Have a Field Day: Celebrate Ainsworth's Birthday on Aug. 21
Historic ballpark was dedicated 79 years ago
Maybe you remember the epic tales about Babe Ruth playing baseball in Erie. Or you want to learn more about the legacy of Negro League baseball in our town. Perhaps you are curious about the late Betty Peebles, a sports columnist when female sportswriters were rare, who led clinics to explain baseball to Erie women in the 1940s.
She later became the Erie Daily Times society editor.
Maybe you live in the area bounded by Cranberry Street and Washington Place, between West 22nd and West 24th streets, and wonder what improvements could be in store for your neighborhood.
Just as importantly and more urgently, you might be an Erie School District parent or coach advocating for upgraded facilities for students who play on the district's baseball and tennis teams.
Whatever your passion, from Erie's sports history to today's student athletes, you are invited to the inaugural Ainsworth Community Day on Friday, Aug. 21, starting at 4 p.m. The free event will feature food trucks, local vendors, raffle baskets, and activities. At dusk, The Sandlot, a 1993 comedy, will be shown. Mishaps involving a baseball autographed by Yankees legend Babe Ruth play a key role in this coming-of-age film, known for its oft-quoted line, "You're killin' me, Smalls!"
Coincidence or not, Ruth also played a big part in the legends about Ainsworth Field, even though when Ruth played here with his barnstorming team in 1923 and in an exhibition game for the New York Yankees in 1932, the ballpark was known as Athletic Field, before being renamed Ainsworth.
Ainsworth Community Day is a two-fer birthday party, celebrating the field's namesake, J.C. "Doc" Ainsworth, who was born on Aug. 19, 1878, and the 79th anniversary of the date that the Erie School Board formally dedicated Ainsworth Field, on Aug. 25, 1947. As with many attempts to make change in Erie, the path to changing Athletic Field to Ainsworth hit bumps.
In 1939, Erie City Council approved a resolution urging the Erie School Board to rename Athletic Field for Ainsworth, longtime civic leader, champion of youth sports, and physical director for the YMCA. By a 7-2 vote, the school board promptly rejected the name.
Yet by the mid-'40s, Athletic Field was being called Ainsworth, even though the formal dedication wouldn't take place until 1947.
In their 2005 book Baseball in Erie, Mark K. Vatavuk and Richard E. Marshall include a newspaper ad for a game on July 23, 1946, between the Newark Eagles, first-half champions from the Negro National League, versus the Cleveland Buckeyes, from the Negro American League, winner of the 1945 Negro League World Series. The game site is listed as Ainsworth.
The Buckeyes beat the Eagles 8-5 that night, powered by Sam "The Jet" Jethroe, who hit a double, triple, a home run, and stole a base, the book notes. After retiring, Jethroe moved to Erie, played with the Erie Pontiacs, and owned a steakhouse. Future Baseball Hall-of-Fame inductee Larry Doby, who would play for the 1948 World Series Champion Cleveland Indians, was on the Eagles' roster.
Athletic/Ainsworth Field also served as home for Erie's minor league teams – mostly the Erie Sailors but also the Erie Tigers, the Erie Cardinals, and the Erie Orioles – for decades. But in 1990, Major League Baseball spelled out strict facility rules that minor-league ballparks had to meet by 1994. Ainsworth Field failed those standards, and Erie was in danger of losing professional baseball.
"Since 1981, when professional baseball returned to Erie, major league directors and players beefed, to varying degrees, about inadequate facilities at Ainsworth Field, which is owned by the Erie School District," Dave Richards wrote in the Erie Times-News SportsWeek on June 18, 1995.
The long view beyond the outfield at Ainsworth Field is picturesque but problems lurk in the fencing surrounding the ballpark.
Photo: contributed
Justifiable complaints about the condition of Ainsworth Field and its nearby tennis courts continue, as Al Swigonski and Jenn Yauger can attest. Swigonski, a stalwart Erie baseball fan and historian, has long been urging the Erie School District to pay attention to the conditions at Ainsworth Field.
After MLB said that Ainsworth couldn't be salvaged for professional baseball, Team Erie formed in 1990, with Swigonski as president. Team Erie pushed hard for a new baseball stadium and a new minor league team. That's how the Erie SeaWolves came to play in a new downtown ballpark in 1995.
At Community Day, Swigonski will display a timeline about the history of Athletic/Ainsworth Field, along with his baseball card and photo collection. According to his research, interest in a new, first-rate athletic facility for Erie students began in 1911, when faculty members, students and alumni championed the project.
In an Oct. 4, 2020, Erie Times-News op-ed column, "Roosevelt demo offers chance to realize dream," Ann Silverthorn elaborated on that long-ago, big-picture vision. "William E. Dimorier, head of the Erie High English Department, recruited a committee of prominent business leaders who were at first skeptical of the project, but became convinced when they learned that the senior class had donated their entire treasury to the project. The school board agreed to match the students' contributions."
You can read more about her research and the resulting biography, William E. Dimorier: Servant-Leader, at annsilverthorn.com. But suffice it to say that from the beginning, the seed planted to create the sports complex that later became Ainsworth Field was nurtured by strong community involvement.
Sadly, community interest in great ideas often wanes or disappears over time. The Erie School Board has periodically launched plans to fix Ainsworth Field, including with the use of various grants and at a 1980 re-dedication ceremony. But today there is litter outside of Ainsworth and holes in the metal fencing. Sloping near first and third base has been fixed, but "the fence at the bottom in the outfield is still hazardous," said Swigonski. "It curls up at the bottom toward the playing field," he said. "There are also holes in the infield where it's hazardous."
The Glenwood League, an amateur wooden-bat league, moved its games to Girard in 2024 because of the field condition, but has since returned to Ainsworth.
