FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO): Fort Wayne is home to a surprising piece of professional baseball history.
It turns out Camp Allen Park was where the first professional baseball league game was held, on this date in 1871. Fort Wayne City Councilman Geoff Paddock tells WOWO News there will be a special monument placed at the park this evening at 6pm to commemorate it… right where the game was played.
“Of course, you can imagine this area looked quite different (then)… we didn’t have a flood control wall or as many homes there, so you may wonder how anyone could play baseball on a park that’s as ‘rinky-dinky’ as this,” Paddock says. “This history of this goes back to May 4, 1971, when the Mayor promised a marker there, but for some reason it just never happened.”
That historic game was between the Fort Wayne Kekiongas and the Cleveland Forest Citys. Fort Wayne won, 2-0.
2 comments
Fort Wayne is erecting a baseball memorial, at the same time it is destroying the veterans memorial. Way to go Fort Wayne, this shows where your priorities lie.
This is something that has been in the works since 1971, and is completely unrelated to Indiana Tech’s proposal.