Home of the Senators and Solons

For 50 years, there was a ball park at Riverside and Broadway in Sacramento, although it did not always have the same structure or the same name.

Buffalo Park, named after the Buffalo Brewing Company owned by the team's major stockholder Edward Kripp, was built in 1910. It became the new home of the Sacramento Senators of the Pacific Coast League. The wooden grandstand and bleachers seated 5,000 fans.

After Lew Moreing purchased the club in 1920, a new park named Moreing Field was built at the same location in 1922. Its concrete and wooden grandstand accommodated 10,000 fans in addition to those in the bleachers. The first night game in the Pacific Coast League was played there between the Sacramento Senators and the Oakland Oaks on June 10, 1930.

Branch Rickey, then of the St. Louis Cardinals, purchased the franchise in 1935, and renamed the park Cardinal Field and the team the Sacramento Solons. In the winter of 1938, a storm damaged the entrance and roof of the grandstand and it had to be rebuilt for the 1939 season.

HISTORY 1910 - Buffalo Park 1922 - Moreing Field 1935 - Cardinal Field 1944 - Doubleday Park 1945 - Edmonds Field

A newspaper contest in 1944 resulted in renaming the park Doubleday Park, after Abner Doubleday, but on September 9, 1945, between games of a doubleheader, it was renamed Edmonds Field, after former Sacramento Union sports editor Dick Edmonds.

A fire almost totally destroyed the park on July 11, 1948, and the Solons were forced to play the rest of the season on the road. The park was reconstructed almost entirely of concrete, and reopened for the 1949 season.

On January 4, 1961, the Solons were sold and moved to Hawaii, and Edmonds Field was demolished in May of 1964.

Copyright © 2003. William B.Shubb.