Tour 2025: Banner Island Ballpark

All photos of Stockton and Banner Island Ballpark available on Flickr.

Due to some traffic, it was about an hour drive to Stockton for our next stop of the tour and second game of the day.  We still arrived in plenty of time not only to check into our room at the Studio 6 Suites downtown, but also to enjoy a quick dip in its pool.  This was not a glamorous place by any means - especially when compared to the accommodations we just enjoyed in Sacramento - but it was certainly classy for a Motel 6, and as we'd come to realize over the next 18 hours or so, it was pretty damn nice for Stockton.  The friend I had lunch with on Wednesday is in the law enforcement field, and his wife is from there, so he warned me that Stockton has a reputation of being very dirty and unsafe, and Reddit is quick to back that up.  We were basically only at the ballpark and in a very concentrated downtown area, so we didn't experience that per se, but I couldn't help but keep my guard up the entire time.  We went to a decent cocktail bar called FED before the game, and then walked across a bridge over McLeod Lake to the ballpark.  The waterfront and cool dock area was one of the few redeeming qualities of Stockton, and let's just say it's one of those cities I would have never visited if there wasn't a baseball team there.

Banner Island Ballpark is an unofficial name adopted by locals in reference to the area it's in, which used to be an island within a river delta, but due to landfill is now just a peninsula in sort of a dead-end channel.  Even the team calls it Banner Island Ballpark, but its real official name is simply Stockton Ballpark, as it is owned by the city.  Stockton's claim to fame in baseball lore is that an old team there from the 19th century supposedly served as the inspiration for the "Mudville Nine" in "Casey at the Bat," but the current team in town dates back a mere 84 years.  The Ports have called Banner Island Ballpark home since it opened in 2005.  Its listed capacity is 5,200 but it was only about 10% full on this Thursday night.  The first person we were greeted by upon entry was the mascot Splash, whom Erik got his picture with of course.  Besides a charming masonry tower and long entry canopy, and the site being water-adjacent, there isn't much of an exterior, but there are some nice details once you get inside.  It's got the standard 15 rows of seats spanning from pole to pole, bullpens in left field, and a berm in right field, all of which are easily accessible.  This park does lack a second level of any kind which you don't see much in newer parks, so it offers a sleek low profile, which really reinforces the entry datum and tower as focal points.  The lack of a second level pushes suites and the press box down to the back of the main level behind home plate, sort of like Fox Cities Stadium.  This causes your view of the field to be interrupted when walking around the concourse, which is annoying, but architecturally speaking the breaking up of the seating bowl makes it visually interesting.  Probably the most unique area of the park is the Black Oak Casino Back Porch in right field.  It features Adirondack chairs under a covered "porch" hence the name, with its own private bar, and a little bump-out into right field to give it some prominence.  Unfortunately, this is a private area so we couldn't go inside, but it seemed to be well used even on a weeknight.  We just bought GA tickets for this game so we moved around a lot, and we spent most of the evening watching from the outfield and behind the bullpens.  We chatted with some of the players out here during the game, and there were also some hilarious drunk fans who spent a lot of time trying to coax a player into throwing them a ball.  Besides being in Stockton, I guess poor concessions would be my biggest complaint about the park.  The food and drink selection was very mediocre and bare bones - you can get away with that if you've got a vibrant atmosphere or a historic ballpark, but at your typical sleepy A-ball game at a modern park, it stands out as an issue.  Erik and I had a sad excuse for a cheeseburger and nachos for dinner, which I washed down with a barely palatable blood orange ale.

Tonight was the first of a string of very quick games to close out our trip, played at 2:26 officially despite 9 runs being scored in 10 innings.  If I'm being honest, I was glad it was a fast game, because I was not prepared in my shorts and t-shirt for the steady cold wind after the sun went down.  The Ports (Athletics affiliate) faced off against the Fresno Grizzlies (Rockies affiliate) on this night.  Unfortunately for us - but probably fortunately if you're a fan of either of these teams - most of their organizational top prospects seem to be at higher levels right now, so we didn't really see any big names on either side.  The only prospect ranked in either team's Top 30 that played in the game was Kelvin Hidalgo, who is the #21 Rockies prospect.  He lived up to that billing by being the offensive star of the game, going 3-5 out of the leadoff spot with a homer and a double.  I was hoping that last year's #3 overall draft pick Charlie Condon would be on the Grizzlies roster, but it looks like he skipped low-A entirely.  Fresno tallied single runs in the 1st, 4th, and 5th, until coughing up the lead in the bottom half of the 5th on a Gunnar Gouldsmith 2-run double.  The score would remain 3-3 and go to extra racks, and the Grizzlies immediately scored their ghost runner on consecutive hits by Tommy Hopfe and Derek Bernard.  They would tack on two more insurance runs, and Tyler Hampu shut down the Ports 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 10th to secure the victory.  The starting pitchers went 5 and 3 innings respectively.  I thought that the Ports starter Wei-En Lin fared pretty well, giving up only 1 unearned run, but for some reason he was pulled after only 36 pitches.

We were pretty tired after 19 innings of ball in two cities, so we headed straight back to our motel following the game to tune into some NCAA Super Regional action and rest up for Day 3.

park rankings and statistics:

aesthetics - 5
views from park - 4 (unfortunately cannot see water except from outfield)
view to field - 3 (tons of foul ground and all seating areas far away)
surrounding area - 2 (hockey/G League arena next door and not much else)
food variety - 2
nachos - 2
beer - 3
vendor price - 8
ticket price - 7
atmosphere - 2
walk to park - 6 (depends what direction you come from...walking along the water is nice)
parking price/proximity - 7 (we walked but adjacent lot for $10)
concourses - 3 (very disjointed concessions and bathrooms and not enough of them)
team shop - 7

kids area - 0 (closed)

best food - ice cream
most unique stadium feature - Black Oak Casino Back Porch
best jumbotron feature - Chug Cam

best between-inning feature - flip cup

field dimensions - 300/399/326

starters - Marcos Herrera (FRE) v. Wei-En Lin (STK)
opponent - Fresno Grizzlies
time of game - 2:26
attendance - 912
score - 6-3 L

Brewers score that day - off