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Our second Editor’s Choice Award is for all the grunts who make baseball work on a daily basis: the folks who tend the grass, clean the grandstand and prepare the facilities for the next day’s game. That routine is taken to the extreme by the hard-working staff at Jupiter’s Roger Dean Stadium, the busiest baseball […]

The Ballpark Digest award season continues, as we announce our first Editor’s Choice citation for Camelback Ranch-Glendale, the spring-training home of the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers. Camelback Ranch-Glendale is a bold re-imagining of the spring-training complex, bringing in the feel of a classic training camp with all the amenities of today.  The […]

In this economy, teams need to give fans a little push to come to the ballpark. Those nudges — big or small — fall under the rubric of marketing. How teams present their image and branding to fans is a critical piece of their continuing success. In our annual Ballpark Digest Award for the Best […]

A strong logo is instant identity for a baseball team. It should be appropriate for a variety of uses, and it should portray the team’s marketing image in a positive, forceful way. And it should also transcend the local market — the better for merchandise sales and branding. Today we honor two new logos that […]

Minor-league baseball teams live and die with their promotional schedules, which is why they’re such a preoccupation in so many front offices. Every team now has a promotion virtually every game of the season, whether it’s a Thirsty Thursday or a bobblehead giveaway. There were many great promotions during the 2009 season, but promotions from […]

There’s no mistaking who’s behind the mike when the Round Rock Express take the field, as broadcaster Mike Capps continues one of the most successful runs in baseball. This long and distinguished career, which culminated in Capps calling the Triple-A Baseball National Championship Game on ESPN2, led to his being named by Ballpark Digest editors […]

We launch Awards Week on Ballpark Digest by naming Rick Brenner, president/general manager of the Class AA New Hampshire Fisher Cats and president of the Class A Bowling Green Hot Rods, as our Executive of the Year. Wearing two hats in the business world is hard enough, but doing so successfully in one of the […]

OK, so technically the pair of Joseph Finley and Craig Stein doesn’t comprise a single organization; they jointly own two teams and separately own two others. Still, 2008 was a banner year for the various Finley/Stein entities. The inaugural season for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (Class AAA; International League) was by any measure a resounding […]

This year’s winner of the Ballpark Digest Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Roy Acuff, the longtime voice of the San Antonio Missions (Class AA; Texas League). The Dean of Texas League Broadcasters, Acuff has been the Voice of the Missions for 20 seasons, but he goes even farther back in the Texas League; in 1974 […]

In a year of great promotions, two stood out as we were contemplating the Best Promotion of 2008: the St. Paul Saints’ Bobblefoot Giveaway on National Tap Dance Day, and Totally Rad ’80s Night from the Fresno Grizzlies. The Saints honored “tappers” during National Tap Dance Day by giving away a bobblefoot to the first […]

A great logo is the same as a great brand, which is why minor-league teams are so focused on creating a distinctive, marketable logo. This season saw a whole slew of great logos to hit the market, which made choosing the logo of the year a very difficult task. In the end, we went with […]

Joe Ricciutti, who turned around the Staten Island Yankees (short season; NY-Penn League) over the last two seasons, is the recipient of the Executive of the Year citation in the 2008 Ballpark Digest Awards. Joe Ricciutti, who turned around the Staten Island Yankees (short season; NY-Penn League) over the last two seasons, is the recipient […]

In choosinG the winners of the Ballpark Digest Awards, we’re always cognizant of a feel-good story. Under the Editor’s Choice Award category, we have two organizations that really typify why we love the game: MiLB Charities and the Texas League. The first award goes to Minor League Baseball as a whole for the establishment of […]