It’s Kokomo Municipal Stadium vs. Athletic Park in the final round of Best of the Ballparks 2016 voting for favorite summer-collegiate facilities. So you know what to do: Vote!
The matchup is pretty cool in that it’s old versus new. Kokomo Municipal Stadium, home of the Prospect League’s Kokomo Jackrabbits opened in 2015 and was built specifically for summer-collegiate baseball. Athletic Park, home of the Northwoods League’s Wisconsin Woodchucks, opened in 1936 and served as home to Minor League Baseball teams for decades (the legendary John Henry Moss was GM of a Tigers farm team there in the 1950s).
So you know what to do: Vote!
We began this year’s Best of the Ballparks vote in May with fans asked to choose their favorite Triple-A, Double-A, High-A and Low-A affiliated ballparks. We’ll launch voting later this month for Short Season A and Rookie ballparks. And, of course, we’ll run another round this month for MLB ballparks.
We know from our marketing/user research a third of our readers work in the baseball industry, so we’re tapping into that collective expertise. And we know from our research that a third of our readers sell to the baseball industry, so that expertise will be valuable as well. The remaining third — fans, media, government — will certainly have a different view on things as well.
One thing to note: votes are filtered by IP address, so we’re limiting folks to one vote. (Feel free to hit that reload as many times as you want, but multiple votes will be filtered out of the final tally.)
Voting for this competition has ended.
Here are the ballparks selected for this round of voting:
1. Kokomo Municipal Stadium (Kokomo Jackrabbits; Prospect League)
2. Athletic Park (Wisconsin Woodchucks; Northwoods League)
3. Witter Field (Wisconsin Rapids Rafters; Northwoods League)
4. Buck Hardee Field (Wilmington Sharks; Coastal Plain League)
5. Wade Stadium (Duluth Huskies; Northwoods League)
6. McNair Field (Forest City Owls; Coastal Plain League)
7. Warner Park (Madison Mallards; Northwoods League)
8. Rivets Stadium (Rockford Rivets; Northwoods League)
9. Holly Springs Ballpark (Holly Springs Salamanders; Coastal Plain League)
10. Fleming Stadium (Wilson Tobs; Coastal Plain League)
11. J.P. Riddle Stadium (“The Swamp”) (Fayetteville SwampDogs; Coastal Plain League)
12. Holman Stadium (Nashua Silver Knights; Futures League)
13. Simmons Field (Kenosha Kingfish; Northwoods League)
14. War Memorial Stadium (Peninsula Pilots; Coastal Plain League)
15. Borleske Stadium (Walla Walla Sweets; West Coast League)
16. Wahconah Park (Pittsfield Suns; Futures League)
You can view the brackets here:
Click on the image for a larger version.