With Grant Park Softball Dead Where Should Play Move?

Northerly Island, Chicago, IL (above)

By Don DeBat

Second of two articles on the future of softball on Chicago’s lakefront.

It appears that “Chicago’s Game,” 16-inch slow pitch softball, is officially dead at Grant Park after anchoring the historic lakefront location for nearly 100 years.

Following the four-day and night “Lollapalooza” concert event, Grant Park’s cherished softball diamonds were trampled into utter destruction by a total of 400,000-plus concert attendees. When the festival ended, on Sunday, August 2nd, the mega-event was marked by monsoon rains, a sea of slurry, and mud. leaving concert goers standing in ankle-deep ooze.

Last year, organizers spent more than $1 million on cleanup and restoration after Lollapalooza. This year’s costs will likely be higher after all of the heavy rains, said the organizer, “C3 Presents,” which must cover the costs of all resodding and labor. No problem. Gross revenue of $488 million was raised by C3 Presents.

Chicago softball lovers ask: What if Grant Park’s desecrated softball diamonds were razed, a new underground parking garage was built, proper drainage installed, and “The Valley,” between Balbo St. and Roosevelt Rd. east of Columbus Dr., was covered with Astro Turf and dedicated exclusively for concerts?

Post-concert cleanup costs would be greatly reduced. Once the rain water drains off the roof of the garage, the remaining concert debris—beer and wine bottles, decomposing food wrappers, marijuana butts, and articles of soiled clothing could simply be vacuumed up.

Defeated softball lovers have pretty much run their jock straps up the flagpole and surrendered Grant Park. Critics say the cash-strapped city and the Chicago Park District now is focused on leasing public park property for “profit-making” ventures.

As a result, Grant Park, the place once dubbed “the city’s green front yard,” is off limits to the general public for half of the summer. Lollapalooza’s contract with the city of Chicago runs a whopping length of time—through 2032. So, it is time for players to look for greener pastures.

End of a century of softball?

More than 350 softball teams once competed in leagues organized by the Chicago Park District at Grant Park. It once was the biggest slow-pitch venue in the Windy City, where the historic game was born in 1887.

Grant Park softball took a turn for the worse after the tragedy of 9/11. Metered parking along Columbus Drive near the fields was removed for security reasons. Players were forced to park five blocks away and walk to the fields, or take a cab.

Critics noted that the demise of softball at Grant Park really accelerated in 2022, when NASCAR, the redneck racing sport, got the green light on two years of racing. Back in 2022, dozens of teams that have played in the corporate, industrial and saloon leagues at Grant Park for decades were tersely notified that their season had been canceled because of the upcoming NASCAR race, festivals and events.

After years of physical abuse of the dozen softball fields in “The Valley,” true lovers of the historic sport now are asking: Where should elite downtown softball leagues move?

Slats Grobnik’s softball plan

To gain clarity on the history of softball in the Windy City, the Home Front column recently hosted a séance with Slats Grobnik, the alter-ego of the late Mike Royko, famed Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper columnist.

Royko’s Slats was a comically stereotyped working-class Polish-American Chicagoan. If you are too young and uninformed about “Mike and Slats,” google Mike Royko’s Wikipedia file. However, Royko, like Slats, had a great love of softball. He played on his father’s saloon team, the Blue-Sky Lounge in Wicker Park as a teenager.

Slats Grobnik, the imaginary true blue-collar Chicagoan, always recognized the significance of “Chicago’s Game,” and recognized the softball saloon was the epic-center of his neighborhood.

Northerly Island a softball mecca?

Slats’ simple master plan for saving downtown softball is to move the historic Grant Park diamonds east to Northerly Island, a 119-acre man-made peninsula and park located on the city’s lakefront at 12th St.

Originally constructed in 1925, Northerly Island was the former site of the Century of Progress World’s Fair, and later became Meigs Field airport. When Meigs Field was clandestinely removed by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2003, Northerly Island became a recreational, concert, nature and sculpture center, and part of the Museum Campus.

