Brand New Bull Yard

The Hackensack Bulls, in dramatic fashion, wait until the league deadline to grab Crosley Field for their inaugural season. The Bulls will be the newest member of the National League North Division.

Crosley Field was a green-carpeted oasis in the middle of the brick and smokestack-filled desert that is Cincinnati's deteriorating West End. The cozy, tightly carved ballpark fitted snugly into its neighborhood, the angled streets that surrounded it, oozing charm and personality, simplicity and intimacy from its every nook and cranny. The famous flag pole in left center field, for instance, was 82 feet high, and was in play - occasionally it would knock back a monster shot that would have been a home run anywhere else. Buildings marked "Merchants Paper" and "Lackner Neon Signs" stood sentry over the center and right-center field walls on Western Avenue. Billboards dotted the right-center field skyline, hawking attractions and products like Coney Island, Hudepohl Beer ("Get moody with Hudy"), Shillito's department stores, Young & Bertke sheet metal company, Coca-Cola and Petri wine.

The Luebbers/Rohr Replica: Crosley Field was abandoned by the Reds for Riverfront Stadium - home plate was transported to the new multipurpose ballpark, and many of the other parts were auctioned off. The city of Cincinnati impounded towed cars there before it was torn down. Much of the park was bought by a Reds fan named Larry Luebbers, and he began the task of reconstructing the park - life-size - on his farm in nearby Union, Kentucky. His version had about 400 seats, the 40-foot incline near the outfield wall that served as a warning track, the 60-foot flag pole from left-center field, the scoreboard, the ticket office and some of the original walls.
Unfortunately, a fate befell Luebber's recreation that many baseball card collectors are all too familiar with - his mother sold the land and the old Crosley was thrown out as garbage. Luckily, another fan named Mark Rohr found a few of Luebber's pieces in a faraway dump site, and he began gathering the missing pieces. Bit by bit, Crosley has risen again - this time in Blue Ash, Ohio, about an hour from downtown Cincinnati - and by 1988 it was substantially revived.