Like a pitcher, baseball fan and home brewer Ken Finnigan threw himself a change-up six years ago. The California civil engineer abandoned his desire to establish a brewery and, instead, began making beer coasters celebrating defunct major league baseball stadiums.
“Beer coasters were simply the most achievable way to display and celebrate defunct baseball stadiums rather than the heavy lift of setting up a brewery to celebrate the ballparks,” Finnigan explains.
Ken Finnigan, the author of a book about sites where major league baseball stadiums once stood, ... [+]
The coasters are displayed in Finnigan’s new 112-page hardcover book Remembering Torn-Down Ballparks Over a Cold Beer. The book is filled with information about 34 defunct stadiums and the sites where they once stood.
Finnigan initially planned — from 2015-2018 — to brew and sell beers with defunct baseball stadium names. He applied for trademarks for the beers, but Major League Baseball was opposed, he says.
His trademark attorney reached a settlement with Major League Baseball, Finnigan says, that allowed him to register beers with defunct ballpark names but prohibited him from using team logos. In early 2018, Finnigan encountered financial obstacles that blocked his brewery idea and decided to “pursue an idea to create coasters as a baseball-nostalgia and art-design project.”
He put a trademarked beer name on each coaster and sells 35 different coasters on his Classic Park Brew website and an eBay store. A coaster celebrating the Chicago White Sox’s former stadium, for example, calls itself “Comiskey Park Cream Ale.” The coaster includes a photo of Comiskey Park and information about its years in operation and what occupies the site today.
Finnigan, who grew up on Long Island, says his favorite sites of defunct stadiums are Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn stadium that once was home of the Dodgers, and the Polo Grounds, the Manhattan stadium where the Giants once played. Apartment buildings stand on the sites, and signs prohibit ball playing, he says.
He recommends trips by other travelers to the defunct ballpark sites.
“Each time I visited a site, I had a sense of being at a sacred, hallowed ground, like some historic battlefield,” Finnigan says. “But it’s without the bloody aftermath, although some games saw spikes flying into opponents. Like entering a time warp to imagine the stadiums that once rose up, you also get a sense of a void now left in the venue's absence. While slightly somber to consider, it is intriguing. You can see the neighborhood and try to envision the crowds, grandstands, field, vendors and ballplayers within the site. You may also locate landmarks that were visible during the ballpark's heyday.”
Author Ken Finnigan, who wrote a book about sites of defunct major leagie baseball stadiums, stands ... [+]
Finnigan moved permanently to California in 1988, while attending Long Beach State University. He graduated with a civil engineering degree, worked in engineering until 2020 and has lived in Carlsbad since 1993.
Finnegan remembers sitting inside eight stadiums in his book, watching games before the ballparks were razed. They were Comiskey Park, New York’s Shea Stadium, Detroit’s Briggs/Tiger Stadium, San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, Milwaukee’s County Stadium, Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium and San Diego Stadium.
A common theme at past and present ballparks is ice-cold beer, Finnigan says.
“Rarely has there been an inning passed without a hot dog, roasted peanuts or cold brew,” he posts on his Classic Park Brew website. “With this commemorative line of coasters depicting classic torn-down stadiums, Classic Park Brew is that place to celebrate the sports venues that relied upon ice-cold, crafted beer to quench the thirst of ballpark spectators.”
Today, Finnigan isn’t a dedicated fan of any Major League Baseball team.
“I root for stadiums more than teams,” Finnigan says. “If the teams with the older classic stadiums are in the playoffs — such as the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field and the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park — I root for them.”
