Bat Sports in Parks

Although baseball is an American invention, sports commonly played with a bat or stick descended from England and Ireland and had many common ancestors, such as Rounders. Cricket also came from this tradition, and today both are played in the parks of New York City. The Department of Parks & Recreation has a long tradition of both, and baseball´s earliest beginnings can be traced to New York´s open spaces.

Early Designs for Sporting Fields

Baseball evolved from cricket, which had been played for centuries before the advent of baseball, and which was popular in England. As Central Park engineer in chief in its early days, Egbert Viele designed an early plan for Central Park that featured a cricket pitch in the southwestern portion of the park, one of only two open spaces in the layout. Central Park designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux also noted the usefulness of placing a cricket pitch near the southern end of the park, close to train access, and retained the feature in their Greensward Plan, which ultimately prevailed. The cricket grounds (also for baseball) in the "Southern Valley" were one of the first features to be built at the park. In 1865, proponents of the "national game" of baseball complained that permits for the Central Park fields were hard to come by, as apparently preference was given to the "English game" of cricket.

Use and Demand Grows

Local clubs played cricket matches frequently at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, sometimes against teams from faraway places like Philadelphia and even Canada. Prospect Park was such a big spot that the "Manhattan Cricket Club" played its home games there. The Staten Island Cricket and Tennis Club in the Livingston neighborhood on the Island´s north shore hosted many cricket matches; the grounds eventually were purchased by the city and now comprise Walker Park. In 1885, Parks officials opened Central Park´s North Meadow to cricket matches to accommodate demand for the sport. People played cricket in the United States (primarily in places like Philadelphia and New York) until around World War I, when pastimes like tennis and golf started to become more popular.

The Cricket Revival

Starting in the 1950s, immigrants from former British colonies helped renew interest in cricket in the United States. The Hyderabad Blues, a team from India, played an exhibition match against a team of American players at Randall´s Island in 1975 to a crowd of about 200 fans. In the years since then, cricket´s popularity has taken off to the point that today there are cricket fields in 15 parks across the five boroughs.

The sport is especially popular at Van Cortlandt Park and Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. When Parks dedicated a new cricket pitch at Spring Creek Park in Brooklyn in 2003, players from the United States Cricket Promoters Association and the New York Metropolitan Cricket Association played alongside council members and Parks officials to christen the new playing field. In 2007, the inaugural Mayor´s Cup Cricket Tournament hosted 28 teams playing in five parks.

Watch an It's My Park segment about cricket at Gateway Cricket Ground in Brooklyn.

The Birth of Baseball in New York

Baseball´s beginnings are apocryphal and murky, but Madison Square Park figures in at least some accounts of the sport´s birth. Some note that in 1845, the rules of baseball were officially set by Alexander J. Cartwright, a 25–year–old volunteer fireman, and the game as it is now known was first played in the vicinity of Madison Square.

Early baseball games were played in Central Park, the Parade Ground near Prospect Park, and even Carroll Park in Brooklyn, where the Star Grounds once existed. When Chelsea Park was acquired by the City in 1905, it was a crowded lot of tenements. Before the park was fully built in 1910, its interim use as a ballfield attracted hundreds, if not thousands to the site. The 1913 Annual Report listed regulation diamonds at eleven sites throughout Manhattan, including two at Chelsea Park.

Parks Bats for Bat Sports

Although it was sometimes difficult for nineteenth–century baseball players to enjoy fields at Central Park, by the 1930s, when recreation became a top priority of Parks, the game was embraced. In 1934, Parks announced that the informal playing fields in Central Park´s North Meadow would be formalized with permanent bases and backstops. Parks also held tournaments for both baseball and softball throughout the 1930s. (Softball began in the late 19th century as an indoor version of baseball, played with a larger, softer ball during the winter off–season months.)

Instead of clogging narrow neighborhood streets with games of stickball (which has been revived in recent years at "Street Games" demonstrations sponsored by Disney), young players took advantage of the many fields in playgrounds and larger parks. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the five borough presidents threw out ceremonial first pitches on April 14, 1935 to open the baseball season at several of the city´s 159 baseball diamonds. Permits to play in 1940 required holders to note the name of the team, the average age of the players and whether or not they sported uniforms.

Today Parks hosts baseball and softball in all levels of play. Little League teams such as the Harlem Little League play at Jackie Robinson Park, Holcombe Rucker Park, Col. Charles Young Park and Central Park. In 2006, the Mid Island Little League team in Staten Island went on to compete at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Each summer, Central Park hosts leagues like the Broadway Show League, which takes advantage of free afternoons to compete with each other at Heckscher Ballfield, and the Media League, which fields teams from some of the many media organizations headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.