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The Dispatch wrote
As long as the tales survive, Cooper Stadium will live on
Monday, September 1, 2008
BY JIM MASSIE
The county stadium on Mound Street has been home to baseball in Columbus since 1932. The Clippers will play their last game there tonight; next year, the team will move to the new Huntington Park in the Arena District.
A ballpark exists beyond the bricks, mortar and steel. I’ve felt the heartbeat of an awakening Cooper Stadium three hours before the first pitch and heard the quiet breathing of the place as it bedded down well past midnight. Ghosts, maybe; place memory, perhaps, but the sensations always comforted me. I don’t think I’m alone. The stories are what bind us.
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Wow. The Dispatch had three reporters with the same story today.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
BY JIM MASSIE
The people packed the house last night to say a final goodbye to Cooper Stadium in the manner of old friends parting.
In the minutes following the Toledo Mud Hens’ 3-0 victory over the Columbus Clippers, the fans lingered. They took the last opportunity to run the bases or to play catch in the outfield on what has served as the local field of dreams since 1932.
Seventy-six years and 4,697 games after the stadium opened on W. Mound Street, the Clippers are moving their baseball business to Huntington Park in the Arena District next season. The prospect of a fresh, new ballpark holds the excitement of Christmas morning for many.
Yet the affection felt for the Coop, even with all its well-earned wrinkles, showed in the overflow crowd of 16,770 fans. The third-largest crowd in stadium history moved the total attendance to more than 22.5 million fans.
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
BY JEREMY MCLAUGHLIN
The excitement in Cooper Stadium began to build early yesterday afternoon. Fans started arriving three hours before the Clippers’ finale against Toledo. A steady stream followed into the third inning.
Tucked away in their clubhouse, the Clippers tried to follow their daily routine. Most relaxed, a few took extra swings in the cage, and the rest finished cleaning out their locker. But they were not oblivious to the anticipation growing outside. This wouldn’t be an ordinary game.
“We can sense it,” first baseman Larry Broadway said. “We’ve been getting a little more fanfare and there’s more hype about this game. It’s always good to see more faces in the crowd.”
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
BY BOB HUNTER
Cooper Stadium was never formally introduced to me. I slipped through an open gate and said hello to the old park in the mid-1970s when the field was a weed patch and the grandstand looked like it might not last another five years.
The fact that the Jets had been gone for four or five years and the stadium’s only occupants were insects and rodents was no deterrent to me. Old baseball parks were a peculiar love of mine, and it was important to see the place before I awoke one morning and discovered it had been torn down.
The place was quiet, gray and more than a little depressing. The field where Enos Slaughter and Willie Stargell slugged their way into successful major-league careers looked like a good place to hunt wildflowers or pick blackberries. The Red Birds and Jets were buried here, memories of hundreds of old stars were buried here, and no one seemed to care. The irony of that day wasn’t lost on me last night. With the stands packed with people and hundreds more sitting and standing beyond the outfield fences — remember when the San Diego Chicken drew a crowd of 20,131 that looked just like that on July 17, 1980? — Cooper Stadium was anything but a graveyard. The place was jammed with 16,770 fans who wanted to celebrate the memories that seemed to haunt the place on my first visit, and they had 32 more years of happy memories to add.
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