Ironically, a statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Slat’s favorite Polish patriot and Revolutionary War hero, proudly stands on Northerly Island. Today, Kosciuszko Park at Diversey Ave. and Pulaski Rd. still showcases a tough 16-inch softball league. Slats would re-erect the commemorative statue which honors the birth of softball. The marker currently is sitting in a dusty Chicago Park District warehouse.

Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago showed proposed lakefront park and lagoons. The initial plans that led to the construction of Northerly Island were inspired by the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Ironically, only a few years later, the first indoor game of softball was played at Farragut Boat Club at Lake Park Ave. and 31st St., only a couple of miles south of Grant Park.

Work on Northerly Island began in 1920 when Chicago voters approved a $20 million bond issue to create it. Construction was completed by 1925.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) connected the island to the mainland via a causeway at 12th Street in 1938. During this period Northerly Island was full of paths and walkways as well as a beach at 12th Street. Meigs Airport was built on the island after World War II.

Meigs Airport Before/After 2003 Construction (above)

Meigs Airport removed by Daley

In 1994, Mayor Daley announced plans to close the airport and build a park in its place. In 1996, the Chicago Park District, which owned Northerly Island, refused to renew the airport lease. In 2003, Meigs Field was demolished by bulldozers overnight by Mayor Daley, who claimed that safety concerns required the closure, due to the post 9/11 risk of terrorist-controlled aircraft attacking the downtown waterfront.

In December 2010, the Chicago Park District unveiled its framework plan for Northerly Island to be completed over the next 20 to 30 years. In 2015, a 40-acre park opened on the southern part of the island. The park features a concrete trail for walking and bicycle riding, a lagoon, and wildlife habitats.

How to honor Chicago’s Game

While Northerly Island’s current use as a nature preserve is honorable, Slats Grobnik believes its highest and best use is designating the island land to create a first-class softball mecca as a tourist attraction for the city of Chicago.

The park may be home to natural wildlife, including monarch butterflies and herons, it also should be a historic landmark site for “Chicago’s Game,” and the unique urban creatures who play it. Drainage of a small man-made lake on the island would be necessary, but the historic benefits to the world-renowned game of softball are more important, advocates say.

As far as diamond design, softball lovers are advocates of the classic “pinwheel,” where four fields are clustered together in a circle similar to James Park in north suburban Evanston. There should be room for at least three clusters on the island for a total of 12 diamonds. Enough parking exists nearby on Solidarity Dr.

With this design, outfielders would never collide like Grant Park. And, of course, Slats believes the center piece of each four-diamond cluster would be a stand selling cold beer under the lighted fields.

Time for Mike Royko Field?

Pulitzer-prize winning newspaper columnist Mike Royko, who was inducted into the Chicago 16-Inch Softball Hall of Fame in 2000, played hundreds of games at Grant Park between 1974 and 1983.

Royko won many championships while promoting softball, managing and pitching for the HOF Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times teams in the Industrial League. After Royko passed into softball heaven in 1998, in his honor the Chicago Park District created the Mike Royko Softball Tournament, which was played at Grant Park for more than a decade.

Now, 28 years after Royko’s death, Robert Egan, a HOF Sun-Times player and manager—whose elite team was a five-time Royko Tournament champion at the park in the in 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2009—wonders why, along with many of his teammates, the historic lakefront diamonds are not renamed “Mike Royko Field”?

That suggested future honor for Mike Royko and his family—complete with a City Council proclamation and installation of appropriate park signage—should be fielded by Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward), who has an aldermanic prerogative over Northerly Island.

For a good read on the history of softball in Chicago, buy a copy of “The Greatest Game on Dirt” by Al Maag. And, visit the 16-inch Softball Hall of Fame website: http://16inchsoftballhof.com/shop.

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For more softball and housing news, visit www.dondebat.biz. Don DeBat is co-author of “Escaping Condo Jail,” the ultimate survival guide for condominium living. Visit www.escapingcondojail.com. DeBat also is putting the finishing touches on “Chicago’s Game,” a book dedicated to 16-inch softball.