The Month of May usually involves me checking up on the Independent Leagues and a couple brand new ballparks opened up this spring. The first comes from Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston, where Constellation Field (an appropriate naming-rights deal) was just finished. That now gives the Houston area a remarkable 22 stadiums on The List within an hour’s drive from downtown. What is really strange about the new home of the Sugar Land Skeeters, is the league that they play in. The Atlantic League has seven teams in the Northeast US (from Maryland to Massachusetts) and one in Texas. What is this the NCAA? I guess there will be many 7-game homestands against the same team for the Skeeters.

The other new stadium also comes from the great state of Texas, in the border city of Laredo. The Lemurs are an expansion team in the American Association and Uni-Trade Stadium is their new home. The franchised moved from Shreveport, where Fair Grounds Field is now off The List as it looks like they have no tenant this season. Heading North to the stable Frontier League, two new teams are welcomed and I guess you can say they are welcomed back. After a stint in the league several years ago, London, ON makes a return and so does Labatt Park, the oldest ballpark in North America still in use. Also, a welcome to Schaumburg, where after a year featuring many off the field issues, the city gets a baseball team back. Their stadium was renamed from Alexian Field to Schaumburg Boomers Stadium (that’s temporary I’m guessing).

There were a couple leagues that saw a bunch of changes, including the CanAm League. This is a league that always seems short on teams and they are now at an all-time low with only five franchises. Both Brockton and Pittsfield dropped down to a collegiate summer league. The Rockland Boulders have a new, one-year old ballpark and I’m wondering how long it will take until the Atlantic League tries to go after a team in their footprint. Given that the CanAm only has five teams, they have paired up with the American Association for some split scheduling. The other league is that of the atrocious North American Baseball League, one that was doomed to fail at the start for many reasons. It hasn’t folded yet, but I’m sure it will within a few years. In fact the league almost operates as two separate entities with the Southern Division (all Texas teams) never playing the Northern Division. Anyway, the only stadium news to take out of this is that Calgary’s Burns Stadium is off The List (Edmonton stayed on with a summer league team taking over).

And lastly, a couple more fringe leagues: Major League Lacrosse added two teams and both will give a professional tenant to a large high school stadium…the Charlotte Hounds and the Ohio Machine in Delaware, OH. In soccer, the Women’s Professional League folded and now a hybrid pro/am league was redistributed into WPSL-Elite. One note here is FC Indiana taking over 12,111 Michael A. Carroll Stadium on the campus of IUPUI.

C'mon Altoona...you have one of the best Double A ballparks in the country. You're much better than to sell out and call your stadium Peoples Natural Gas Field

We’re back with a fresh look at leagues that started up this April and any Stadium changes have been reflected on The List. Of course, April means the glorious return to baseball and only a couple changes were made across both the Majors and Minors. Likely the biggest stadium news of the year in any sport is the opening of Marlins Park in Miami, thankfully getting the Marlins out of the football stadium down there. From what I have seen, the ballpark screams “Miami”. I think this is a good thing, despite all of the quirkiness involved. As for the ballpark’s finances…well that’s a different story.

In the minors, we have Penscaola’s new stadium: Blue Wahoos Park…or Community Maritime Park…wait, maybe its Multi-Use Stadium? I have no idea what the stadium is “officially” called as it has been named something different across many platforms (the Blue Wahoos website, the Pensacola News Journal, Wikipedia). I understand they’re looking for a naming rights deal, but c’mon figure out a consistent name until that happens. Anyway, the move set off a chain reaction as the Carolina Mudcats moved to Pensacola in the Southern League. Carolina took over Kinston’s spot in the Carolina League. That leaves historic Grainger Field without a tenant for the first time in a long time. They will remain on The List however, as it continues to host the Freedom Classic, a three-day series between Air Force and Navy each year. Other ballpark changes were just new names, all of them awful. Myrtle Beach’s ballpark will now be known as TicketReturn.com Field. Fifth Third Bank continues their plans to dominate the stadium world and stick their face in front of every fan as Geneva (Kane County) becomes the fourth Midwest city to have that bank as a naming rights sponsor. Lastly, Altoona, say it isn’t so! Blair County Ballpark is one of my favorites but it is now going to be known as Peoples Natural Gas Field. The only good that may come of this is my preferred nickname for it: Fart Field.

