Site with trip reports to minor and major league stadiums

[Jim Kuhn]

I stumbled on this cool site that has trip reports to major and minor league stadiums? Do the trip reports seem to correctly reflect your experiences at the various parks. There is a lot of information on that site. The site is here.

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
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[MicroBob]

Okay, here's my lengthy review looking over some of their minor-league ballpark write-ups.
Cliff-notes: Mostly accurate from what I saw but perhaps erring on the less-critical and more polite side most of the time.

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Looks like a pretty good site. Very impressive and they have clearly done their research and homework on each of the places attended.

after scanning through a few of their reviews I conclude that they tend to rate some parks they've been to a tad more positively than I might and are reluctant to criticize too harshly.
I think that's fine though. Minor-league baseball is supposed to be all about having fun so even the most generic and boring of ballpark experiences should still be a pretty good time.

I haven't gone to any of the major-league stadium reviews yet. Would be interesting to see if they had anything bad to say about any of those.

I went through his reviews of the Memphis, Vero Beach, Daytona and Madison ballparks and found his information to be mostly accurate.
Here are some of my reviews of same ballparks highlighting some of the differences I had with this reviewer.

I disagree with his assessment of Memphis Auto-Zone Park being so fantastic (note, it didn't even make my top tier or even my 2nd tier of favorite ballpark experiences) mostly due to the part that he mentions briefly about it being somewhat generic imo.

I believe he was mostly incorrect about his enthusiasm for Memphis Redbirds attendance too.
Memphis gets a crowd of 2k and they call it 9.5k thanks to 'tickets sold' via corporate sponsors or whatever.
I can guarantee that the 9k crowd he says was in attendance when he was there was nothing close to an actual 9k.

Autozone Park is a nice-ish, modern ballpark nestled in a downtown setting as he states but the atmosphere there is incredibly boring and the crowds are much much smaller than he advertises.
Also don't get much of a breeze in there so on a hot, summer night in Memphis you don't get much relief.

They have cheerleaders at the Memphis baseball games which I personally think is a travesty. They do some fan-in-the-stands type trivia stuff occasionally between innings (and their wireless mic almost always cuts out on them it seems) but mostly their between-innings promotions are some of the least entertaining in minor-league baseball.

No kid racing around the bases or dizzy bat-race or any other awesome on-field promotion. They do NOTHING on the field because the president of the team is a bit old-school and doesn't believe in it.
I talked with him a little about it and he's a nice guy and all but I really think his decision on this is a bad one. His upcoming Minor-League Baseball and America museum sounds very interesting though. He's pretty enthusiastic about it and has been putting a ton of time and research into that upcoming project at their stadium.
He was telling me about it back in 2003. Well, it's 2007 now and still hasn't opened to my knowledge so the delay seems to be getting longer and longer now.


Reviewer seemed less thrilled with the 'charm' of Dodgertown in Vero Beach than other reviewers do but his assessment is still pretty accurate. It's no frills and feels like you stepped into a time-machine to watch baseball 40+ years ago.
So it's definitely charming but feels a bit quieter and slower there.

He very clearly must have been allowed to enter before game-time to snap pics for his site because I don't think he got those Dodgertown pics from elsewhere. This wouldn't be unusual imo.
If he called ahead of time or just showed up and said, "Hey, I run a website. Can I just walk around and snap a few pics before the fans all pour in?" I'm pretty sure on most days the staff or usher wouldn't care and would just say, "Sure. Why not?"
This would be pretty consistent all around spring-training and minor-league baseball as long as the guy didn't look too creepy/weird/sketchy.

The Wendy's sign from the back of the concession-stand there is new.
The window on the far left of the press-box was my broadcast home for 5 years.
The site and his pics bring back some nice memories of course.

His pics and description do seem to capture the atmosphere of Dodgertown pretty well imo.
If 2008 is truly going to be LA's last year for spring-training there I highly recommend a visit if you haven't been before.


I didn't think his pics of Daytona's ballpark did it quite as much justice as you can't even see that you are surrounded by water which definitely adds to the atmosphere. He mentioned the view in his write-up, but you never get to see it.
He seemed a tad less thrilled by this ballpark than I was (one of my all-time favorites) but it also looks like he must have attended on a weeknight with a smaller crowd.


For the Madison Mallards of the Northwoods League:
Perhaps they added a few bleachers to old Warner Park since I was last there in 1992 when they were the Madison Muskies (I still have my cap).
But he still lists their seating-capacity as 5k and then in his write-up says they average 6k per game which I refuse to believe is correct.
In the pics of the game he attended you can clearly see many empty seats so it's not like it's a crazy sellout each and every time.

Good crowds there? Absolutely. That's what I've been hearing. But I'm guessing that if you arrive on a regular old Monday or something it's not like you'll have to phone ahead to make sure you get tickets or anything which is contrary to the impression the writer seems to give about the monster crowds they supposedly are getting there.


Just checked around to see if there are any stadiums that got reviewed less favorably.
Ft. Myers he definitely didn't seem to care for and I agree with that assessment. An immensely boring stadium although comfortable enough and with decent on-field promotions.

Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter he rated very highly it seems and I really don't think there's anything special about that place except for the handsome outside brick and the Abacoa town-center thing he describes as well as the tall office-buildings beyond the OF wall.

But as far as actually being IN the stadium and watching a game from the stands there I don't think it's that great. I've been to many games there with crowds ranging from teeny to huge so it isn't that. It just isn't a great atmosphere inside the place imo.

The good thing about Roger Dean Stadium that he briefly touches on is that two different minor-league teams play there now (Jupiter Hammerheads and Palm Beach Cardinals). So it would be very unusual for you to show up there during the summer and not be able to see a game.
This also seems to have the effect of diminishing the average nightly attendance though which leads to less excitement and atmosphere overall which he alluded to.

[JohnAndersen]

There is an A-ball team in Burlington, IA called the Bees. I spent the better part of my youth at the park and around the team. They play in the midwest league and I actually got to go see them play Appleton, WI when A-Rod played for a few months with them.

Community Stadium is pretty standard, however it has a different feel than most other minor league games I have been to because the town is only about 30.000 people. They have a pretty loyal fan base and of course my favorite part of Minor league games, the promos and gimmicks. Their tickets are dirt cheap so it is a pretty economical way for my friends and I to spend a summer afternoon/night


Also, O'Brian Field in Peoria Illinois is a great ball park. It is relatively new and a great place to catch a game. Ryne Sandburg is their manager right now and big-leaguers seem to always do rehab stints there which I think is pretty fun to watch. I have only seen a couple games at O'brian so I am not as familiar with it, but even though, I highly recommend it.

[Jim Kuhn]

When I stumbled across that website I was like 'wow, that is like Bob's minor league trip reports' and wondered how they related to your experiences. I have closely followed major league baseball for about thirty years.

These past couple of years I have been going to several Gateway Grizzlies games a year. That really seems like baseball the way it should be played. They really play hard nosed and often better fundamentals then the major leaguers. For example, the catcher always hustles down to back up first on ground balls to shortstop or second base. The atmosphere also seems much more lively. Major league games seem to have gotten more corporate and 'stuffy' it seems in recent years. Maybe because of the steep price hikes.

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
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