Story by Mark Mathis
Photos by Daniel R. Patmore
It was the last home stand of the season. A night in late August, overcast, with drizzle in the air. It rained hard enough a couple of times to wonder if the game would be called. It wasn’t, and the rain didn’t stop the folks from coming out to Bosse Field for one last evening in 2001 of hometown baseball.
A small jazz band greeted visitors with snappy tunes. A little further into the park the Otters booster club was selling tickets to collect half the pot. A sign said the proceeds would go for player equipment bags, pre-game meals, bus trip sack lunches, plaques, trophies and all-star gifts. Obviously, none of these were part of the player contract package.
If you had missed dinner, you could grab a jumbo dog and 16-ounce beer for a grand total of $5.75. Isn’t that standard price for a small beverage in some of those ballparks that are mega-modern, yet designed for an old-time feel?
“Everything in souvenir shop 1/2 price” another sign declared. There were lots of kids and lots of cotton candy. This was a Saturday night in Middle America, right before school was starting back up. This was a place built in 1915 and with every bit the feel the 86 years have weathered.
Bosse Field itself is a fascinating little ball-yard. Tucked in the North Side of Evansville, it has a nostalgia that can’t be recreated in a Camden Yards. The Gothic façade to the entrance looks like a baseball church.
The stadium is constructed with steep steps leading to the dugouts. Narrow hallways underneath the stands head to small locker rooms, a main covered grandstand with seats close to the action and a short brick wall that circles all the way around for the backstop.
It held enough of an old-time visual to be selected as the location for “A League of Their Own,” a movie about a women’s baseball team, that featured Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna. Large, painted signs still hang around Bosse Field touting the Racine Belles.
Bosse Field has a rich baseball history in Evansville. The Triplets, a Triple-A team that played there, left nearly 20 years ago. During professional baseball’s time at Bosse Field, some of the great players of the 1970s and ‘80s played there. Bert Blyleven, Mark “The Bird” Fydrich, Kirk Gibson, Howard Johnson and many others made perhaps their last stops at Bosse Field before they were called up to The Bigs. Plenty of older players, like Dell Crandall and Whitlow Wyatt, also played when Bosse Field was a newer place.
Certainly Evansville misses the influence and attraction that a minor league ballclub held, but the folks who were watching the last Otters’ home game of the season held a certain affection for both this ballclub and its players...
