World War Memorial Stadium, more commonly known as War Memorial Stadium, is a

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 in

Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte and Raleigh, the 69th-most populous city in the Un ...

, United States. It is situated on the northeast corner of Lindsay Street and Yanceyville Avenue, northeast of the downtown area and near the campus of

North Carolina A&T University North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (also known as North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina A&T, N.C. A&T, or simply A&T) is a public, historically black land-grant research university in Greensboro, North Caro ...

. It is currently the home of the NC A&T

team of the

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of College athletics, intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major ...

Colonial Athletic Association The Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA's Division I whose full members are located in East Coast states from Massachusetts to South Carolina. Most of its members are public universi ...

(CAA). It was the home of various local minor league baseball clubs off-and-on from 1930 through 2004. It also continues to be used for other amateur baseball events. It was also the home of A&T football until Aggie Stadium was opened in 1981.

History

World War Memorial Stadium was dedicated on the eighth anniversary of

Armistice Day Armistice Day, later known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the United States, is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, Fran ...

, on November 11, 1926. At the time, there had of course only been the one

World War A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World WarI (1914 ...

. The stadium was originally built mostly with

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

in mind, resembling a backwards "J" and with a running track. In 1930 the Greensboro "Patriots" of the old Piedmont League set up shop there, after a few decades at

Cone Athletic Park Cone Athletic Park or Cone Park was the name of two multi-purpose athletic parks that hosted college football and baseball games as well as a minor league baseball team in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first park was built on Summit Avenue in 19 ...

(near the Cone Mills plant a couple of miles to the northeast), and made various improvements such as the installation of lights and a roof for the box seat area. The field was initially laid out with the diamond centered on the curved part of the "J", with short foul lines and a deep center field, like a very-scaled-down version of the Polo Grounds. Later the diamond was rotated clockwise and repositioned, and the field assumed a fairly normal shape except for right center, which was abnormally close due to the presence of a creek. The ballpark's age and its cramped quarters began to be a notable problem for the minor league club once the minor league explosion of the late 1980s and early 1990s was under way. Various cosmetic renovations were made, such as building a kind of stadium club ("The Grandstand") in the left field corner seats, as well as a fairly large concession stand ''outside'' the third base stands. The stadium also received many seats from Philadelphia's old

Shibe Park Shibe Park, known later as Connie Mack Stadium, was a ballpark located in Philadelphia. It was the home of the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League (AL) and the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League (NL). When it opened April 12, 1 ...

after Shibe's demolition. Another issue was the condition of the field. With so many games being played there by the Patriots (later renamed the "Hornets" and then the "Bats") along with the college teams, the turf took a serious beating during the long hot North Carolina summer, and required frequent replacement with new turf. In order to put the city in a position to possibly upgrade to AA level ball, in the early 1990s the minor league club owners began lobbying for a new ballpark. Their efforts finally succeeded in the early 2000s, and the new First Horizon Park (now known as

First National Bank Field First National Bank Field is a Minor League Baseball park located in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. The home of the Greensboro Grasshoppers of the High-A East, it opened on April 3, 2005. The park is on the block bounded by Bellemeade, Edg ...

) opened downtown in spring 2005.

Archways and plaques

One of the stadium's notable features is an ornate, triple-arched entrance, which made a cameo appearance during the "road trip" segment of the 1988 movie ''

Bull Durham ''Bull Durham'' is a 1988 American romantic comedy sports film. It is partly based upon the minor-league baseball experiences of writer/director Ron Shelton and depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor-league baseball team in ...

''. During the minor league club's tenure, the three arches were decorated with quarter-sphere awnings covered in red, white, and blue cloth respectively. The stadium has a pair of bronze plaques framing the archway and listing the area's war dead during 1917–1919. Close examination of the right-side plaque reveals that there were actually two alphabetical lists. Some sources say that this was a separation of white from "colored" in the conventional practice of the segregation era. The marker between the two lists was later roughly chiseled away. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2001.

Dimensions

After the field was rotated... *Left Field – *Left Center Field – *Center Field – *Right Center Field – *Right Field – WWMS19890625

References

External links

World War Memorial Stadium Views – ''Ball Parks of the Minor Leagues''
{{Triad sports venues College baseball venues in the United States North Carolina A&T Aggies baseball Monuments and memorials in North Carolina Sports venues on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Sports venues in Greensboro, North Carolina Baseball venues in North Carolina Defunct college football venues National Register of Historic Places in Guilford County, North Carolina 1926 establishments in North Carolina Sports venues completed in 1926

History

Archways and plaques

Dimensions

See also

References

External links