Washington Park
Santa Clara, CA
Review by Mike
Washington Park is a bit of a mystery, at least to me. This classic old ballpark, built in 1935, has a lovely, covered grandstand, a well-maintained field and looks like it should ooze with history and notoriety, except that… I’d never heard of it before. Browsing the internet, I can find a few folks who mention it, but mostly there is… silence.
Perhaps this is because only one professional team ever played there, the 1979 Santa Clara Padres of the California League, who were an ad-hoc team added that season to create an even number of teams and actually played many of their home games in San Jose due to scheduling conflicts at Washington Park.
The ballpark is easy to miss. You can’t see it from the road because it is in the middle of a large rectangle of land that houses an elementary school, middle school, football field, offices and houses on the periphery. You could drive by a hundred times and never know a WPA-era ballpark is just over there.
Sadly, I was not able to get inside, but a walk around the exterior yielded these shots, which show a really substantial roof covering wooden bench seating for about a thousand fans. There are no additional open-air bleachers as maintenance buildings and, possibly, clubhouses line both sides beyond the grandstand. Real, below grade dugouts are on either side and a nice scoreboard is in left-center. The ballpark faces southwest, which I can only imagine leads to some challenges for hitters in the late afternoon. There are banners on the exterior highlighting many “Pony League” championships through the years.
Doing what we do, we always know that there is the chance we won’t get inside a place we are just driving by, but, for me, this one was a tough miss. Washington Park appears to be well-cared for and well-used, tucked away out of sight, aging gracefully, a hidden gem and a well-kept secret. Shhh… don’t tell anybody.
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2024
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N/A
A Ballpark Brothers reader, David Currie, was nice enough to send in a couple of photos from inside Washington Park, as I was not able to get in myself. He also sent an historical flyer about the ballpark. These items were sent as a tribute to Chuck Blair. From David...
"Chuck Blair was the coach of I think 5 world titles of Palomino Baseball - Washington park hosted a few World Series events. Chuck Blair also coached on that field with Santa Clara high school teams for many years."
Our thanks to David for the content and to Chuck Blair for his years of service to youth baseball.
I grew up in Campbell CA (I'm 65) which is also a suburb of San Jose, and played many games there. It was primarily used for High Schools, and leagues through the Santa Clara PONY organization. In the late 1960s through the 1970s , Campbell and Santa Clara were arguably the best youth baseball areas in the country. Santa Clara Briarwood won the LL World Series in 1969 and Campbell lost the LL World Series championship game in 1970,1976, and 1979. Washington Park is usually in pretty good shape. Maintained, limited use, never played on when wet.
- Michael Laross Coggan, Campbell, CA
Spent a lot of time at this park in the early mid- sixties...They used to have semi-pro games there. You walked up a ramp to get to the stands. Bunch of us boys stood at top of ramp waiting for foul balls that went over top of stadium onto the street. We would fly down the ramp and scramble to get the ball. If you got one you handed to the ump through a small square opening right in the wood right below the screen. At the end of the game you got a quarter for every foul ball you returned. They also used to give us the cracked bats after the game! Great memories!
- Mark Dunn