Long before live streaming and sports apps, watching a baseball game meant being there in person — or getting very creative. Fans who couldn’t get into a stadium would crowd outside newspaper buildings, scale walls, shimmy up poles, or press their faces against outfield fences just to catch any glimpse of the action. These photos, collected from the late 1800s through the 1980s, show just how far baseball fans were willing to go.
During the 1911 World Series, thousands of fans packed the streets outside the New York Herald Building. They weren’t there by accident — the building displayed live game updates on a mechanical board called the Playograph. A telegraph operator inside received pitch-by-pitch details from the ballpark and relayed them to two attendants who manually moved pieces on the board to show the crowd what was happening in real time.
The Playograph drew enormous crowds. Men in suits and hats stood shoulder to shoulder, necks craned upward, watching wooden letters and numbers shift across the board. For many working-class fans who couldn’t afford a ticket or leave their jobs, this was the closest they got to the game.
Getting a ticket was its own battle. Lines outside ballparks stretched for blocks, and fans showed up hours early to secure a spot. The 1903 World Series at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston drew such massive crowds that even the outfield filled with standing spectators. Fans who couldn’t get in at all found other ways — including climbing the walls.
Inside the 1903 Series, the Royal Rooters — Boston’s most devoted fan club — had their own dedicated section in foul territory. This group of loud, organized supporters helped set the template for what die-hard fandom looked like in early professional baseball.
Shibe Park in Philadelphia became a recurring site of fan chaos. In 1947, fans climbed the backstop screen during a game — dangling above the field to get a better view. Today, that kind of stunt would end in immediate arrest and a lifetime ban from the stadium. In 1947, it was just another afternoon at the ballpark.
Overcrowding wasn’t unique to Philadelphia. Yankee Stadium in 1926 was a sea of hats — nearly every man in attendance wore one, and the stands were packed so tightly that ushers had little room to move. Fenway Park in Boston hit a similar wall in 1934, with fans sitting directly in the outfield grass because there was simply nowhere else to put them.
Presidents made baseball a national tradition by throwing out ceremonial first pitches on opening day. William Howard Taft did it in 1911, Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith attended in 1916, and Warren G. Harding carried on the custom in 1922. These appearances reinforced baseball as America’s game — something that connected citizens across all walks of life.
For fans who couldn’t make it to the stadium at all, radio became a lifeline. By the 1940s and 1950s, groups gathered around radios in homes, bars, and street corners to listen to live broadcasts. In Brooklyn in 1946, neighbors leaned out windows and sat on stoops with their radios turned up loud. In a Chicago bar in 1952, a crowd sat completely still, eyes locked on the TV screen as the Yankees faced the Dodgers in the Subway Series.
Street scoreboards also drew crowds in major cities. In New York in 1924, fans packed the sidewalks to watch a scoreboard set up outdoors during an important game. These public setups turned city blocks into open-air stadiums, with strangers standing side by side, reacting to each update as it came.
Baseball also played a role in unusual settings. In 1943, photographer Ansel Adams — best known for his sweeping landscapes — documented a baseball game being played at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, where Japanese Americans were being held during World War II. The game went on even there.
World Series crowds were some of the most intense gatherings in American sports history. At Braves Field in 1915, thousands of fans in hats stretched out in every direction. At Sportsman’s Park in 1946, the stands were wall-to-wall for Game Six between the Cardinals and the Red Sox. And at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field in 1909 and 1910, early stadium crowds showed just how seriously fans took the fall classic from the very beginning.
Some fans found ways to watch from far outside the stadium. In 1960, University of Pittsburgh students climbed to the top of the Cathedral of Learning — a 42-story skyscraper — to watch the Pirates play the Yankees from high above the city. Meanwhile, a lone cop once joined fans peeking through a fence in Massachusetts in 1930, apparently deciding the view was worth it.
Ticket lines for World Series games in the 1940s could stretch around entire city blocks. Fans camped out overnight to secure seats, and the demand far outpaced supply. Ebbets Field in Brooklyn drew massive night crowds in the same era, with the stadium blazing under floodlights and every seat taken.
The sport extended to Latin America with genuine passion. Around 1940, Carlos Colas was hoisted onto the shoulders of fans celebrating a major Latin American baseball tournament — a moment that captured just how deeply the game had taken root far beyond U.S. borders. Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers held spring training in Havana, Cuba in March 1947, reflecting baseball’s growing international footprint.
Willie Mays was one of the players who could truly electrify a stadium. After a home run in the 1950s, teammates and fans lunged toward him at once, reaching out to shake his hand as he crossed home plate. Young fans chased autographs from both Mays and Willie McCovey in 1960. When the Giants returned to the Polo Grounds to face the Mets in the 1960s, Mays was greeted by a crowd that treated his homecoming like a celebration.
San Francisco embraced the Giants hard after the team relocated from New York in 1958. The opening game against the Los Angeles Dodgers that year drew a fired-up crowd at Seals Stadium. Photos from that era show fans reflecting the city’s diversity — a mix of faces, ages, and backgrounds all united by the same team. When Candlestick Park opened in the 1960s, fans arrived wearing commemorative hats to mark the occasion.
Willie McCovey was honored at Candlestick Park in 1977, waving to the crowd from the field. Six years later, a fan in the stands cheered wildly for Joe Morgan in 1983. And in 1989, fans burst into celebration the moment the Giants clinched the pennant — a raw, unscripted burst of joy captured right as it happened.
Away from the big leagues, baseball was just as alive at the grassroots level. Kids at Madison School played their own games in 1914. Young champions of the 1920 Washington Herald Junior Baseball Championship posed proudly with their trophy. And in Milwaukee in 1957, opening day brought out fans who were just as excited for their Braves as any New York crowd was for the Yankees.
A 1912 photo shows a “chorus girl” singing at a game, adding entertainment beyond the diamond. Fans in the 1940s locked their eyes on the field with complete focus, as captured in one well-known photograph. At Wrigley Field in Los Angeles in July 1937, the bleachers were full on a summer afternoon. The 1916 World Series brought Brooklyn fans out in force, seated alongside Jennie Veronica in a photo that freezes that moment forever. And the 1950s produced the kind of fans memorialized in the Broadway musical and film “Damn Yankees” — obsessive, devoted, completely consumed by the game.
This got like no traction but it’s the coolest post I’ve see. In awhile on here.
Philly always had crazy fans that climb things, huh
Love how old this sport is