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West Side Park was the name used for two different baseball parks that formerly stood in Chicago, Illinois. They were both home fields of the team now known as the Chicago Cubs of the National League. Both parks hosted baseball championships. The latter of the two parks, where the franchise played for nearly a quarter century, was the home of the last world champion Cubs team (), the team that posted the best winning percentage in Major League Baseball history and won the most games in National League history (), the only cross-town World Series in Chicago (1906), and the immortalized Tinker to Evers to Chance double-play combo. Both ballparks were what are now called "wooden" ballparks. ==The first West Side Park (1885–1891)== The initial stadium was the club's home beginning in , succeeding Lakefront Park. Although the park's useful life turned out to be as short as the ball club's stay at the Lakefront (seven years), it was also memorable, as the team won back-to-back National League pennants in its first two seasons there. The park was located on a small block bounded by Congress, Loomis, Harrison and Throop Streets, with the diamond toward its western end. The elongated shape of the block lent a bathtub-like shape to the park, with foul lines reportedly as short as 216 feet. The stadium held roughly 10,000 fans. In addition to the diamond, the park held a bicycle track which encircled the playing field, at the height of the contemporary bicycle craze. The Cubs (then known as the White Stockings) had had to secure a new property after , and it took longer than anticipated. The season began on April 30, a month later than it does today, for a 112-game schedule, 50 fewer games than today's major-league schedule. The club spent the first five-plus weeks of the 1885 season on the road () and the park was finally opened on June 6 with a victory over the St. Louis Maroons, late of the Union Association. Despite being "wanderers" early in the season, the powerful Chicago club, under player-manager Cap Anson, came home with an 18-6 record. They would sweep a four-game set in their first homestand and romp through the league schedule, finishing at 87-25. The only team that gave them any problem was the New York Giants, who won 10 of the clubs' 16 meetings and finished just two games behind Chicago in the standings. If projected to a modern 162-game schedule, that translates to 125 and 123 wins, respectively, in a very lopsided league (the third-place club finished 30 games back). Chicago captured the National League pennant that season and also went on to win the league crown in 1886. The site saw postseason action those two years, as the White Stockings squared off in 19th-century World Series play against the St. Louis Cardinals, then playing in the rival American Association and known as the St. Louis Browns. The championships of the 1880s were disorganized in comparison to the modern World Series, exemplified by the 1885 contest, which ended in dispute with no clear winner. The 1886 World Series was more conventional, and was won by the Browns. Those matchups were the first on-field confrontations of the Cubs and Cardinals clubs, which remains one of baseball's strongest rivalries today. The site also saw "bonus baseball" in 1887, as a neutral site for Game 14 of that year's unique 15-game "traveling" World Series between the Browns and the Detroit Wolverines. In 1891 the team split its schedule between West Side Park and South Side Park. The first West Side Park was abandoned after the 1891 season, with the team playing at home exclusively on the South Side in 1892. The site of the first West Side Park is now occupied by the Andrew Jackson Language Academy, whose address is 1340 West Harrison. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「West Side Park」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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