In 1937, Ed Burns, a sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune, penned a series of articles on every major league park at the time (15 articles in all, of 16 parks for 16 teams; the Cardinals and Browns shared Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, while the Indians played in both League Park and Cleveland Municipal Stadium that year, with one article for both), which were also published in the Sporting News that year.

A very interesting series, especially from the perspective of 1937, and the hand-drawn diagrams of interesting plays and quirks of each park are wonderful. I’ll post them in order of when they were originally published, and one at a time to make things interesting. Click the Burns-Eye Views of Big Time Parks category link to the right to see all the articles together.

Ninth in the series, Navin Field, which would become Briggs Stadium (the new owner who just remodeled it as noted below, and who would eventually name it after himself in 1938) and eventually, good old Tiger Stadium. The expansion in 1936 resulted in the “only two-deck bleacher in the majors”, which would soon enough not be called bleachers at all, but simply a 2-tier deck in the outfield. And more importantly, a correction from Mr. Burns: Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis was not the only park of the day to have “luscious broiled hot dogs” instead of “soaked” ones – this newfangled broiled treat was also cheerfully served at Navin Field. And finally, in a bit of sad irony, Navin Field was considered the “best located park in the majors, from the viewpoint of proximity to the central business district”; unfortunately, the location of the park was considered less desirable decades later.