Slag Pile Field

The "Slag Pile" baseball park shown on George B. Kelley's 1903 "Map of Birmingham, Alabama and Surrounding Suburbs"

Slag Pile Field (also called Baseball Park or West End Park) was a baseball ground located on land west of Alice Furnace and north of the Railroad Reservation on the western edge of Birmingham's original city limit, adjoining Smithfield. The park abutted 7th Street North at 1st Avenue North, south of the Car Line Railroad and north the Alabama Great Southern Railroad tracks

After 1886 the property was owned by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI) . The park earned its nickname for the piles of furnace slag outside the outfield fences, which served as free seating for those who didn't want to pay to sit in the bleachers.

The field and a few wooden bleachers were leased, in 60-day terms, to the first owners of the Birmingham Barons, who played there, when active, from the mid-1880s until the completion of Rickwood Field in 1910.

Ty Cobb, having just attended the trial where his mother was acquitted for killing his father, rejoined his Detroit Tigers teammates in a barnstorming game against the Barons at Slag Pile Field early April 1906.

During a period when the Southern League was inactive, the a banked wooden bicycle race track was constructed in the outfield, re-using the left field bleachers as a grandstand. The Cycle Racing Association held races there during the fall of 1898.

The park also hosted the Alabama and Auburn football teams in the early 1900s, and was the site of the 1902, 1904 and 1905 Iron Bowls.

References

• "Bicycle Racing at Last a Reality" (September 17, 1898) The Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 5
• Barra, Allen (2010) Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark. New York: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 9780393069334
• Leerhsen, Charles (2016) Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. New York: Simon & Schuster ISBN 1451645791, p. 122

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