With the end of the summer-collegiate Northwoods League season, the Rochester Honkers are ending their 33-year history at Mayo Field, with the future of the vintage facility up in the air.
The team had informed city officials and local fans that 2026 would be the team’s last season at Mayo Field. 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.
With the ballpark site placed on the Rochester disposition list, the Honkers used the opportunity to end the Mayo Field lease, and the team Not a surprise: past and current team ownership had been working for years on a new ballpark, saying that future growth was impossible there. 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.
Honkers owner 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 Honkers launched at Mayo Field after minor-league baseball 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.
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