March 22 (1951)

An era in St. Louis soccer ends when William O. DeWitt, president of the American League’s St. Louis Browns, announces that Sportsman’s Park, site of the first known soccerlike game in St. Louis in 1875, will no longer be available for St. Louis Major Soccer League professional matches for the rest of the season. The league, and its predecessor, the St. Louis League, had played many of its games for the past few decades at Sportsman’s Park. The stadium also had been the site of the first known soccer game in St. Louis on May 28, 1875, when the facility was called the Grand Avenue Baseball Park. Many National Challenge Cup and international matches were played over the years at Sportsman’s Park. The St. Louis Major League will never return to Sportsman’s Park, playing at other venues the next two seasons. The league will cease operations in 1953 without an enclosed venue for a home when the North Side Sports Arena, the league’s field at the time, becomes a building construction site. Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch will buy the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals, who had rented Sportsman’s Park, in February 1953. The Browns will sell Sportsman’s Park to Anheuser-Busch in April 1953 and will move to Baltimore. Anheuser-Busch will rename the facility Busch Stadium, where it will be the home of the Cardinals until early in the 1966 season. Soccer matches of importance will be played at Public Schools Stadium, North Kingshighway and Lexington avenues, until Civic Center Busch Memorial Stadium, just north of today’s Busch Stadium, opens in 1966.