When New Orleanians today think of the Pelicans sport franchise, basketball comes to mind. But back in the day, the New Orleans Pelicans was a popular minor league baseball team that played at Pelican Stadium, as seen in 1955, on the corner of South Carrollton and Tulane avenues.
Over the years, some of the greats in baseball history played here, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Satchel Paige, Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Lemon, and the infamous Shoeless Joe Jackson, a member of the Pelicans’ 1910 championship team and later a major figure in the White Sox 1919 World Series scandal.
In pre-TV days, hometown minor league baseball turned out crowds across the eastern states and South, including New Orleans. According to S. Derby Gisclair’s 2004 history of New Orleans baseball, New Orleanians’ appetite for the game had become so intense by the 1880s that in 1887 a group of local promoters formed the New Orleans Pelicans. Over the next seven decades, the team served as the minor league affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Cardinals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees.
This was not the team’s first ball park. Between 1887 and 1908, the Pelicans played at three different locations, including the first Pelican Park on South Carrollton and Banks across from Jesuit High School. In 1914 local businessman A. J. Heinemann, a part owner of the Pelicans, built the new stadium on the site of an amusement park he owned at Tulane and Carrollton. The new ball park bore his name from 1915 until after his death in 1930. In 1936 the new owners rechristened the park Pelican Stadium.
The Pelicans weren’t the only teams to play at the stadium. Back in those early years, it was a favorite spring training camp for the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Cardinals, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. When the Yankees were in town, people from as far away as the Gulf Coast flocked to the stadium to watch exhibition games between the Pelicans and Yankees headlining Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. In a 1922 match, the Babe hit a grand-slam homerun to the delight of cheering fans.
Local black baseball clubs also played here. According to Gisclair, when the Pelicans were on the road, the New Orleans Black Pelicans, New Orleans Crescent Stars, New Orleans Creoles, Algiers Giants and the Jax Red Sox took to the field. It was also a popular stop-over for visiting Negro League teams with future baseball hall-of-famers Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. In 1948 Pelican Stadium hosted the final game of the Negro League World Series between the Birmingham Black Barons and Homestead Grays.
On Sept. 1, 1957, the old New Orleans Pelicans played their last game at Tulane and South Carrollton, losing to the Memphis Chicks 7 to 3. The following day, Times-Picayune columnist Bill Keefe reflected upon that historical moment:
“Memories rolled on through the days of (players and later managers) Johnny Dobbs and then Larry Gilbert and behind it all hovered the spirit of “Heine” (Heinemann). Then the film of memory snapped off, the mist cleared, the ghosts disappeared and there on the field, making their last stand in the old ball park, were the 1957 Pelicans, still fighting but still reminding us of the black prospect of seeing the Pelicans fly on – on behind the fire engine horse, the storm buggy and the mules that hauled the Carnival float.”
The following month, bulldozers leveled the landmark to make way for the Fontainebleau Hotel. The Pels played their final two seasons at Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park. In 1959 the team’s 72-year run in New Orleans ended when owners sold the team to Little Rock.
