A book celebrating stadiums that were reduced to rubble is worth toasting.
Welcome to “Remembering Torn-Down Ballparks, Over a Cold Beer,” a tale about venues residing in the graveyard that are given a new life.
Author Ken Finnigan of Carlsbad is the pilot into this time machine of baseball gems that were reduced to dust. He reflects on these slices of baseball heaven that landed on a scrap pile.
While discarded, these stadiums remain etched in people’s minds and hearts.
“Seeing them rekindles that memory of remembering what once was,” Finnigan said.
Finnigan crisscrosses the land, tipping his cap to 34 demolished ballparks — each with its own lore, which Finnigan reveals.
San Diego, of course, deserves a page or two.
The chapters on Qualcomm Stadium (better known as “The Murph”) and Lane Field are like the others: They highlight the national pastime’s great cathedrals that have disappeared.
Finnigan, raised outside of Queens, N.Y., knows his stuff. He rattles off key numbers, like one does their address.
“From my house it was 10 miles to Shea Stadium, 15 to Ebbets Field, 20 to Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds,” he said.
Finnigan landed in North County, carving out a 30-year career as an engineer.
Retirement found him brewing beer and then producing coasters saluting the torn-down ballparks. That morphed into his latest endeavor, a book that is a fun and historical read.
When Finnigan returns to the old sites, they’re still relevant. Even if he’s unable to put his hands on what touches his soul.
“Ebbets and the Polo Grounds, they are now two huge apartment high-rises,” said Finnigan, who turns 59 on March 20. “They are sort of cold and sterile.
“But you can still feel that aura of the ballpark and it rekindles a memory of what was once here.”
The late Duke Snider, a longtime Fallbrook resident, once chased fly balls for the Brooklyn Dodgers where that’s no longer allowed.
“There’s a sign at the Ebbets site that reads: ‘No Ball Playing,”’ Finnigan said.
The Lane Field chapter explores the 8,000-seat downtown stadium near Broadway Street and the San Diego Bay. It was leveled in 1958.
The Padres’ Ted Williams, while then in the Pacific Coast League, hit a home run there that landed in Los Angeles — see page 72.
Where Lane Field stood is marked by a commemorative home plate and pitcher’s mound.
The outfield?
“It’s full of hotels,” Finnigan said.
Qualcomm Stadium, or San Diego Stadium, its original name when christened in 1967, is no more.
But Finnigan, like countless others, can recall his visits to the Taj Mahal of San Diego venues.
“I saw The Who there in the late 1980s, with that huge Marlboro cigarette ad looming overhead from the right-field scoreboard,” he said. “That was before it was enclosed in 1997, so you could look out on to the hillside.”
It would host two World Series and two All-Star games on the baseball side. Once inside, it often didn’t matter what was on the marquee.
Seeing those stadiums again through Finnigan’s book opens a door.
“It brings you back to your childhood where you’re just kind of learning sports for the first time and sometimes being in the stadium is the first experience of being in the adult world as a kid,” he said. “You’re absorbing this mass of people and you’re not used to the excitement surrounding it.
“You had collected the baseball cards, watched the games on TV, but suddenly you’re inside a ballpark. Seeing these old ballparks rekindles that experience and it gives you a fond memory.”
With baseball around the corner, Finnigan has two book signings on deck: March 10 at Warwick’s in La Jolla, 1-3 p.m, and March 15, Barnes & Noble in Encinitas, 3 p.m.
“I feel lucky I was able to see some of these ballparks before they were destroyed,” Finnigan said.
We’re fortunate he constructed what made them so special.
Contact Jay Paris at [email protected] and follow him @jparis_sports
