America’s Pastime

Did you know pro baseball has been played in Oklahoma City since at least 1903, and maybe even earlier? That’s right, just a few years after settlers ran for land to call home, players ran for home plate at Colcord Park, a baseball field near the current Farmer’s Market area in what was called Delmar Gardens. The Oklahoma City Metropolitans made the park their home until 1908, when the Oklahoma City Indians, managed by the too-apropos-for-an-old-school-baseball-guy-to-be-made-up-sounding Doc Andrews, joined the class C Texas League the following year and took up residence at the park.

After years of bouncing around lesser leagues, in 1962 Oklahoma City joined the ranks of AAA with the advent of the 89ers, who played in All Sports Stadium at the Fairgrounds and were the farm club of the awesomely-named Houston Colt .45’s. 1990 saw the advent of the much-heralded Robo Niner era. The ‘Niners and their mascot stayed there until the opening of the Bricktown Ballpark in 1998, when the team was renamed the RedHawks. (Local legend has it Robo-Niner escaped destruction by hiding in the basement of the Space Tower, but his plan was foiled when it flooded in 2010 and he finally succumbed to metastasizing rust.) The RedHawks, after becoming the Astros top farm team in 2011, switched affiliations to the LA Dodgers over the winter, and Boom! It’s Dodger time in OKC. If you’d like to delve further, a good read on the history of baseball in Oklahoma City would be the book Baseball in Oklahoma City by Bob Burke.