Forbes Field

The Garden and the Gap

Forbes Field opened on June 30, 1909, in Pittsburgh, named for British General John Forbes, who had captured Fort Duquesne from the French in 1758 and established Fort Pitt on the site. The stands were built entirely of concrete and steel — the National League's first concrete-and-steel park, months behind only Philadelphia's Shibe Park — and the park was praised for its drainage and its 25,000-seat capacity, larger than any other field at the time.

The outfield was enormous. Left field stretched 365 feet down the line, right field a short 300, and the deepest point in left-center reached 457 feet. In 1946 the Pirates replaced the left and center field fence with a brick wall and planted ivy at its base. A year later, after Hank Greenberg arrived, the team moved the bullpens to the base of the left field scoreboard, shortening left by roughly 30 feet. The enclosure was nicknamed Greenberg Gardens, then rechristened Kiner's Korner in 1948.

Clemente's Angles

Roberto Clemente made his Pirates debut at Forbes Field in April 1955, playing right field and collecting the first of his 3,000 career hits. The right field he patrolled had a short 300-foot line but a deep right-center gap, and Clemente played the angles off the wall and scoreboard with a precision that turned routine singles into outs. He played parts of sixteen seasons at Forbes Field before the Pirates moved to Three Rivers Stadium in the summer of 1970.

One Pitch

On October 13, 1960, Game 7 of the World Series saw the lead change hands repeatedly before Bill Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth against Ralph Terry with the score tied 9-9. Mazeroski drove Terry's second pitch over the left-center field wall, just left of the 406-foot marker — the only walk-off homer to end a Game 7 in World Series history. The 36,683 fans inside Forbes Field poured onto the field at 3:36 PM.

The Pirates played their final game there on June 28, 1970, sweeping a doubleheader from the Cubs before 40,918 fans, with Bill Mazeroski recording the final putout.

Reporting: Baseball History, Society for American Baseball Research. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.