The old stadium, and I use the term “stadium” with reservation, was named after a Russian immigrant and played host to everything from international softball competitions, to the great Eddie Feigner and, for many years, to the highly-regarded Winnipeg Colonels fastball team.
Charlie Krupp was 9-years-old when he and his family arrived in Canada from Russia in 1915. He had a solid career as a softball player in Winnipeg, but for the most part, he was an organizer. He put together leagues for adults and kids and it got him inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame.
This week, word came down that Charlie Krupp Stadium will exist no more.
Wayne Perfumo from Manitoba Lotteries, the man I worked closely with on the concept and construction of the Upper Deck Sports Bar, had worked diligently to have the bar (read: the MLC) take over operation of Charlie Krupp Stadium for the benefit of the Winnipeg Men’s Fastball League.
But Winnipeg Fastball League president Nathan Wiens called this morning to inform me that Perfumo had met with the City of Winnipeg and the city has decided to accept a proposal from the Winnipeg Nomads to take over the entire area just east, across McPhillips Street, from the casino. It will be a football complex now and while that’s not a bad thing by ay means, but it does mean another piece of Winnipeg’s sports history will soon be gone.
“I don’t think the city wanted it there anymore and they haven’t wanted it there for a long time,” Wiens said. “It’s very disappointing for us and for fastball and for history, I guess, but it’s pretty obvious the city didn’t want the ball field anymore.”
Charlie Krupp Stadium hasn’t really been Charlie Krupp “Stadium” for more than a decade, but it was still on its original site and the fastball league believed it was the best facility of its kind in the city.
Still, times change and we tend to lose a bit of history every day. The fact that a bunch of kids will play football on that field certainly takes the sting out of it, but for those of us who were around, there was a time when Charlie Krupp Stadium was a vibrant and wonderful place.
It will be sad to see it go.
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