ON THE ROAD—Larry Lucchino was right about a lot of things, one of them being that baseball is played in a ballpark, not a stadium.
Since he and Janet Marie Smith designed Camden Yards in Baltimore (don’t forget Sahlen Field in Buffalo), and more on that later) ballparks have become part of the game’s attraction. Some fans will buy a ticket just to see a ballpark. If the game is interesting, that’s a bonus.
Ergo, my wife and I decided to mix business with pleasure. Recently, we took a Triple-A ballparks tour and combined it with visits to family and friends. All the ballparks are ones that the WooSox regularly play in. This was also a chance to compare them with Polar Park.
Just as every diner advertises the best coffee in town, every fan thinks their city has the best ballpark. In the case of Triple-A baseball, though, Polar Park has been rated as the best in the classification by Ballpark Digest.
So, how does it compare with the competition?
We did NBT Bank Park in Syracuse, Sahlen Field in Buffalo, ESL Ballpark in Rochester and Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Penn. On the Monday off-day, we went up to Toronto. That meant we connected with four of the eight cities that were in what became the International League when Worcester had its first Triple-A experience in 1899.
Rochester, Syracuse and Toronto were also in that league.
The four ballparks all have bigger footprints than Polar Park. Sahlen Field was also in the heart of the city, ESL Ballpark close. They all had some ground level parking at the ballpark. For ball-and-strikes fans, interested mostly in the game itself, there are no bad seats in any of the parks.
Even from the inside, they all seemed a lot bigger than Polar Park, probably because they have many more actual seats.
The tour:
AUG. 22, NBT PARK, SYRACUSE; Syracuse 3, Worcester 0. Attendance, 5,059.
NBT Bank Park is the home of the Mets. It opened in 1997 next to where old MacArthur Stadium stood. In 1942 that ballpark was renamed from Municipal Stadium to honor a general. Its successor is named after a bank. Times have changed. It is highly unlikely that Douglas MacArthur wrote a check for the naming rights.
In 1936, when Boston was assembling a farm system, one of its Triple-A affiliates played there and went 59-95. The current ballpark is on its third name.
NBT Bank Park is comfortable, spacious, and has a big upper deck. Parking is close to the ballpark. The downstairs concourse is very wide with a standard variety of concessions. We went local and bought Hofmann hot dogs — snappy skins and quite good.
The upper deck makes it look twice as large as Polar Park and it is on the edge of the city. With Worcester in town, the night also featured a press box visit with broadcasters Jim Cain and Alex Jensen.
The Mets have a wall of pictures upstairs featuring important people in organization history. One picture was of home run king and New York Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner, a distant cousin of WooSox infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa.
The game was unexciting. The electronic noise was pleasantly underwhelming and the park allows for conversation. The home dugout is on the third base side and, on this night anyway, there was no replay on the video board.
Easy in, easy out. Good seating, pleasant atmosphere. Fireworks after the game. A great night out in Syracuse, but without the eccentricities like the walls and bullpens in Fenway and Polar that New England fans are used to and has uniform outfield dimensions.
Worcester’s all-time record is 34-31 in NBT Bank Park.
AUG. 23, SAHLEN FIELD, BUFFALO; Buffalo 10, Lehigh Valley 2, Attendance: 7,043
The Bisons are affiliated with the Blue Jays. That connection, and the fact that Canada is just across the river, is probably why both the “Star Spangled Banner” and “O Canada” preceded the first pitch.
Sahlen Field is not Plymouth Rock historic. However, it is the first downtown retro ballpark to open, which happened in 1988 even before the Smith-and-Lucchino Camden Yards. Its original name was Pilot Field.
The Bisons moved here from War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, featured in “The Natural.”
This ballpark was initially designed to attract a major league team, which never happened. It has the largest seating capacity in the minors at 16,000 which makes even a crowd of 8,000 look smaller.
The downtown site is great. The ballpark is warm and welcoming with many amenities but not many eccentricities. There is a lot of Buffalo to be seen from Sahlen Field and cars zip past on a nearby interstate. There is some parking nearby and the concessions include many different options, and we opted for the Polish Platter.
