Cramton Bowl
Montgomery, AL
Essay by Gary
Cramton Bowl is a site with abundant baseball history. The original baseball stadium no longer stands, replaced by an impressive football stadium, but all of the greats who once trod upon this same ground with gloves and bats render the location worthy of a special page. Gary visited in 2026 and presents this historical essay about Cramton Bowl.
Crampton Bowl was erected on the site of a former sanitary landfill in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. Named after a local businessman who donated his land to build a multi-use stadium, Cramton Bowl’s first ballgame was between Auburn and Vanderbilt Universities in May, 1922. The Philadelphia Athletics relocated their spring training home here from Texas and trained at this new ballpark for two seasons, before a few minor league Southeastern League teams would take turns using Cramton as their home field.
The Montgomery Rebels were the longest tenured team at the ballpark, playing here from 1938 to 1949. They were the last pro baseball team to play here before moving to the newly constructed Paterson Field located just across the street on Madison Avenue. The Montgomery Grey Sox of the Negro League Southern League played here in 1923, with the ballpark regularly hosting barnstorming teams.
The 8th and deciding game of the 1943 Negro World Series was played at Cramton Bowl, with the Homestead Grays defeating the Birmingham Black Barons. While no baseball field dimensions have been found, it was said that the distance from home plate to the outfield fence was determined by a home-run derby held by “Montgomery’s heaviest amateur hitters” on Jan. 9, 1922.
Many pro teams played exhibition games at the park, including a 1927 rematch of the 1926 World Series between the Yankees and the Cardinals. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League also threw the ball around at Crampton during their existence. In April 1924, Babe Ruth visited Cramton Bowl, where he participated in a publicity stunt by catching a baseball dropped from an airplane, as he did several times in various cities during the 1920's while on barnstorming tours.
In 1927, Cramton became the first stadium in the South to host a high school football game “under the lights”. The Alabama Crimson Tide football club played home games here from 1922 to 1932. As the largest established stadium in the state during the venue’s early years, Alabama and Auburn played more than 70 football games in the facility along with many bowl games and Turkey Day Classics. Cramton Bowl’s stadium capacity grew over the years since completion, expanding to 7,991 seats in 1929, 12,000 in 1946, and 24,000 in 1962 with the completion of the east stands to complete the conversion to a football stadium. After a 2011 renovation, the stadium expanded one last time to 25,000.
The renovated stadium, known today as The Multiplex at Crampton Bowl, now includes an adjacent indoor sports facility with seating for a variety of sports contests. Today, the Cramton Bowl field is primarily used for football. The curved, grassy end of the field close to Madison Avenue where the backstop once stood is the only remaining sign that a baseball field was ever there.
