Jason Fry's Dorkery
I write stuff. I do stuff. Some of it's even cool.
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Love this George Steinmetz photo of a house in Namibia being overtaken by dunes. It’s like “Rooms by the Sea” after a Biblical drought. (From National Geographic; more here.)
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Great David Griner story at Poynter about an arresting image of a KKK toddler and a black state trooper. I’m a words guy, but the best photos awe me with their power and their elusive meaning. You could look at this photo for hours and talk about it for days.
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Hey look! A wall!
It’s not just any wall, though. This is what remains of Washington Park, the home of the Federal League’s Brooklyn Tip-Tops. The Tip-Tops played there in 1914 and 1915, with their final game a 3-2 loss to the Buffalo Blues on Sept. 30. Washington Park was built as a near-exact replica of Chicago’s Weeghman Park, which also opened in 1914. Weeghman Park has been extensively renovated, but baseball is still played there — it’s now known as Wrigley Field.
Washington Park was the second venue on the site (and third in the immediate area) to bear the name — its wooden predecessor was home to the National League’s Brooklyn club, who played there from 1898 through 1912 before heading a few miles east to Ebbets Field. Brooklyn’s final year at the site saw the debut of a 21-year-old outfielder named Casey Stengel. Before he was done, Stengel would also play for the Giants and manage the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets — the only man to wear the uniform of all four major-league New York clubs.
Wait a minute, there was yet another Washington Park? Yep — that was the name of a park located catercorner to this one, on the site of what’s now J.J. Byrne Park. The forerunners of the Dodgers played there from 1883 to 1890. (For more on the history of the three Washington Parks, go here and here.)
If you want to visit the wall yourself, it starts at the intersection of 3rd Avenue and 1st Street, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.
So, yeah: Hey look! A wall!
