Hamtramck Stadium

The photographs on this page, brought to life.

The grandstand from outside in 2012, overgrown and out of use. Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

There is a federal record for this ballpark. It contains no photographs. That is not a note about a filing error. It is the story. Hamtramck Stadium was built in 1930 for the Detroit Stars of the Negro National League, in a small city entirely surrounded by Detroit. It is one of a very small number of Negro League ballparks anywhere in the country that is still standing — the count is usually given as five, and the number keeps threatening to go lower. Turkey Stearnes played here. He hit for average and for power, he could outrun the ball he had just hit, and he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame — elected in 2000, sixty years after he stopped playing and twenty years after he died. Norman Thomas Stearnes worked at the Ford Rouge plant while he played, because playing did not pay enough to only play. The white major leagues were photographed constantly. Every park, every angle, every year, filed and captioned and kept. The Negro Leagues were photographed too, but by fewer people, with less money, for publications with smaller archives, and much of it was simply not kept. When the Historic American Landscapes Survey documented Hamtramck Stadium, what went into the national record was text — a written description of a place, standing in for the pictures that were never taken or never saved. So this page is deliberately empty of images. Every other page on this site has something to look at. This one has the shape of what is missing. Hamtramck has been restoring the field. The grandstand is still there. If you have a photograph of this ballpark — any photograph, any year, a game or a weed-grown outfield or a kid on the mound in 1974 — it is worth more than you think. Add it here. Record: Historic American Landscapes Survey, HALS MI-4, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.