The Lincoln Park Grounds, commonly known as Union Grounds, was a former

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

park, part of

Lincoln Park Lincoln Park is a park along Lake Michigan on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Named after US President Abraham Lincoln, it is the city's largest public park and stretches for seven miles (11 km) from Grand Avenue (500 N), on the south, ...

, located in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

. The Grounds were built for the Union Cricket Club in 1856; they "were used for cricket and baseball in the summer and were flooded for skating in the winter." In 1865

Harry Wright William Henry "Harry" Wright (January 10, 1835 – October 3, 1895) was an English-born American professional baseball player, manager, and developer. He assembled, managed, and played center field for baseball's first fully professional team, t ...

became the professional of the Cincinnati Cricket Club, which also used the grounds, and the next year Aaron Champion, president of the new Cincinnati Base Ball Club, "approached Wright to propose a limited use of the grounds if the CBBC and Live Oaks club would put in $2000 each to revamp the Lincoln Park Grounds."

A year later the ed Stockingsleased the grounds of the Union Cricket Club for its home tilts. Most club members referred to the field as the Union Grounds, although it also was known as the Union Cricket Club Grounds and the Lincoln Park Grounds, given the fact that the eight-acre, fenced grounds were located in a small park behind Lincoln Park in Cincinnati, near the Union Terminal. It was a twenty-minute ride by streetcar to the Union Grounds from the heart of downtown Cincinnati. Aaron Champion ordered that approximately $10,000 worth of improvements be made to the home grounds for the 1867 season, including grading and sodding of the field and building of a new clubhouse and stands.

Lincoln Park was bounded by Kenner Street (north); Freeman Avenue (east); Hopkins Street (south); and Hoefer Street (west). Old maps show the western one-third of the park designated as "ball field". The ballpark hosted three National Association games in the spring and summer of 1871. One of them was held on July 4, featuring the Boston Red Stockings as the "visitors" and the

Washington Olympics The Olympic Club of Washington, D.C., or Washington Olympics in modern nomenclature, was an early professional baseball team. When the National Association of Base Ball Players permitted openly professional clubs for the 1869 season, the Olympics ...

as the "home" team. Those were the two clubs that most of the 1869-70 Cincinnati Red Stockings players had joined when the Cincinnati club disbanded after the 1870 season. The previous day, those former members of the Red Stockings had played an exhibition game against the other members of the Boston and Olympic clubs, advertised as the "Old Reds" against a "picked nine". The "picked nine" won the game 15-13.(Cincinnati ''Enquirer'', July 4, 1871, p. 4) The Union Grounds were used until 1875; the next year a new

Cincinnati Red Stockings The Cincinnati Red Stockings of were baseball's first all-professional team, with ten salaried players. The Cincinnati Base Ball Club formed in 1866 and fielded competitive teams in the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) 1867– ...

club played at the Avenue Grounds two miles to the north.Reds Ballparks
Lincoln Park itself was eventually closed and its property became the site of the

Cincinnati Union Terminal Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate, Cincinnati, Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Commonly abbreviated as CUT, or by its Amtrak station code, CIN, the Railroad terminal, termina ...

References

{{coord, 39, 06, 32.23, N, 84, 31, 56.97, W, region:US_type:landmark_scale:2000, display=title Defunct baseball venues in the United States Sports venues in Cincinnati Baseball in Cincinnati Baseball venues in Ohio Cricket grounds in the United States Sports venues completed in 1856 Defunct cricket grounds Cincinnati Union Terminal