Aurora Park, also known as the Dale and Aurora Grounds or Comiskey Park, was Frogtown’s minor league baseball park. In 1895 Charles Comiskey started Saint Paul’s team in the fledgling Western League. Comiskey was one of the great first basemen of his day. While retiring from active play Comiskey decided to start a team, the Saint Paul Saints. He did play 17 games for his team so the retirement was sporadic.
In spring 1895 he began building a ball park in the area bounded by Dale and St. Albans streets, and Aurora and Fuller avenues. The grandstand and bleachers seated 3,000 spectators.
Comiskey quickly discovered that people would rather watch games for free from a nearby hillside. He put up additional bleachers to block the view. On the morning of the first regular-season game, Tuesday, May 7, 1895, the St. Paul Pioneer Press stated, "The advantageous position on the hill has been blocked by a high row of seats on that corner of the park, and that congregation of person who would otherwise probably not pay their half-dollar to see the game will be disappointed."
Small children then began boring holes in the ballpark fence, more than 200 holes in all. Comiskey fought back by building a second fence, six inches inside the first one.
But a bigger problem was the outcry from folks who opposed Sunday baseball as sinful. Foes got a judge to grant an injunction prohibiting Sunday games, so Comiskey had to move games to Minneapolis and to a ballpark on Saint Paul’s West Side. He held Sunday games elsewhere in 1895 and 1896, moving all games to the new Lexington Park at Lexington Parkway and university Avenue in 1897. Lexington soon replaced Aurora Park and the land was sold for other uses.
]]>- The dispute between Charles Comiskey and orgainzed labor over the opening of Lexington Park -
On April 30, 1897, St. Paul's legendary Lexington Baseball Park opened to the public for the first time, the start of nearly 60 years as the site of professional baseball. One hundred years ago professional baseball was the sporting entertainment for the urban masses, many of whom were deeply affected by the resurgent labor movement of the last two decades of the 19th century. Those who put their wares before the city working classes strove not to offend the new unions and their enthusiastic adherents. Boycotts and protests against non-union enterprises by labor-oriented consumers were vigorous and frequent.
Baseball entrepreneur Charles Comiskey was the beneficiary of the construction of the new St. Paul ballpark, located at the southwest corner of Lexington and University Avenues, by a Buffalo, N.Y. capitalist named Edward B. Smith, who put $75,000 of his own money into the park, big money in those days. This, of course, was at a time when no one would have dreamed of asking for public money for such a facility.
Manager Comiskey who became the focus of a crescendo of complaints from St. Paul unions. At a meeting of St Paul's Trades and Labor Assembly in early April, a complaint against the manner of constructing the park, initiated by the Carpenters Union, was referred to the Building Trades Council. A particularly sharp grievance emanated from Local 20 of the Theatrical Stage Employees Union, who were engaged in a struggle with the management of the Metropolitan Theater over the employment of union stagehands. As a result of the dispute a boycott had been placed on the theater by organized labor, and the local was incensed when it learned that a sign advertising the Metropolitan was to go up in Lexington Park in time for opening day.
A special committee was appointed to visit Comiskey to raise these and other grievances -- asking additionally that only union label cigars be sold at the park and that only union musicians be employed at the ballpark. However, all did not go smoothly. The band Comiskey employed on opening day had misrepresented itself to him as a union group. Non-union cigars were on sale. The sign was still on the outfield fence. The Metropolitan sign had been placed in the park, Comiskey said, because he had been "hoodwinked" by the theater manager. Comiskey, the committee reported, claimed he had rented the space to a wily entrepreneur who had then sublet it to the Metropolitan over his protests. The Assembly notified Comiskey that if the sign did not come down, a boycott would be instituted.
At the May 14 meeting the baseball committee reported progress "but no assurance of a satisfactory settlement," and the boycott was imposed. Shortly afterward the sign came down. Comiskey wrote to the Assembly stating that "the Met has did just what it agreed to with me in regard to my fences and will put no sign on it." At the May 28 meeting of the Assembly the boycott was officially declared off. And finally, on July 16 James Nelson, Local 20's secretary, reported that as a result of labor's boycott the Metropolitan Opera House had closed for the season.
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