Rochester Honkers (summer collegiate; Northwoods League) ownership announced this will be the team’s last season at Mayo Field, but plans for a new ballpark remain up in the air.
It’s no secret that the Rochester Honkers owners — as well as the team’s prior two ownership groups — have sought a new ballpark for several years to replace aging Mayo Field, but city officials and state officials have never been able to put together a site and funding/bonding plan for a new ballpark. Rochester is a charter member of the Northwoods League, launching play in 1994.
But Mayo Field is a limited ballpark, with no room for expansion: it’s surrounded by housing on two sides and public facilities and a parking lot on the other sides. And while Rochester is a boom town thanks to the Mayo Clinic investing $5 billion in its downtown campus, that boom hasn’t translated into any benefits for the Honkers.
In fact, the current ownership, Bases Loaded Entertainment, LLC, is facing the reality that the city doesn’t have much interest in keeping the ballpark, as the site has been placed on the Rochester disposition list. Team co-owner Chris Goodell confirmed the team’s limited future and says there are discussions about a new ballpark elsewhere in the city, but 2027 plans for the team are up in the air, with the possibility of the team suspending operations until a new ballpark is built or possibly temporarily relocating. From the Rochester Post-Bulletin:
“That means there’s obviously not a future to remain there,” Goodell said. “You kind of couple that with … it’s been deteriorating for well over a decade. At this point, I know the previous ownership group, whom we knew well, they had been trying to work on a new ballpark even before we got in there, and we took over our ownership in 2019. You coupled those two things together, and there really was no future at Mayo Field.
“We’re obviously full steam ahead here for ’26, we’re all in on this one, but after the season, we will not be able to call that home when there’s no future to have as a whole, unfortunately.”
Bases Loaded Entertainment also owns the La Crosse Loggers and Mankato MoonDogs in the Northwoods League, with plenty of experience managing higher-level facilities: La Crosse’s Copeland Park was the first ballpark expressly built for a Northwoods League team, and the renovations to ISG Field (then Franklin Rogers Field) won our 2018 Ballpark Digest Award for Best Renovation (MiLB/College).
The current Mayo Field opened in 1951, but the site has hosted amateur baseball since the turn of the century. Black Sox legend Swede Risberg played here as well when he owned a dairy farm in nearby Blue Earth, and his teams also played other barnstorming teams that would make their way every summer throughout southern Minnesota.
Minor-league baseball has failed twice in Rochester: the Rochester A’s lasted for one season in the Three-I League, and the Rochester Aces were part of the rebirth of the independent Northern League in 1993 before the team moved to Manitoba and saw new life as the Winnipeg Goldeyes.