War Memorial Stadium

(also known as Civic Stadium)

BUILT: 1938

OTHER OCCUPANTS: Buffalo Bills (AFL/NFL), 1960 to 1972

War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, NY, was the home of Buffalo affiliated baseball from 1961 through 1987. After that, the Buffalo Bisons of the American Association began playing in a new downtown stadium.

"The Rockpile" had no affiliated baseball from 1971 through 1978, though, after the International League revoked the long-troubled Bisons' franchise and gave it to their parent Montreal Expos. They moved it first to Winnipeg, MB, then - unable to get it into the Pacific Coast League - to Hampton, VA.

The 1967-1969 Bisons had played home night games in Corning, NY, due to racial unrest - and suffered low attendance in both cities.

In 1979, the Eastern League rushed Buffalo in after the Jersey City Athletics folded. Triple-A returned in 1985, 100 years after Buffalo's first IL game, when the American Association's Wichita Aeros became the Bisons.

The somewhat renovated ballpark appears in The Natural (1984), but it was demolished in 1988. It had hosted parent exhibition games over the years, the last an all-Major League Baseball spring-training finale in its final season - the Bisons' then-parent Cleveland Indians vs. their then-unbeknownst future parent Toronto Blue Jays in "The Battle of the Lakes". Weather and the tie outcome froze out the hope of showcasing Buffalo as a candidate for big-league expansion. Buffalo is the only city in the failed Continental League that has not landed an MLB franchise.

War Memorial Stadium is not to be confused with World War Memorial Stadium in Greensboro, NC.