Blair Field
Encyclopedia
Blair Field is a stadium
Stadium
A modern stadium is a place or venue for outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.)Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event...

 in Long Beach, California
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...

. It originally opened in 1956 and is primarily used for baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

. It holds 3,238 people. It is named for Frank Blair, the sports editor for the Long Beach Press-Telegram
Long Beach Press-Telegram
The Press-Telegram is a daily newspaper published in Long Beach, California. Tracing its history to 1897, it is currently published by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a division of newspaper conglomerate MediaNews Group, which purchased the newspaper from Knight Ridder in 1997; Ridder and Knight...

newspaper for 32 years.

Located in Recreation Park, it was constructed in 1958 and over the years has fostered local amateur baseball and hosted Moore League
Moore League
The Harry J. Moore League is a high school sports league in Southern California. It comprises seven schools: six public traditional high schools of the Long Beach Unified School District, and Compton High School...

 high school football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 and baseball
Amateur baseball in the United States
Amateur baseball is a form of baseball in which the players either are not paid for playing, or receive only a modest stipend or employment arranged by the team's boosters...

 teams, along with American Legion
American Legion Baseball
American Legion Baseball is a variety of amateur baseball played by teenage boys in 50 states in the USA. More than five thousand teams participate each year. The American Legion Department of South Dakota established the program in 1925 at Milbank, South Dakota...

 and Connie Mack baseball. The Chicago Cubs
Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago . The Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the National...

 baseball team held spring training at the ballpark in 1966
1966 Chicago Cubs season
The Chicago Cubs season was the 94th in franchise history. One of the defining trades in Cubs history occurred on April 21, when the Cubs acquired future Cy Young Award winner Ferguson Jenkins in a trade with the Philadelphia Phillies.- Offseason :...

, the Los Angeles Rams football team and Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 teams have used the site for practice or exhibition game
Exhibition game
An exhibition game is a sporting event in which there is no competitive value of any significant kind to any competitor regardless of the outcome of the competition...

s.

It is the home of the Long Beach State 49ers baseball
Long Beach State 49ers baseball
The Long Beach State 49ers Baseball team is the college baseball program that represents California State University, Long Beach. Unlike all other Long Beach State sports teams, since 1989 the baseball team has unofficially gone by the name The Dirtbags....

 team, the Dirtbags, and the Golden Baseball League
Golden Baseball League
The Golden Baseball League, based in San Ramon, California, was an independent baseball league. It later merged with the Northern League and the United Baseball League to form the North American League in the western United States, western Canada and Mexico....

 team, the Long Beach Armada
Long Beach Armada
The Long Beach Armada was an independent professional baseball team based in Long Beach, California, in the United States. The Armada was a member of the North Division of the now-defunct Golden Baseball League, which was not affiliated with either Major League Baseball or Minor League Baseball...

.

In 1992, $1.475 million was spent to renovate the 3,238-seat facility. New spectator seating, field lights, a playing field with state-of-the-art drainage system, and turf which exceeds professional baseball standards were installed. Additional improvements, including 774 new box seats and a new scoreboard, were made in 1999.

Blair Field has hosted six MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 Rock N' Jock softball games. It has also has been the filming location for numerous film, TV, and commercial productions, including the movie Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...

.

The Minnesota Vikings
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Vikings joined the National Football League as an expansion team in 1960...

 practiced at Blair Field prior to Super Bowl XI
Super Bowl XI
Super Bowl XI was a football game played on January 9, 1977 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California to decide the National Football League champion following the 1976 regular season...

 in nearby Pasadena
Rose Bowl (stadium)
The Rose Bowl is an outdoor athletic stadium in Pasadena, California, U.S., in Los Angeles County. The stadium is the site of the annual college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl, held on New Year's Day. In 1982, it became the home field of the UCLA Bruins college football team of the Pac-12...

.

External links

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