League Park III (later, Bain Field) was used primarily as a minor league baseball park, but also saw heavy usage as a neutral site location for football games in Norfolk. It was also used as a home field by Old Dominion from roughly 1930-1940. League Park III was located between 18th Street, 20th Street, and Church Street [1] [6] [7]. It replaced Lafayette Field and Norfolk Athletic Park, and was ultimately replaced by High Rock Park.

Overall, NC State had a record of 3-9-1 at this field, playing only Virginia teams in neutral site matchups.

See also: Fields of Norfolk.

  * Non-conference games

When the Norfolk & Western Railroad purchased the land of the Norfolk Athletic Park, they simultaneously purchased new land for the construction of League Park III. The park opened halfway through the 1913 Virginia League baseball season, with a handful of games being relocated due to Norfolk's temporary lack of a field. The original park had a grandstand capacity of 3,000, with additional bleacher seating; the bleachers were scavenged from the demolished Lafayette Field, which sat just across Church Street [1] [2] [3]. Because it was rebuilt close to and using parts of old Lafayette Field, it was briefly called Lafayette Field; this lasted only from opening on June 9th, 1913 until it was formally chistened as League Park on June 23rd [23].

The park was initially detested by local fans, who called it "an abortion" and a general embarassment to the town. The outfield was described as "full of holes and uneven places." There were no fences separating the field and stands for much of the park's life, meaning the grounds were easy for angry fans to rush. The field was built so close to the rails that "a cloud of locomotive smoke obscures the play every time a train passes." And possibly worst of all, it was incredibly small: the distance from home to the left field wall was just 235 feet, while the right field was encroached upon by the negro bleachers -- any ball hit into the section which encroached on play was ruled a double [13].

In fact, the venue was so small that in its first season of operation, rumors emerged that the NC State-Washington & Lee game would be relocated "because the smallness of League Park... made the laying off of a gridiron properly [difficult]." Even though the rumors were quashed early, they turned out to be well-founded: the field was found to be "five yards short behind the northeast goal line," and that "the lines had been drawn irregularly" to boot. The game was played nonetheless [15].

In 1921, additional bleachers were built, pushing the capacity to 5,000 persons, and by 1922 the park had "ample seating capacity... for around 8,000 spectators" [9]. In 1926, the field was enlarged once again, pushing the venue's baseball capacity to 7,000, making it the largest park in the Virginia League; it was believed the park could be modified to hold 12,000-15,000 persons in football configuration, including about 10,000 seats (though only about 5,800 were considered "choice" seats for football) [10].

The field burnt down in August 1930, but was rebuilt and renamed Bain Field in October 1930 in honor of Phillip Davis Bain, head of the American Peanut Corporation, who had passed in February 1930 at age 69. Bain owned the property on which the park stood [4] [5]. The rebuilt stands could hold about 7,500 persons; these went largely unmodified, aside from a minor renovation in 1935, when the Yankees helped cover additional sections of the stands with a roof [11] [12].

By the late 1930s, improvements to the degading park were becoming increasingly necessary; the Yankees threatened to move the Tars to Portsmouth unless Norfolk invested $100,000 into renovating the field after a series of storms damaged the field in the late 1930s. Though it was proposed the whole plant be torn down and rebuilt in 1939, it was eventually decided that a new park, High Rock Park, would be built instead. The park was used right up to the bitter end, when a fire broke out in the colored section of the bleachers during what were already scheduled to be the grounds' final professional games [6] [14].

Pictures of League Park III

Sadly, images from the 1913-1930 era of League Park have been difficult to come by, and the extant images are not terribly illustrative of the field due to either the quality of the image or the content captured. Identifying field orientations is also difficult because the field was often rearranged; for example, in 1914, "The field was rearranged yesterday so the gridiron parallels the right field bleachers. The grandstand was cut in two, and half of it moved back, so the field could be shifted. The third base bleachers were moved, so they are also parallel with the playing field" [16]. Originally, however, the stands were arranged "just as they [were] on the old Lafayette Field before the layout was changed," meaning batters faced southwest, and the grandstand located at the intersection of Rugby and Elmwood. Note that the Griffin Brothers building discussed below sat between near the intersection of Church and the N&W Railroad, along Rugby and Elmwood [24].