University of Florida Gators baseball fans showed a lot of love for their home field, as Alfred A. McKethan Stadium at Perry Field was the fan favorite in the Best of the Ballparks, NCAA edition.
You can see the brackets and results here.
While you can argue whether McKethan Stadium is the “best” college ballpark in the nation (honestly, we did not have it amongst our top seeds), the fan vote showed a lot of devotion to the Gators baseball program and the ballpark, which opened in 1988 and named for Alfred A. McKethan, a wealthy benefactor who contributed $2.4 million toward its construction. In college baseball, it’s all about the passionate fans, and those fans turned out to vote McKethan Stadium as their favorite. Over 7,000 individual fans weighed in during six rounds of voting, with the final round going 56%-44% for McKethan Stadium over Founders Park at the University of South Carolina.
And there’s an even better fan experience on tap for Gators fans in the future, as the university is raising money for athletic-facilities upgrades that includes improvements to McKethan Stadium. The improvements include shade structuring, five new rows of premium seating directly behind home plate, new club seating and an expanded press box, a new second-level concourse, plus refurbished and improved player amenities.