Today is a significant anniversary in the history of Charleston, but for those who travel up and down MacCorkle Avenue, who go by the site where the structure stood for decades, they may not even be aware that it ever existed at all.
After construction began in 1948, Watt Powell Park opened on this date, April 28th, 1949, at the corner of 35th Street and MacCorkle Avenue.
The opening Watt Powell Park marked the return of pro baseball to Charleston after a five-year hiatus caused by World War II and the destruction of the previous stadium.
Watt Powell, the man, was a driving force in bringing pro baseball to Charleston, founding the original Charleston Senators and instrumental in the construction of Kanawha Park, the city’s first major stadium, which opened on the same site in 1916, but burned to the ground in 1944.
Watt Powell Park was built using concrete and steel, a rarity for minor league parks of that era which were usually made of wood. Watt Powell passed away in February of 1948, just months before the stadium that bore his name officially opened.
But about that that first game, which was originally set for April 27th, 1949, but was postponed a night due to rain, the Charleston Senators outslugged the Saginaw Bears, 11-5. “Dean” Wood and Hobie Landrith both cracked home runs and combined for eight RBIs.
The new stadium was only about 70% complete for Opening Night. The plumbing was still being installed, which likely made for a long night for the 8,000 fans who turned out, far exceeding the official capacity of six thousand.
Over the next five decades, multiple future Hall of Famers, like Dave Parker, Jim Katt, Jim Bunning and Trevor Hoffman represented Charleston-based minor league teams.
But on that first night in 1949, the majority of players on both teams never made it to The Show, but had long careers in the minor leagues, playing for teams like the Welch Miners, the Bluefield Blue-Grays, High Point-Thomasville Hi-Toms or the Elizabethton Betsy Cubs. It was the era before cable television, before color television, when if you wanted to see pro baseball, you had to leave your home and go to the ballpark.
Hard to believe, but it’s been more than twenty years since Watt Powell Park was demolished in 2005. The site where Watt Powell Park stood, where Kanawha Park stood, is now the home of the CAMC Cancer Center.
A historical marker is all that’s left to note the decades of baseball at Watt Powell Park where local fans spent countless summer nights enjoying the crack of the bat, the cool breezes funneling through the valley and trains that marked time, brimming with coal, rumbling past, just beyond the right field wall.
GoMart Ballpark in the city’s East End, is home for baseball in Charleston now, but on this anniversary of Opening Night at Watt Powell Park back in 1949, a tip of the cap, a baseball cap, seems appropriate.