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Tingley Field (originally named Rio Grande Park) was a baseball stadium in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which served as the home of professional baseball in Albuquerque from 1937 to 1968. It could accommodate 5000 fans, with seating for 3000.
Contents
The stadium was located at the intersection of 10th Street and Atlantic Avenue, across the street from the Rio Grande Zoo.
Design
Tingley Field had a 3000-seat concrete grandstand with a small pressbox which could accommodate only a few people. The outfield wall was built out of adobe. There were several light standards and telephone poles within the stadium itself, which occasionally caused problems for outfielders or interfered with potential home runs. The park was roughly the same size as Albuquerque Sports Stadium (360 feet to left field, 350 feet to right field, and 425 feet to center), though the exact dimensions vary by source.[1][2]
History
The stadium was built during the Depression at a cost of $84,000 USD, using WPA funding secured by governor Clyde Tingley.[3] It opened on April 7, 1937 with a speech by St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey, who praised it as "one of the finest minor league parks in America."[4] This was followed by an exhibition game between the St. Louis-affiliated Albuquerque Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates, which the Cardinals lost. The Class D Cardinals remained at Tingley Field until 1941, when it was closed for the duration of World War II.
Tingley reopened in 1946 with the Albuquerque Dukes, who at that time played in the Class C West Texas-New Mexico League. Apart from a brief hiatus in 1959, the stadium remained the home of various incarnations of the Dukes until 1968, when voters approved the construction of a new stadium in southeast Albuquerque. Tingley Field had begun to show its age, and city officials hoped a larger and more modern ballpark would help the city attract a Triple-A team.[5]
Eventually, the city redeveloped Tingley Field into a public park with softball and football fields. The only remaining parts of the former stadium are the light standards and ticket office.[6] A large concrete baseball that originally sat outside Tingley was moved to Albuquerque Sports Stadium in 1969 and remains on display in front of Isotopes Park.