It's also important to recognize what's part of the Ainsworth legacy – six tennis courts to the south of the baseball field – and what no longer exists, Theodore Roosevelt School, opened to the east in 1922, closed in 2007 and demolished in 2020.
Ainsworth should be considered a historic landmark, Swigonski said. "Not just Babe Ruth but a series of other Hall-of-Famers visited Ainsworth. The Negro Leagues used it as a neutral site," he said. "That's a history that needs to be preserved."
In fact, Patterson, New Jersey, recognized the significance of its Negro League ballpark, Hinchcliffe Stadium, and led a $100 million project to restore the field "to its former glory," according to a May 17, 2023, New York Times story.
Fun fact
Greg Coleman, Erie SeaWolves president, pioneered the practice of employing temporary team names when he was assistant general manager for sales and marketing for the minor league team in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The team had rebranded as the Hot Rods but Coleman also liked a goofy name that was rejected before he came on board. He created "What Could Have Been Night," with the Hot Rods morphing into the Bowling Green Cave Shrimp. It won Minor League Baseball's promotion of the year.
Erie's commitment to Ainsworth likely isn't that ambitious, but attention must be paid to the current conditions of both the baseball field and the tennis courts. "The primary thing is making sure our student athletes have a decent place to play. It's as simple as it gets," said Swigonski.
Jenn Yauger, president of the Erie Royals Baseball boosters, would agree. Her concerns about Ainsworth started around 2017, when her older son Tyler, now 23, played baseball there for Erie High. A few years later, her son Jacob, who will be a junior at Erie High, began to play there. "I was disappointed the condition of the field had not improved much," she said.
She emailed the Erie School Board and started speaking up at meetings. Her efforts prompted other parents as well as students to start advocating for Ainsworth.
Community Day developed from that activism.
"Come and experience this place that is so special. It's a celebration of Ainsworth history and also about its future," said Yauger. She hopes people will turn out to help shape the future of Ainsworth – not just for baseball but for tennis. She wants people who attend Community Day to "leave feeling connected to Ainsworth, inspired to help preserve it and invest in what it could become."
Erie School Board President Jay Breneman and tennis coaches Cole Held and Kim Nikolai also have high hopes that Community Day will convince people – regular folks and community leaders – that Erie athletes deserve better.
"The public is encouraged to come out, be a part of it and help determine what the future will be," Breneman said. After hearing from the public and consulting with its architectural firm, the "best case" scenario is that the district will go out for bids for Ainsworth improvements in the spring, he said.
Community Day will also introduce people to the fact that Erie students have a strong and growing interest in playing tennis. "We have athletic programs that many don't know exist," Breneman said. "The tennis families need more support from the district."
Weeds sprout through cracks at the tennis courts at Ainsworth Field. Erie School District tennis players do not have home courts to practice or host meets. Contributed photo.
Nikolai has coached girls' tennis in the Erie District for the last 20 years, yet for all that time, Erie High has not had home tennis courts. Instead, tennis players practice and play at the former Burton School or at Frontier Park. "Community Day provides a tremendous opportunity to shine a spotlight on our tennis programs and the need for quality tennis courts," she said. "We can build awareness, generate excitement and encourage support for a program that will not only benefit our athletes but future generations of students."
Held, who coaches boys' tennis for high school and middle school players, is also pumped about this sport, teaching skills that last a lifetime. "It's one of the few sports where you might see an 85-year-old playing," he said.
Tennis also teaches "overall good character," said Held, who first considered coaching tennis at the suggestion of his wife, Nisha Tamang, even though he hadn't played tennis. He has since plunged into learning as much as he can about the sport and is so enthusiastic that he also coaches tennis at Penn State Behrend.
He's thrilled that tennis is accessible to so many students in the Erie District. Team members speak 12 different languages and are enrolled in programs ranging from honors to life skills. Like Nikolai, Held is an Erie Public Schools math teacher.
Speaking of math brings us back to the story about Babe Ruth's first visit to Erie, on Oct. 28, 1923, when his barnstorming team beat the Erie Moose Club 15-1. Legend has it that Ruth swatted a home run that sailed above the Roosevelt School chimney. In their book, Vatavuk and Marshall wrote that "contrary to popular lore, [Ruth's homer] did not clear the Roosevelt chimney."
Yet Jack Kastner, sports editor of the Erie Dispatch-Herald, wrote the next day that Ruth's feat did occur, but during pre-game practice. "With [Johnny] Scott on the mound, Ruth pasted several over the right field wall, one going over the brick smokestack on Roosevelt school and another going so far in the air that it was difficult to say whether it landed on top of the building or passed completely over."
Baseball mom Jenn Yauger can attest to the staying power of the old Ruth stories. Her son Tyler hit a grand slam out of Ainsworth and "put a few balls on top of the school" during his playing days, putting Tyler in good company with Ruth.
Help Ainsworth
Al Swigonski, former president of Team Erie, is looking for supporters to help decide the fate of historic Ainsworth Field, which is still used by the Erie High Royals baseball team and other leagues. "Ainsworth is a living, breathing disgrace. We should be ashamed it's come to this. Our kids deserve the best," Swigonsnki said.
For detailed accounts of Ainsworth Field's history, consult Baseball in Erie by Mark K. Vatavuk and Richard E. Marshal, and Swigonski's two books, Erie Baseball and Softball 360, volumes one and two.
To learn more about preservation and rehab efforts for Ainsworth Field, email Swigonski at Alswigonski@aol.com.
For more information about Community Day, visit Erie's Public Schools website or email erieroyalsbaseballboosters@gmail.com
Liz Allen, who learned the ins and outs of baseball by attending Erie Sailors games at Ainsworth with her dad, can be reached at lizallenerie@gmail.com
