbled on stage on April 30 for its first game, in which the Highlanders beat the Senators 6-2. The playing field was in woeful shape, there was no roof over the ramshackle grandstand, and the locker rooms had yet to be completed. When the team hit the road for the first time, the fences were hastily adjusted to eliminate a swampy hollow in right field. After this early alteration, the dimensions of the park were 365’-420’-385’ from left to right field. Renovations in 1907 and 1911 brought the center field and left field fences in considerably.

The official listed capacity of Hilltop was 15,000, but this does not account for the copious amount of standing room-only space. As was the case in most early parks, the “standing room” was actually the playing field itself, which could accommodate another 10,000 fans at the least. In 1911, center field bleachers were added; all previous seating had been along the foul lines.

While the Highlanders never won a pennant at Hilltop Park, their performance at home was excellent. In ten years there, they went 398-332, a .545 winning percentage, and had a run differential of +29. On the road over that same span, they were 336-417 (.440 winning percentage) with a –384 run differential. Few teams in baseball history have ever had such a pronounced homefield advantage.

New York’s best season during its Hilltop tenantship was 1904. They were led by slap-hitting Hall of Famer Willie Keeler, who batted .343 and was second in the league with 186 hits. On the mound was right-hander Happy Jack Chesbro, a Hall of Famer in his own right. Chesbro had his greatest year in 1904, winning 41 games with a 1.82 ERA and .937 WHIP. He allowed under seven hits per nine innings, best in the American League. The Highlanders spent the entire second half locked in a race with the Red Sox; after August 15, the lead changed sixteen times between the two clubs, and never exceeded two games. On the last weekend of the season, Boston and New York played five games in three days to decide the race. Boston won three of them and took the pennant by a game and a half. New York finished the season 92-59, their best record at Hilltop.

When the Polo Grounds were damaged by fire in 1911, the Highlanders allowed the Giants to play the first two months of their 1912 schedule at Hilltop. This helped to end the animosity between the rival clubs, and the following season, 1913, the American League club vacated Hilltop in favor of a shared arrangement in the Polo Grounds. Hilltop Park stood empty until 1914, when it was demolished; the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center was built on the site. After ten years at the Polo Grounds, the Yankees moved into their own, new stadium in 1923.

American League Park in New York, better known as Hilltop, does not have the same history as the fabled Yankee Stadium, but it nonetheless saw ten years of baseball at a formative time for the Yankees, as well as for the game itself. Similarly, its destruction in 1914 occasioned much less fanfare than that of the House that Ruth Built—in fact, it was not even mentioned in the New York Times . Nevertheless, it occupies a significant role in the history of the franchise as the predecessor to the soon-to-be abandoned Yankee Stadium.

References: www.ballparks.com; SABR Ballparks Committee; www.baseball-reference.com.