Tour 2025: John Thurman Field

All photos of Modesto and John Thurman Field available on Flickr.

Having no interest in exploring Stockton any further, we left for Modesto around 10am, and it was about a half-hour drive through mostly fields of long dry grass.  The landscape in this part of the country looks like throwing a lit cigarette out the car window would set hundreds of acres ablaze in a matter of minutes, so it's easy to see why there are so many wildfires out here.  Based solely on Google Maps alone, in my mind I was figuring Stockton would be nice and Modesto would be a dump before we left on this trip, and it turned out to be the opposite.  I was pleasantly surprised with Modesto's downtown, which was extra buzzy on a Friday morning due to their annual American Graffiti parade and festival kicking off that night.  After walking around downtown a bit to get the lay of the land, we started our day at Churchkey, which was a phenomenal gastropub and probably my favorite non-ballpark place that we to went the entire trip.  We imbibed for a few hours at the bar while watching NCAA Super Regionals (which conveniently began at 9am PDT), and were actually there so long that we had two meals.  Everything we ate and drank was delicious and it was a beautifully designed space as well.  I didn't want to leave, but we figured we should check into our room at the Motel 6 while still coherent.  As compared to our somewhat classy Motel 6 in Stockton, this one was more what we were expecting - I think you can create your own visual on what that means.  We made one more stop at Contentment Brewing Company en route to the Nuts game.  This was a cool industrial space featuring games and live music and we loved the beer here as well.  It was a really unexpected and fun day in Modesto, but alas duty called, and we made our way a couple miles south for the 6:40pm first pitch.

John Thurman Field was the only ballpark we had to drive to on our trip, and it was a reasonable $10 for parking.  This stadium has more or less only hosted some form of the Nuts throughout its long history, and 2025 marks its 70th and final season, which is the main reason we had to stop here on this trip.  John Thurman Field, much like Funko Field in Everett last year, is one of the many old parks that is falling victim to the MLB/MiLB facility standards that were implemented in the last CBA.  The Mariners (Nuts parent franchise) and the City of Modesto kept the lights on as long as they could but could not come to any ballpark improvement agreements beyond this season, so they sold the team to Diamond Baseball Holdings, who as their name implies is quickly become the major holding company for dozens of minor league teams throughout the country.  The days of the mom-and-pop community-centric MiLB teams are fading fast, and this is unfortunately the new reality.  There are certainly many good reasons to have standards, such as improving player facilities, standardizing the product, better fan experience, and increased revenue, but the downside is when a long-standing baseball community like Modesto gets left in the dust.  You wouldn't know it by Friday night's attendance, but the Nuts have been a lifeblood of this city for 80 years, and it's a sad reminder that baseball is ultimately about the almighty dollar just like every other business.  Erik and I don't take it lightly that we were blessed to get to see the Nuts in their final season, and hopefully John Thurman Field will find new life with another team in the future.

That being said, I'm not going to glorify this stadium as being architecturally significant or beautiful in any way just because it's old and it's a sad situation.  I mean, there is a reason after all that the team is moving, and that's because it is just not an adequate minor league ballpark by today's standards.  Everything from concessions, to seating, to bullpens and player facilities, and even the playing surface, were all varying degrees of sub-optimal.  Like most older parks, almost the entirety of the concourse is behind the seating bowl, and you have to ascend up ramps and metal stairs to your seats, which is less than ideal and certainly does not meet today's accessibility codes.  These types of stadiums create a major dark tunnel effect where concession stands and bathrooms are stuffed into food trucks and shanty-like structures under bleachers, of which the Nuts had aplenty.  But horrendously, no nut stand!  How do you not even sell basic peanuts at a team called the Nuts that has three nut-themed mascots?!  They did partially redeem this atrocity with full-sized helmet nachos.  The concourse reminded me of Sioux Falls in that most of it seemed eerily empty and understaffed.  We did find a nice little craft beer & food stand in the right field corner where I crushed an IPA and a delicious mac & cheese burger, but its juxtaposition right next to the bullpen staring directly at us was just one of many examples of the Nuts trying to make the best with what they have.  Other examples of this were a kids bounce house in a forgotten back corner that was completely unused, and some vacant "party decks" at the top of the grandstands that were just empty slabs of concrete with no chairs.  It's about what I expected for a park that I knew was in its final months of existence, so it's hard to say I was disappointed, and ultimately the game was all that mattered anyways since my rankings for this park will be pretty pointless (most of this blog is pointless so don't worry I'm still doing rankings).

