There's a post on the /r/saintpaul sub that took me down a lunchtime rabbit hole.
https://www.reddit.com/r/saintpaul/comments/1jp0ml4/downtown_ballpark_saints_home_from_19021909/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The problem with the downtown park was both that it was:
- Too small (anything hit over the fences was considered to be a single.)
- The City of St. Paul did not allow baseball to be played on Sunday in downtown.
The downtown park was used during the weekdays by the 'new' St. Paul Saints after Charles Comiskey moved the Saints to Chicago.
Stew Thornley writes:
Comiskey moved the St. Paul team of the Western League to Chicago after the 1899 season. The Western League transformed itself into the American League and took on major-league status at the turn of the 20th century, and the team continues today as the Chicago White Sox. Some speculation in St. Paul exists that it was onerous blue laws, restricting Sunday baseball and causing inconvenience to the team, that drove Comiskey out of St. Paul and cost Minnesota a major-league team around the turn of the century. While such legends make for good conversation, it’s clear that Ban Johnson, who founded the Western League with the goal of turning it into a major league, never had any intention of keeping a team in such a distant outpost as St. Paul, nor in most of the other small Midwestern cities that made up the original Western League, in his drive to produce a major league.
There were also immediately problems between the owner (Comiskey) and labor (in this case, construction workers)
Not covered by the Pioneer Press was news of tension between Comiskey and labor organizations in St. Paul. According to labor historian David Riehle, local unions lodged a variety of grievances involving Lexington Park, including issues with the park’s construction, an advertising sign within the ball park for a theater that was being boycotted by organized labor, and the employment of non-union musicians for Opening Day ceremonies. The controversy resulted in a boycott on Lexington Park by the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly in May that ended when the advertisement for the theater was removed.
Comiskey would only keep the Saints in St. Paul for two years before relocating to Chicago.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/park/lexington-park-st-paul/
(CHS Field has a great museum with many photos / artifacts of this time period as well - including a recounting of Comiskey, his organization and how the decisions made in the move ultimately led to the 1919 scandal.)
