Minnesota baseball lovers make a pitch to honor bygone ballpark, 2 historic St. Paul teams

Sitting on a frontage road perched above the interstate, hemmed by roads and nondescript government buildings near the Capitol, 12th and Robert streets in St. Paul isn’t much to look at. But in 1903, this was the place to be if you loved baseball. 

There, the St. Paul Saints and the St. Paul Colored Gophers — two of the city’s historic baseball teams — played at the Pillbox, sometimes called the “Downtown Ball Park,” a popular venue almost laughably small for baseball.

"It was a tiny ballpark,” said Stew Thornley, a local baseball historian who’s seeking approval this year for a plaque to commemorate the Pillbox and its history in St. Paul.

"Even if you hit a ball over the fence, right down the line, it was worth only two bases,” he said. “There were another set of poles out to left and right center field. You had to get it more to center field and over the fence for it to be considered a home run."

Home plate faced northwest, at what would be the site of the state Capitol, which was completed in 1905, two years after the Pillbox opened.

While the Saints history is well-known, historians say the Colored Gophers were key to the history of Black baseball in Minnesota and across the country. They played a decade before the formation of the Negro Leagues.

"They are probably one of the greatest baseball teams, white or Black, in Minnesota history,” said Frank White, who wrote a book about Black baseball history in Minnesota. "And in terms of Black baseball, they are, for sure, the team.” 

Starting in 1907, the St. Paul Colored Gophers wrapped up a four-year run with a 380-89-2 record — winning more than 80 percent of their games — under legendary team owner Phil “Daddy” Reid, according to the Center for Negro League Baseball Research.

Reid sought the fastest ball players he could find from around the country and paid them. The result was dominance, White said. The team beat the Saints in a 1907 unofficial state championship. 

In a series that was called the Black World Series by some, the Colored Gophers hosted Chicago’s Leland Giants, one of the best Black baseball teams in the country, for a five-game series at the Pillbox, with Minnesota winning the series three games to two.

Among the notable players on the Gophers were "Steel Arm” Johnny Taylor, William "Big Bill" Bill Gatewood and Bobby Marshall, who had played football for the Minnesota Gophers. Marshall happened to be one of the most famed Minnesota athletes at the time.

Telling ‘the hidden history of Black baseball’

After the 1910 season, Bobby Marshall bought the St. Paul Gophers. The team changed its name to the Twin Cities Gophers. The ballpark on Lexington Avenue near University Avenue became more popular and the Pillbox soon closed. It's such a distant memory that it has been forgotten by most.

But not by Thornley. He has applied to put up a memorial plaque next to the Minnesota Department of Health laboratory where the park once stood.

"It's got greater significance than just to somebody like me who loves baseball, loves the old ballparks,” he said.

“The chance to tell the story, the story of baseball, the story of the ballpark, but especially with the hidden history of Black baseball … many people here in Minnesota have been digging that history out and telling those stories. And this is one more way to do that,” Thornley said.

He and others have worked to get plaques up at other baseball sites around the Twin Cities. But the application for the Pillbox site is more time-consuming than most. 

That’s because it sits on the Capitol complex and has to go through the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board. On top of that, it is the first application received since the board created a new multistep application procedure.

The new process was put into place after the Christopher Columbus statue outside the Capitol was torn down by protesters in June 2020. The new process was put into place to make sure there is ample opportunity for public input on things being added or removed to the Capitol grounds. 

The staff at the Capitol architectural board say the application process for the marker for the Pillbox could take six to eight months, or longer.

"It's definitely a more involved process,” said Tina Chimuzu, a planning fellow at the CAAPB. She says the board considers many factors in applications, including whether it has public support.

“Documented public support for the artwork, and the artwork has to have lasting statewide significance for Minnesotans,” she said. “And then the artwork has to be respectful of the diversity of Minnesotans. And then, does viewing the artwork provide a rich experience to broaden the understanding of Minnesota-shared history, heritage and culture?"

Erik Cedarleaf Dahl, executive secretary for the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board, said the team works to confirm and fact-check everything in the application. The goal is to learn as much as possible about it in their own research. 

"With limited space on the Capitol Mall, we want to make sure that what we're putting there is totally accurate, especially if you're going to go through this,” he said. “To ask taxpayers dollars to spend this time on this … we want to make sure that it is accurate and the process is effective."

Public input on the application for the Pillbox field plaque is open until May 5.

If all goes as planned, the plaque could be up this fall, although it still has several more fences to clear.

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