In other news, the International Basketball League resumed and lots of changes there. Unfortunately, both Gary and Battle Creek folded, meaning that the Genesis Convention Center and Kellogg Arena are off The List as sports are gone from their resume. USL-Pro (Third Division Soccer) also resumed and an interesting ballpark will be home to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Al Lang Field, which has a lot of baseball history, will be a soccer home this year. Also, the San Antonio Scorpions expansion team is going to play in Heroes Stadium (a high school stadium). What is important here though is nearby construction is ongoing for them to move into a 6,100 seat stadium next year. That would only be Phase I of the complex as Phase V is a plan for an expansion to 18,000….possibly with an eye on the MLS?

Goodbye to Champion Stadium as an official Stadium Visit

On a recent roadtrip I got to thinking about several things I wanted to clean up on the website. There have been a few tweaks I’ve wanted to make on the reviews and rankings and with more ideas coming to my mind, I figured now was as good of a time as any. Here are some of the changes that will occupy me for the next several months:

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- Rankings: I know these are quite subjective and don’t have all that much meaning to me, but there were a couple sections I wanted to change. I did one major change back in 2007 and had to re-rank everything, so I’ll be doing the same here. Also, now that I’ve seen many venues in multiple sports it helps to give a perspective when being able to compare a lot of facilities.

1) Made the Exterior worth 10 points instead of 14. When I first started doing these trips, I valued building architecture a little too much. I didn’t de-value the inside (14pts) because that I feel is the most important part of a stadium. Though first impressions are big, I think a bigger part of the stadium experience instead of the exterior is…….

2) Made the Atmosphere worth 14 points instead of 10. The atmosphere many times makes or breaks a stadium. Tullio Arena may be a dump, but I want to go back because of that atmosphere. I considered giving some points to fan support as the two can go hand in hand, but I felt that atmosphere is a much better gauge.

3) Renamed “Banners” to “Displays”. I used to reserve this to just the banners visible from where the playing surface is. Now, I see more and more stadiums with various plaques, statues, hall of fames and display cases. There was nowhere for me to put boost rankings for these, so I’ve started to count them in “Banners”, which changed to the better representative title of “Displays”

4) Changed the “Game” ranking to “Prestige”. I used a quality of the game ranking because I did this on a personal level for so many years. I always knew it was silly and irrelevant when judging the quality of the stadium experience, so I finally came up with a replacement. There was nowhere in the rankings that really gave credit to a historical venue. So I combined that, along with asking straight out “Do I want to come back?” for a “Prestige” category worth 5 points.

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- More Detailed Reviews: Starting with Citi Field, I went with a more detailed review, breaking down additional parts of the stadium trip. This became more time-consuming on my end, but I enjoyed giving a thorough overview of the whole stadium experience. So, I’ll be going back to do that with the previous 80+ reviews. This will be easier in the later years when I wrote more, but likely will become a struggle when I get to those first 30 venues or so, when I never really focused on things like cost, concourses and food. Obviously this will take a while, but I’m looking forward to going back as it will become well worth it. It also helps for consistency sake, which means I’ll also be fixing that top header to get rid of the game attendance, which I explained that sham here back in August.

