CLEVELAND — Built in 1891, League Park is the place where the Cleveland Indians played for 50 years. It was also once home to the Cleveland Buckeyes — a Negro League Baseball team that played back In the 1940s.
Spectrum News spoke with community member Bob Render on the park’s rich history, and the influence of Cleveland Councilwoman, Fannie Lewis, who died in 2008.
She had a vision and steadfast support for a revitalization project in the city’s Hough neighborhood.
“League Park is one of the only original ball fields that is still intact,” said Render. “It wasn’t destroyed. It didn’t become a parking lot or some new development. It is as it was back when it was created in 1890. You have new stands, things of that nature.”
Lewis’s support for a revitalization project helped save the park and its rich legacy.
“League Park is — I’m not going to even say a ‘diamond in the rough’ — is a jewel of this city, of the state (and) of the nation. and Fannie Lewis to her credit understood that long before the renovations and the money was raised by the current mayor. We have to give him his credit. I think it was like $6 to $8 million to do the refurbishing of the League Park we know today. She had that vision 30 years ago,” said Render.
League Park was once the home to the Cleveland Buckeyes, the city’s Negro League team.
“It educates the kids who knew nothing about the Negro League,” said Render. “We spend all three days talking about the Negro League and the importance and the coming together of the Latino community and the African American community to talk about that history, that legacy and the leadership that took. But like I said, most young kids know nothing about that.”
