THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: 1951
Vancouver’s baseball fans had a new place to enjoy their favourite pastime: Capilano Stadium
Sixty- three years ago, Capilano Stadium opened. An overflow crowd of 8,000 turned out June 16, 1951, to watch the Vancouver Capilanos clobber the Salem Senators 10- 3. So many people showed up that the stadium ran out of tickets, and people sat on the slopes of Little Mountain to watch the game. The new stadium cost $ 550,000, a rather large figure given the Capilanos played in the Class B Western International League against teams from Wenatchee and Yakima, Wash. The design for the new stadium was lifted from Sick’s Stadium in Seattle. The Capilanos were owned by Seattle beer barons Emil and Fritz Sick, who also owned the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. In Seattle, the Sick brothers owned the popular Rainier beer brand, hence they called their team the Rainiers. In Vancouver, the Sicks operated Capilano brewery, so the team became the Capilanos. The new stadium was built on a former swamp owned by the city at 30th and Ontario. The city spent $ 12,500 to drain the 5.3hectare site in 1950. The stadium was originally projected to cost $ 302,000, but wound up costing almost twice that. The capacity was 7,500, including 2,000 reserved seats, 3,500 rush seats in the grandstand, and 2,000 “bleacher roosts.” Reserved seats were $ 1.10 to $ 1.35, while rush seats in the grandstand were 90 cents and 65 cents in the bleachers. Children could get into the bleachers for 15 cents. There was no roof over the stands until 1955. The Sun files have the original artist’s conception of the park, and it’s called Sicks’ Capilano Stadium. For some reason, the Sicks decided to drop their name from the marquee when it opened. Perhaps they were worried spectators might show up at the old Sicks’ Capilano Stadium, which had been the home of Vancouver baseball since 1913. The old park was at 5th and Hemlock, and was originally called Athletic Park. Made of wood, it burned to the ground in 1926 and again in 1945. It rose from the ashes both times to host all manner of sporting events ( baseball, soccer, football, lacrosse, rugby), even political rallies. Athletic Park was the site of the first baseball game played at night in Canada on July 3, 1931. On Oct. 19, 1934, a barnstorming crew of major- leaguers including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Connie Mack stopped off at Athletic Park on their way to Japan, playing an exhibition game in torrential rain. “It drizzled most of the game and when Ruth came up in the seventh inning, I asked the umpire to call the game,” longtime Vancouver baseball owner/ manager Bob Brown told The Sun’s Hal Malone in 1951. “The crowd moaned and Ruth yelled ‘ If you can stand it, so can I,’ and they finished the game.” There wasn’t much nostalgia when the old Athletic Park was replaced in 1951. Another Sun reporter, Dan Ekman, had dubbed it “the old Fifth and Hemlock shanty.” Brown had carved Athletic Park out of a rustic area filled with stumps, which he sometimes removed with dynamite. But even he wasn’t sad to see it go. “Since the second fire ( in 1945), without our old main grandstand and without the gym ( that was built underneath it), it hasn’t been the same,” said Brown. “These past few years, it’s been as bad for us trying to do business here as it’s been for the fans trying to watch baseball here.” The infield grass was rolled up from the old stadium and installed at the new park, using a special machine supplied by the Vancouver park board. This meant that the Capilanos played on the same turf as Babe Ruth. The Vancouver Mounties took over as the main tenant when the team joined the Triple A Pacific Coast League in 1956. The Mounties left after the 1969 season, but Triple A baseball returned in 1978 with the Vancouver Canadians. White Spot founder Nat Bailey was a longtime baseball booster, and had been a peanut vendor at Athletic Park. When he died shortly before the 1978 season opened, Capilano was renamed Nat Bailey Stadium in his memory.