MLB | The Only Ballpark Inside a National Park (Hinchliffe Stadium, Paterson)

Hinchliffe Stadium sits on a bluff directly above the Great Falls of the Passaic River, which is an odd place to put a ballpark and the reason it survived. Paterson opened it on 8 July 1932 as a municipal stadium, 10,000 seats, Art Deco with Mission touches, launched with a pageant of 1,500 people. The horseshoe bowl was modelled loosely on the Polo Grounds. Promoters noticed early that crowds grew when visiting Black clubs played. In 1933 the stadium hosted part of that year's Colored Championship of the Nation, and from the following season Negro Leagues baseball at Hinchliffe became regular. The New York Black Yankees made it a home ground, the New York Cubans played here, and the Newark Eagles used it on occasion. Published season ranges for those tenancies disagree with one another, so treat any precise span you read with caution. Somewhere between eleven and twenty future Hall of Famers played on this field, depending on whose count you take. Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Monte Irvin and Judy Johnson are on every list. So is a local. Larry Doby grew up in Paterson, graduated from Eastside High, and was given a tryout with the Newark Eagles at Hinchliffe in 1942. On 5 July 1947 he debuted for Cleveland as the first Black player in the American League, eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson in the National. The stadium closed in the mid-1990s and sat empty for roughly a quarter of a century, weeds through the infield and beams propping up the stands. It went on the National Register in 2004 and was designated a National Historic Landmark on 11 March 2013, the highest status the federal government confers. The 2009 legislation that created Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park brought it inside a national park, which makes it the only professional sports venue in the United States sitting within one. It reopened on 19 May 2023 after a restoration costing somewhere around $100 million, with a Negro Leagues museum on site. The New Jersey Jackals of the Frontier League play here now, alongside high school sport, graduations and concerts. How many Negro Leagues ballparks still stand is a genuinely contested number, from about five to twelve depending on whether you count parks that hosted only occasional league games. Hinchliffe, Rickwood Field in Birmingham and Hamtramck Stadium in Detroit are the three with the longest league use, and all three are in this collection. Hinchliffe is in Paterson, New Jersey, on the bluff above the Great Falls, inside Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. Coordinates from OpenStreetMap. Cover: Hinchliffe Stadium after restoration, photographed by Quintin Soloviev, 2026, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the stadium in November 2020, before the work was done, photographed by Parkerjh, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.