In late August 1897, three branches of the Ancient Order of Hibernians gathered for their annual picnic at Robison Park in Fort Wayne. Over 3,000 people of Irish nativity or descent flocked to the new amusement park to enjoy the festivities. The afternoon boasted a variety of sporting events, allowing Irish American men to demonstrate their athletic skills. The “fine program of sports” included baseball, Gaelic football, and hurling. With a combination of American and Gaelic sports, the Irish community celebrated its cultural heritage and ideas of traditional Irish masculinity while shaping its distinct Irish American identity.
Robison Park was decked with green on August 27, 1897, for one of its largest events of the year. The excursion offered food, dancing, and speeches from community leaders, but sport was the main attraction. The afternoon began with a baseball game between the Shamrocks and the Emeralds, two local teams in the Robison Park League. Other teams in the league, like the Hibernian Rifles and the Clover Leaves, also boasted Irish-inspired names and had largely Irish rosters. The Emeralds prevailed over the Shamrocks, 14-8.
Though baseball was growing into a popular pastime for Irish Americans in the Midwest, Gaelic sports attracted the most attention, symbolizing cultural revival and nationalist pride. A Gaelic football match followed the baseball game. Young men from existing area teams met on the grassy pitch to play the uniquely Irish sport, which combined elements of soccer and rugby. Division 3 defeated Division 1, one goal and three points to none.
The sporting events concluded with the first hurling exhibition ever played in Fort Wayne. The ancient Gaelic sport, now the national sport of Ireland, was a high-contact activity with militaristic undertones. Using a curved wooden stick called a hurley, athletes attempted to hit a small ball known as the sliotar through or over their opponent’s goalposts. The team of recent immigrants who learned to play hurling in Ireland easily defeated the American-born team, one goal and one point to one point.
The Irish community of Fort Wayne continued celebrating Hibernian Day at Robison Park into the 1910s. Sport remained a significant part of the festivities and the Irish identity of the athletes and attendants.
]]>In 2010, a team of professors and students from Ball State University used digital mapping technologies to identify the exact location of Washington Ball Park. Decades of development and change, including the construction of the Indianapolis Zoo, had nearly erased this important part of the city’s past.
Opened in 1905, the park was home to the Indianapolis Indians until 1931, when they moved to Perry (later renamed Bush) Stadium. But Washington Ball Park was home to another important Indianapolis and American story. From around 1917 to 1931, when the Indians traveled for games, they leased the ball park to the city’s independent African American baseball team, the ABCs. During the 1910s, the ABCs (named for their sponsor, the American Brewing Company), rose to prominence and won the 1916 Negro World Series.
In February 1920, the ABCs’ manager, Charles I. Taylor, co-founded and became vice president of the Negro National League. The NNL was a baseball league for African American players during the era of segregation when they were not allowed to play alongside whites. The NNL consisted mainly of Midwestern and some Southern baseball teams, including the ABCs, the Detroit Stars, the Kansas City Monarchs, the Birmingham Black Barons, and many others. Washington Baseball Park was the site of the NNL’s first game on May 2, 1920, where the ABCs defeated the Chicago Giants twice in a doubleheader. By developing star players like Oscar Charleston, posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and insisting that players wear “collars, ties, and shined shoes,” Taylor created a very successful black baseball team whose players became role models for young African Americans.
After Taylor’s death in 1922, however, the team began to struggle, first facing player raids from the Eastern Colored League and also having financial difficulties due to the economy. Disbanding in 1924 and reforming in multiple variants throughout the late1920s, the ABCs made a comeback in 1931. The National Negro League, however, was not able to recover from financial problems and dissolved in 1932--the same year that the Indianapolis Indians abandoned Washington Ball Park for the new Perry (Bush) Stadium.
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