There is nothing like a ballpark pierogi.
Worcester was supposed to play its inaugural game here in 2021 but Covid restrictions forced the Blue Jays to move in and the WooSox-Bisons game was moved to Trenton, N.J. It is also the site of the largest crowd in Worcester Red Sox history.
The Bisons won, 4-1, in front of 15,490 on June 11, 2022. The WooSox record at Sahlen Field is 27-26.
Aug. 25, ESL BALLPARK, ROCHESTER; Buffalo 6, Rochester 3.
Attendance: 7,568
The city has the longest continuous membership in the league. The ballpark is new, having replaced venerable Silver Stadium, known in its day as the Taj Mahal of minor league ballparks.
ESL Ballpark is a worthy replacement, situated within the city limits with an intimate downtown feel. The Red Wings celebrate their history with a huge Wall of Fame along the main concourse, which has great concessions — I had a Genesee Cream Ale — and other visual treats. A train runs out beyond right field and on this warm night the moon rose over right-center.
The Red Wings play “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses rather than “Sweet Caroline.” Views are good from every place in the park. There is no upper deck so the seating areas have a neighborly feel.
Worcester and Rochester have been closely connected through the years, especially recent ones. They competed in minor league baseball from 1899 until Worcester’s team moved in 1903. They competed in the American Hockey League throughout the city’s AHL run.
ESL Ballpark’s predecessor Silver Stadium was named after Morrie Silver. He rescued the franchise from extinction in the 1950s and his daughter Naomi is the current team president. She joined Ron Shelton of “Bull Durham” renown at Polar Park when the filmmaker, who played in Rochester, was in town for the Lucchino Writers Series in May.
The WooSox are 37-24 in ESL Ballpark, which is on its third name.
AUG. 26, COCA-COLA PARK, ALLENTOWN, Penn; Syracuse 11, Lehigh Valley 1. Attendance: 6,048.
Allentown is a great minor league city at the Triple-A level. Its two Lehigh Valley teams, baseball’s IronPigs and the American Hockey League Phantoms, are both well-supported. The AHL rink is in the middle of downtown. The ballpark is stand-alone on the edge of the city.
Coca-Cola Park is fabulous but if you grew up, like me, with the squeezed-in feeling of Fenway Park and now Polar Park, the wide-open spaces here change the equation. That is one perspective. Otherwise, Coca-Cola Park provided a fun night of baseball even though the home team was crushed 11-1.
The location allows great parking next to the park, which — not a surprise here — has a pig theme. It also had the best concessions of any minor league park I’ve been to. We did turkey brisket, and passed on the roast corn featured in the next food stand. The IronPigs had a fine selection of oddball fan competitions including one involving water rifles.
There are ads literally all over the place. The right-field fence featured 36 of them. The shapes and sizes varied, as did the products offered. A revenue producer, no doubt, but a lot to process.
Even phone numbers have only 10 digits.
Despite the blowout, a lot of fans stayed till the end. Two behind us spent the bottom of the 9th imploring the crowd to stay, citing the chance of a comeback that did not happen. Three rows behind them, a fan sat with pencil and scorebook on his lap, waiting to record the game’s final play.
Of the four road ballparks, I liked ESL in Rochester the best, but not by much, and on gut instinct more than any rational thought process. The baseball was not great, but that is often the nature of the sport. No matter, we enjoyed every event.
Being compact is part of Polar Park’s appeal, but no doubt the WooSox would like more room for parking near the field. Polar Park has many fewer seats than the road ballparks, but that’s good. The variety of concessions is not as great as the bigger parks, and perhaps the WooSox could add a local ethnic stand to go along with Wonder Bar and Coney Island.
Worcester has a great Albanian community, for instance.
We were lucky on our trip. The weather was absolutely perfect, and that is part of the ballpark experience. On the Monday off, the trip to Toronto, the border crossings were uneventful despite the start of the tariffs tiff.
The lasting impression of the four opposing ballparks was much the same as a game at Polar Park. The score mattered, but the night was not ruined if it went the wrong way. Everyone we saw heading out after the ninth inning had the same facial expression, the same body language.
We’re glad we came.
Bill Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
