A few months ago, on a business trip to Indianapolis for ABF Freight, I visited a “retired” baseball field used in a movie. The field was Bush Stadium, the movie – “Eight Men Out.” At the time of my visit, Bush Stadium had long been retired and was now a beautiful apartment complex known as Stadium Lofts. The outline of the baseball field was still present, the outfield fence with the ivy was still present, and baseball themes rang out throughout the complex. So, that was really cool to witness and experience, despite the former Bush Stadium being converted into an apartment complex.

Fast forward to last week, I was in Buffalo working for ABF Freight and saw on my baseball experience map – The Rockpile. What is the Rockpile you might ask? The Rockpile is the nickname given to Buffalo’s former War Memorial Stadium, now Civic Stadium. It was a historic sports stadium that hosted the likes of the Buffalo Bills, yes those Buffalo Bills. It also hosted a number of NASCAR events in addition to several Buffalo minor league baseball organizations. The Rockpile, aka War Memorial Stadium, the sports field with the not so glamourous nickname, was the movie location for “The Natural.” It was home to a number of area college baseball teams, Major League Baseball exhibition games, AFL Championship games, and served as a movie set location to one of the most iconic baseball movies of all-time before it was demolished in 1989. And I visited it last Monday.

So, driving up to Civic Stadium, the Rockpile’s new moniker, I had zero expectations that any of the original Rockpile would be present. However, pulling up to the front entrance, I was happily surprised to see two giant concrete structures still in existence, remnants from the historic War Memorial Stadium which served as the entrance gates to the stadium. I was happy to see that a baseball field was still very much present at Civic Stadium. The field itself was locked and a fence circled the perimeter of the field. I grabbed a few photos and walked around and checked locked gates, thinking one might be left open for me to actually walk onto the field. No such luck. I was just about to get into my rental car and leave when I was stopped by a landscaper working on the perimeter of the field outside the fenced area. “Do you want to go in?” he asked innocently. “Yes, I would love that,” I replied and stated my purpose. He mentioned an open gate down the street, take a left, passed a parking lot area. I thanked him and joyfully hopped in my rental car to park near the open entrance.

The film, “The Natural,” was released in 1984 which by my math skills puts the movie at about 40 years old. It’s a timeless movie in a sense because the film is about baseball played much, much earlier than 1984. War Memorial Stadium served as the home field for the fictional New York Knights, the Knights who took a chance on a mysterious yet uber-talented baseball player named Roy Hobbs. If you haven’t seen the movie, please stop reading this blog right now and go see it. Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, plays right field for the Knights and has a Hollywood rise, fall, rise, fall, and rise to fame and glory throughout the movie. Knowing where right field is on a baseball field all too well, I “hustled” out to right field in the general location of the set of “The Natural” to act out the character of Roy Hobbs, even for a brief moment. I actually did this, pretending to be Roy Hobbs, I’m not joking…

See that baseball right there, that is just pure gold. Roy Hobbs used to rip the covers off the baseballs for the Knights. I found it in, you guessed it – right field. Just laying there in the grass, a story to be told about how it got there. Could this baseball be one of Roy Hobbs’ famous cover-ripping doubles or home runs??? My baseball imagination had gone completely off the rails at this point. There I am in right field, with a busted baseball in one hand, my eyes focused on the infield, my mind replaying the movie scenes of “The Natural” from right about where I was standing in the former War Memorial Stadium. I took a few moments in fantasyland, baseball fantasyland I should say, then headed out of the open gate back to my rental car.

Along the way, I stopped the landscaper to thank him for the tip on the open gate. He mentioned there would be some changes coming to the field and the stadium, and that he was glad I got to see it before more demolition was planned. I wasn’t sure what that meant but maybe there are some more complex changes due for Civic Stadium in the years to come. Still, it was so awesome to step foot on the field where “The Natural” was filmed. To stand in right field, grab that busted baseball, flip it up in the air and catch it, be in the moment like the fictional Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) had done some 40 years ago at War Memorial Stadium. What an incredible out of body, surreal baseball experience at the Rockpile, Buffalo’s historic sports complex, which hosted NFL and NASCAR and Minor League Baseball and served as the set of perhaps the greatest baseball movie of all-time. Atta boy, Wonderboy!