LOUISVILLE, Ky. — When repair work started on a broken water main south of Broadway between 5th and 6th Street, we learned about Baseball Alley. It raised my curiosity and I had to know where the name came from and why.
Baseball Alley.
It’s a throwback to the favorite summer pastime of Louisvillians at the turn of the century.
What’s left of Baseball Alley is short, and about a homerun hit to reach downtown.
The alley was the connector to the Eclipse Park baseball field at a time when the city had baseball fields all over.
We were a town of baseball, bourbon, riverboats and trains.
So how did one get to Eclipse Park?
Well, you would exit the trolley at 4th Street at Memorial Auditorium and walk three blocks west to reach the field.
Eclipse Park was established at the northwest corner of 7th and Kentucky in 1902.
The park seated 8,500 people and it was built as the home for the American Association minor league Louisville Colonels who played there from 1902 to 1922.
What happened to the park?
Eclipse Park only lasted 20 years at that location because it burned to the ground in 1922.
In modern times, homes are now standing where the park used to be.
Baseball’s brief time near downtown had ended and would not return until Louisville Slugger Field opened in 2000.
Eclipse Park also had a cursed history. Its location off 7th and Kentucky was there because two other locations the park previously had burned to the ground.
The first one was at 28th and Elliott and was lost in 1871 and the other, 28th and Broadway burned in 1892.
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