We’re on to the next round of voting for the Best of the Ballparks 2016 competition in summer-collegiate facilities, as fan voting narrowed the field from 64 to 16.
In the end, fans pretty much ignored our seedings and expressed independence in selecting their favorite summer-collegiate ballparks. That’s great — this is why we vote! — and the end result is a pretty balanced list of 16 ballparks sprinkled across five major summer-collegiate leagues. We took those results and launched this bracketed tourney, ranking ballparks by votes they received from fans. There is a wide range of summer-collegiate facilities on our list, ranging from former Triple-A and Low-A ballparks to facilities built specifically for summer-collegiate ball.
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.
Some notes on the voting. First, 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.) Second, you don’t need to fill out a full slate: partially filled votes will count, and we want you to vote for as many ballparks as you like. Third: desktop users will see all the choices; tablet and smartphone users will see one choice at a time. (Tablet and smartphone users can move between choices by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the ballot.)
Voting for this round has ended.
Here are the ballparks selected for this second 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.