Rebel Stadium

To me at eleven, Rebel Stadium was hugely exciting and an extremely beautiful and colorful place. A fence 20 feet high went all around the outfield, and, except for the solid green of center field and the scoreboard, there was a double row of advertizing billboards everywhere on it. The infield and outfield grass were kept green throughout the hot and dry days of summer. The pitcher's mound and the area around home plate were made of the the orangish, clayish looking stuff like ballparks today, but the infield was native dirt, solid black. Add white bases and foul lines and you had quite a colorful setting for baseball.

My memory is that the grandstand roof didn't extend quite as far as first base or third base, but I certainly could be mistaken.

Texas was racially segregated in those days, and the law requiring separation was, of course, in effect at the stadium. About a third of the way between homeplate and third base there was a divider seperating the white and colored sections. I believe I remember a fence made of a pipe or two going from top of the stands to the bottom, but there might have been something else as well. Dallas used the third base dugout in '46 and the first base one in '47. I figured they probably alternated like that to be close to both groups of fans.

In '47 they added bleachers in right field that extended out into fair territory. I sat out there a couple of times hoping to snag a home run.

Rebel Stadium seated about ten thousand people, maybe eleven after the bleachers in right were added. I was a part of several large crowds there. Dallas playing Ft. Worth could pack the place even on a clear Sunday afternoon in mid-July under a blazing sun.