HAMTRAMCK - A baseball stadium that once served as the home diamond for two Detroit-based Negro League baseball clubs could see a face lift next year as a local nonprofit has announced plans to raise funds for renovations.

Hamtramck Stadium, former home of the Detroit Stars and Detroit Wolves, who each played there in the early part of the 1930s, is set to benefit from a $50,000 crowdfunding campaign to kick off in early 2017.

The effort to restore the field, located within Veterans Memorial Park on Dan Street in Hamtramck, comes from local nonprofit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, which also plans to launch a capital campaign before June to carry out structural surveys for renovation of the stadium's grandstand, and a handful of brick structures on site.

Gary Gillette, founder and president of the nonprofit, said the money raised would go to restoration of the field itself, which would include rolling the field, re-establishing the base paths and the pitcher's mound and reseeding the grass to make it more lush and even.

"We intend to restore it with the purpose of making it available for community sports, which would include, historically, baseball, football, soccer, probably softball," Gillette said.

"And the new addition would be cricket, which is a popular sport amongst South Asians. The Bengali population in Hamtramck play cricket there and we want to accommodate them as well."

The stadium, which was acquired by the city in 1940, currently has a configuration that dates back to the 1970s, according to the Society for American Baseball Research, and its grandstand has not been used since the 1990s.

Gillette was instrumental in earning the stadium a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, making a successful presentation on the ballpark's historical significance to the Michigan State Historic Preservation Review Board in Lansing in January of that year.

The Detroit historian said Hamtramck Stadium has played host to several different sports teams throughout its history, from the Negro League baseball teams down to Little League.

"Joe Louis had a softball team called the Brown Bombers in the '30s, they played there," Gillette said. "They had boxing matches there between black fighters and white fighters. There was at least some soccer played there in the '30s. Women's softball. High school baseball. High school football. That's where the 1959 Little League World Series champions played their home games.

"It's just amazing."

According to the SABR, at least 17 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame graced the field at Hamtramck Stadium at some point in their careers, including Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Norman "Turkey" Stearnes.

Ron Teasley, 89, told the Detroit News he watched Negro League games at Hamtramck Stadium with his father in the 1930s.

"It was a big event for a lot of African Americans to go to watch the Detroit Stars play," Teasley told the newspaper. "My father was so enamored with the team. Naturally, it sort of rubbed off on me."

Later on, Teasley would end up playing first and third base, as well as outfield, for the league's New York Cubans for a single season in 1948, according to his profile posted on the website of Kansas State University's Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

"One of the special things about Hamtramck Stadium is that you can say, when you're standing on the pitcher's mound there, that Satchel Paige stood there," Gillette said. "You can say when you're standing in the batter's box that 'Turkey' Stearnes hit a home run standing there."

Gillette said the goal is to have the field restored for use by June of next year, and to have the stadium completely restored and opened for public use by the spring of 2019.

"We want that field used as much as possible by every group that wants to play there," he said.