COOPERSTOWN -- White Sox fans will be able to walk through Comiskey Park once again this summer. However, they'll have to go 761 miles east from what is now a U.S. Cellular Field parking lot to find it.
In a couple months, the National Baseball Hall of Fame will launch a virtual tour of Comiskey Park, the third CAD-rendered ballpark in the museum's "Sacred Ground" exhibit, joining Boston's South End Grounds and Brooklyn's Ebbetts Field.
Comiskey Park was chosen to represent the steel and concrete era due, said exhibit curator Lenny DiFranza, "because it's distinctive in many ways and had a long history."
Of course, that history isn't exactly a sparkling one, starting with the year the stadium will be designed for: 1919. DiFranza said that year was chosen to give fans a look at a park most Sox fans didn't see in their lifetime.
He also adds the other reason:
"For good or bad, it's the most famous year in the park's history."
Based on blueprints found during demolition of the park in an elevator shaft for J. Lewis Comiskey's use and photos from the Black Sox era, the park in its 1919 state sports a different look in many respects from its latter-day appearance.
The exterior of the park is original brick work (not the white paint Bill Veeck applied to it in 1960) and proper signage (not the "Comiskey Park" painted on the brick in green).
The tour flies you in through the arches and pans the outfield seating, which consisted of only wooden bleachers in 1919. The double deck at that time only extended halfway down the foul line, and the rest wouldn't be added for another 10 years. Without the second level, the Illinois Instutute of Technology building -- named the Armour Institute of Technology back then -- is visible in the backdrop, without the Dan Ryan in between.
It's unusual to see Comiskey Park without a scoreboard dominating the backdrop. In 1919, the center field board was long and rectangular in design, and only about 20 percent of it was used to give an account of the game. Large advertisements occupied the rest of the space, including a Chicago Tribune ad that spanned the entire length across the top, and one for Pluto Water, which was a popular laxative in the early 20th century.
(At first thought, it's hard to imagine a Dulcolax ad anywhere in a stadium nowadays. Then again, when Viagara ads scroll behind home plate during a broadcast and Flomax is a corporate partner, bodily functions are still a big part of the picture. Too big, probably.)
Virtual Comiskey is still a couple months away from completion, DiFranza said. The structure of the park has been established, but details such as seating, brickwork and infield dirt dimensions have yet to be finalized.
Also in the works are fact boxes that highlight specific features of Comiskey Park and its history, potentially including breakouts for:
- The signature arches that defined the look of the park.
- The evolution of the scoreboard, from its unremarkable beginning to Veeck's exploding monstrosity.
- The grounds themselves, including the infield Emil Bossard would grossly manipulate to the Sox's advantage and the fire hoses for foul lines.
- The history of the Negro League All-Star games, which Comiskey hosted for many years.
- Disco Demoliton Night.
When finished, the tour should provide an interesting contrast to its virtual counterpart, Ebbetts Field. While the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers has been romanticized and its features have served as the inspiration for the neo-retro wave of current ballparks, Comiskey Park is largely overlooked by nostalgists because many parts of the park, along with some events that took place inside it, could be considered the antithesis of charming.
Throughout much of its history, Comiskey Park, DiFranza said, was "disrespected around the baseball world, and even in Chicago by the media. The White Sox often had to defend it."
Sox fans often find themselves doing the same thing, because warts and all, it's the place where they saw their first big-league game. The virtual tour may not recreate the entire Comiskey experience -- the quaking of the foundation when the crowd had reason to cheer, the chipped and flaking paint on the bricks, seats and railings, the streams of beer flowing down depressions in the concrete -- but at the very least, they can roam the grandstands again and remember the sight lines.
The new perspective is welcome, because the only thing you can see at 35th and Shields now is asphault.