Swayne Field

Swayne Field in Toledo, OH, was the home of Toledo affiliated baseball from 1909 through 1955. After that, the Toledo Sox of the American Association moved into an existing ballpark in Wichita, KS, as the Wichita Braves.

Swayne hosted Negro Leagues baseball in at least the 1950s.

After the Sox left, it was quickly demolished - except for part of one wall that remains at what is now Swayne Field Shopping Center. More than just a monument to the old field, it is historic in its own right as the first concrete outfield wall ever erected for a U.S. baseball field. In fact, Swayne was the first concrete-and-steel ballpark ever built for an American Minor League Baseball team - beating Birmingham's Rickwood Field, which is often credited with that status, by more than a calendar year. Swayne Field hosted its first night baseball game June 23, 1933.

The shopping center that replaced the old yard has come under discussion for another redevelopment. Toledo City Council is considering a plan that would create new retail space and also educational spavce involving Owens Community College.

TV's M*A*S*H made "Mud Hens" a household nickname by agreeing to make CPL Max Klinger a fan, and Swayne would have been his baseball haunt at that time. However, in an issue the show never addressed, Klinger would have had to switch teams during the show's setting: In June 1952, the financially strapped Hens packed up and moved to Charleston, WV; they were replaced in time for the 1953 season by the Milwaukee Brewers, who had been bumped by their parent Boston Braves - but they went by Toledo Glass Sox. They won the American Association championship that year, losing "Glass" from their nickname the next season and leaving for Kansas after the 1953 campaign. Klinger likely never made it back to a game at Swayne; the war ended in late July, he initially stayed in Korea, and although he did return to Toledo he moved to Missouri by year's end.

Swayne hosted American Association teams that were all called Mud Hens except for three short stretches. Besides the mid-1950s Sox: In 1914, the Cleveland Naps pulled their farm club to the other side of Ohio to block the Federal League from using League Park when they weren't. The Fed folded after the 1915 season, and the now-Indians sent their farm club home - as the Toledo Iron Men, but they revived "Mud Hens" in 1919.

The farther back one reaches before Swayne opened, the more amorphous the Toledo baseball team's nickname was. "Mud Hens" seems to have emerged 1896, but there are simultaneous as well as preceding references to "Swamp Angels" and "White Stockings".