HORLICK FIELD

Racine, Wisconsin

Racine is located just south of Milwaukee on the Lake Michigan shore. Except for a Class D team from 1909-1915, Racine didn't host a pro baseball team until 1943 when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was formed. The Racine Belles was one of the four charter franchises along with the Rockford Peaches, Kenosha Comets and South Bend Blue Sox. Honoring Racine's identity as the Belle City of the Lakes, the Belles played at beautiful Horlick Field which is still standing in a slightly modified format. Most of the original limestone walls are still in place except that the west wall has been removed to enable the baseball diamond to be shifted and slightly rotated and a football field added. Today the football field is home to the minor league Racine Raiders while the baseball field hosts various amateur levels. The original Horlick Field was home to the Racine Belles from 1943-50.

In its current state the baseball field is secondary in stature to the football field. Indeed, Horlick Field is more generally considered to be a football stadium that happens to also have a baseball diamond behind one of the grandstands. Bleacher seating is provided behind home plate and behind the dugouts but it lies in the shadow of the far more substantial football grandstands. Horlick Field was a terrific ballpark in its original form and would be a genuinely classic venue for our great national game.

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Horlick Field in its original configuration. Home plate is north with the outfields south.

Original front entrance with football grandstands and press box visible in the background

A bronze plaque memorializes the home of the Racine Belles of the AAGPBL

The original left-center field distance marker in the southeast corner of the park, now hidden beyond the east football grandstand