Our search for the Best of the Ballparks continues with a shift from the professional game to amateurs with voting for the best summer-collegiate facilities across the United States and Canada — and we want to know what you think.
Our Best of the Ballparks competition kicked off with Triple-A voting and continued with Double-A, High Class-A voting. and Low Class-A voting yesterday. We’ll be running the contest with seeded brackets, so there will be plenty of action in coming days. The first round will be a round of 32, followed by three additional rounds before winners are announced. We’ve selected our top 32 summer-collegiate ballparks to keep this poll manageable. We’re sure some readers will question why their favorite summer-collegiate ballpark was not included, and the answer is simple: it just wasn’t feasible to include every summer-collegiate ballpark. This selection, however, does skew toward the old and historic here: many of these are former MiLB ballparks that are links to a bygone era.
We know from marketing stats 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. We can’t wait to see what our readers — whom we consider to be the smartest folks in baseball — say about the best of the ballparks.
Voting in this round is now closed.
Here’s our list of the top 32 summer-collegiate ballparks:
1. Warner Park (Madison Mallards; Northwoods League)
2. Cardines Field (Newport Gulls; NECBL)
3. Fleming Stadium (Wilson Tobs; Coastal Plain League)
4. Dunn Field (Elmira Pioneers; Perfect Game League)
5. Wahconah Park (Pittsfield Suns; Futures League)
6. Holman Stadium (Nashua Silver Knights; Futures League)
7. Wade Stadium (Duluth Huskies; Northwoods League)
8. Kokomo Municipal Stadium (Kokomo Jackrabbits; Prospect League)
9. Simmons Field (Kenosha Kingfish; Northwoods League)
10. Lowell Park (Cotuit Kettleers; Cape Cod League)
11. Athletic Park (Wisconsin Woodchucks; Northwoods League)
12. Kiger Stadium (Klamath Falls Gems; West Coast League)
13. Homer Stryker Field (Kalamazoo Growlers; Northwoods League)
14. Clemens Field (Hannibal Cavemen; Prospect League)
15. Carson Park (Eau Claire Express; Northwoods League)
16. Witter Field (Wisconsin Rapids Rafters; Northwoods League)
17. Robin Roberts Stadium (Springfield Sliders; Prospect League)
18. Danville Stadium (Danville Dans; Prospect League)
19. Damaschke Field (Oneonta Outlaws; NYCBL)
20. Mulcahy Stadium (Anchorage Bucs; Glacier Pilots; Alaska Baseball League)
21. Goss Stadium at Coleman Field (Corvallis Knights; West Coast League)
22. Vince Genna Stadium (Bend Elks; West Coast League)
23. American Momentum Bank Ballpark (Brazos Valley Bombers; Texas Collegiate League)
24. Pat Thomas Stadium (Leesburg Lightning; Florida Collegiate Summer League)
25. McKeon Park (Hyannis Harbor Hawks; Cape Cod League)
26. Recreation Field (Vermont Mountaineers; NECBL)
27. Sims Legion Park (Gastonia Grizzlies; Coastal Plain League)
28. Seaman Stadium (Okotoks Dawgs; Western Major Baseball League)
29. Veterans Field (Chatham Anglers; Cape Cod League)
30. Old Mountain Field (Ocean State Waves; NECBL)
31. Murnane Field (Utica Brewers; Perfect Game League)
32. Fraser Field (North Shore Navigators; Futures League)