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- Saying Goodbye to 3 Venues: I want to do this right and I think its time to say goodbye to three venues that I didn’t truly visit. The 21st visited stadium was Doubleday Field in Cooperstown. I was there to visit the Hall of Fame and while there, I went in to take a look at the stadium while an adult amateur league was going on. It of course was no game and I shouldn’t have counted it (shame on me). They will be removed from the Visits list. Luckily the Hawkeyes from the PGCBL now play there, so there’s still a chance to go have a real visit. The other two venues I removed were a couple places right next to each other in Lake Buena Vista, FL. While the MLB draft was going in the DisneyWorld complex, I saw Champion Stadium and HP Field House (formerly the Milk House). This was on my honeymoon and I have quite a loving wife who gave me an hour to see these two facilities. Now, obviously I didn’t see a game here and technically it is not a visit. Not sure why I included these three in the first place, maybe because I wanted to grow the number of stadiums seen? Regardless, I removed the visits and reviews from the website. This of course, screws up the number for each venue (ie. #91 Rentschler Field will now be #88 Rentschler Field), so that will take some cleaning up. It also means that the special #100 visit (Rhode Island’s Ryan Center) was actually #97. But I don’t care one bit, because in my eyes that is always #100.

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- More Pictures: OK, this post is starting to look like the back of a video game, which was not my initial intention. Anyway, each visit I usually take a couple dozen pictures, but I’ve only posted a few on the website, not knowing how much download space I have. Seeing as though I have a decent amount, I’ll be adding some to each review with the goal being 1 exterior shot, 1 concourse (absent in the earlier years),  and 4 or 5 interior shots. The last picture is something I just completed and that is an image of the program and ticket stub, of which I collect from each game.

Slowly, but surely I’m getting to the stadium reviews. Five new stadiums would take a lot of time, but when two of them are icons, woo there’s a lot to ponder, but I do like writing them. Anyway, we’ve been back a week and I’ve got Akron’s Canal Park and South Bend’s Notre Dame Stadium written and posted. Wrigley will be done soon and then hopefully the other two I’ll have done this weekend. I couldn’t get any work done yesterday as most of the day was celebrating that Bills win! (just kidding, I just watched some more football after jumping around the house for 15 minutes). The rest of the website updates (rankings, Youtube, visits) will be done shortly thereafter. I’ve also taken a peak at some of my older reviews and man they are basic. I would love to redo or update these, but I’m not sure how or when…though it is in the back of my mind. Last thing on this ramble is I want to thank some people that helped out on the trip: Ross Swaldo, Debra Jessup and Aaron Morse. Thank you!

Over the last year or so, I’ve taken more and more videos, while visiting stadiums, arenas and ballparks. There’s enough videos now that I decided to put them up on YouTube and they are available at the channel “stadiumandarenavisit” (they wouldn’t let me get that 21st character). You can check it out by clicking here or clicking “Videos” at the top. Most of the videos are taken from visits over the last year as I’ve gotten more in the habit of recording with my new camera. There are a few though when I began playing around with videos on my first digital camera in 2004. Hopefully it provides a nice prospective of the facility. Plus there are a few cool in-game moments I was lucky enough to catch…like that URI-Charlotte finish

I was unable to make it to HersheyPark Stadium this past weekend for the PIAA (Pennsylvania) High School Football championships as unfortunately, I had to work. I did venture into the state, to nearby Bethlehem’s Christkindlmarkt which was pretty cool. Anyway, I kind of expected this to be a tough go as December is always a difficult month to get in a new stadium as the last time I made it was in 2007 (Stony Brook Arena). As of now, I have no firm plans, but I would like to get to one of the following college basketball venues sometime in January: The Palestra (University of Pennsylvania), Liacouras Center (Temple University) or the very nearby Kirby Events Center in Easton (just added to The List when I  tweaked the seating capacity requirements down to 3,500). In February, I want to either get to another one of those venues or if I have a free weekend, get in a doubleheader on a road trip.

Also, I’m going through all the Stadium Reviews and making sure the pictures are clickable. Not sure, why they weren’t before, but I’m 2/3rds of the way done. The actual review part (which I’ve done in Word for years and then recently pasted them into the page) will be clickable too.

That’s about it…very interesting to see outdoor football again in Minneapolis last night. That video of the Metrodome roof collapse was incredible. 2011 will be intriguing in Minnesota since they’ve been pushing for a new stadium. Part of me is saddened, because that was my favorite NFL Dome venue. I thought the appearance inside was a little better than the others and that place can be deafening. Happy Holidays!