And it was definitely a great game to watch, as we had 2nd row seats behind home plate, and the seats were a little closer to the field than in Stockton.  We watched the Nuts take down the Padres-affiliated Lake Elsinore Storm by a final score of 4-1.  I always enjoy looking up the teams' top prospects when I write minor league posts, and it looks like the highest ranked prospect in the game was Kavares Tears of the Padres, who is #7 in their organization.  He's listed as an outfielder but went 0-4 as the DH in this game.  The Nuts did not have any of their top 30 prospects in the game and managed only 5 total hits despite the win.  Walter Ford, a 2022 comp round pick, delivered perhaps the best pitching performance we saw of the week, giving up only 1 run in 7 innings for the home team and striking out 6, with an incredibly efficient 70 pitches.  From where we were sitting so close, I didn't really notice a ton of movement on his pitches, but he seemed to be missing a lot of barrels so whatever he was doing was working.  Abraham Parra surrendered 3 runs (2 earned) over 5 in a losing effort.  As an aside, it's worth noting that all of the stadium turmoil and deficiencies have not affected the Nuts' performance on the field, as they've won back-to-back California League championships and are in 2nd place this season.

The game was so fast that the sun was still up when we left, so we felt obligated to go out for one final beer in Modesto.  We did not stay out too long, however, as we needed to be back to our motel before the parking lot security gate closed at 10pm.  We were in bed at a responsible time again this evening to rest up for the final gameday of our trip.

park rankings and statistics:

aesthetics - 2
views from park - 1
view to field - 7
surrounding area - 2 (downtown is nice but not mostly residential near park)
food variety - 4
nachos - 8 (bonus points for full-sized helmet)
beer - 6
vendor price - 8
ticket price - 8
atmosphere - 4
walk to park - 2
parking price/proximity - 7 (adjacent lot for $10)
concourses - 2
team shop - 4 (I was impressed what they had considering the team is leaving)

kids area - 1 (one bounce house that's it)

best food - full-sized helmet taco nachos
most unique stadium feature - bullpen very close to beer pavilion in RF
best jumbotron feature - a look back at John Thurman Field history

best between-inning feature - kids run the bases mid-game

field dimensions - 312/400/315

starters - Abraham Parra (LE) v. Walter Ford (MOD)
opponent - Lake Elsinore Storm
time of game - 1:51
attendance - 641
score - 4-1 W

Brewers score that day - 2-0 L

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

Day 47: Arrowhead Credit Union Park

All photos of Arrowhead Credit Union Park available on Flickr.

Today was another relatively lazy day for us in the Los Angeles area. Tomorrow we definitely plan on doing some sightseeing, but pretty much all on the agenda for this afternoon was catching up on the blog and visiting an In 'N' Out Burger, an awesome California chain that only has like three things on the menu, but makes a damn fine burger. We left for San Bernadino around 3:30 because we figured we'd hit traffic. We were correct in our assumption, and we arrived at the park at 5:30 for what was supposed to be a 45 minute drive. San Bernadino is on the fringe of the LA metropolitan area to the east, and is home the the high-A affiliate of the Dodgers, the Inland Empire 66ers. This team has been around for quite awhile and has fluctuated affiliation between the Mariners and the Dodgers several times. The team of course takes its name from Route 66, the famous former transcontinental highway.

Much like the park in Orem, this stadium has a very simple layout with only a couple of vendors and about 20 rows of seats, but there is a nice view to center field. It's certainly not as spectacular as the view in Orem, but had we not been there on a hazy day, we definitely would have had a nice view of the mountains here as well. The entry has a lot of pizzazz, as it is designed in a sort of Spanish style with lots of palm trees around. What set the park apart from some of the other A-ball stadiums we visited was the food. They had an awesome menu and variety, which included a taco stand, Italian cuisine, and bacon-wrapped hot dogs - not to mention it was $1 beer night!

There were several highlights to this night that had absolutely nothing to do with the game. First off, our seats were awesome - first row, right in front of the 66ers bullpen. Erik and I were so close we could investigate whether or not the players were wearing actual stirrups, or just the painted-on kind that Greg Maddux wears. The players all warmed up right in front of us, and I really wanted to go up to some of the guys and tell them that they had a hole in their swing, but I decided to refrain. We also were pleasantly surprised to see that journeyman Charlie Hough was the pitching coach. Secondly, immediately upon our arrival, we were chosen to be in the 3rd inning Keg Roll competition. Erik had to roll the keg from 3rd base to 2nd, and then I rolled it to 1st, while we raced a team running in the opposite directions - we ended up winning by DQ. The best part was before the race when we got to sit in the dugout with the players for a half inning. Chewing seeds in the dugout watching ball was awesome, and it reminded me of all my years riding the bench in Little League and high school. Lastly, perhaps the coolest part of the evening, MLB ambassador and former great Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda was there. Erik and I both bought Dodger baseballs in the team shop and waited in line for 2 innings to get his autograph. It was great to meet a living legend, even though he was visibly agitated to be getting bothered the whole game by fans. He did have a soft spot in his heart for the kids though and seemed to get a kick out of posing for photos with them and talking about baseball.

Between watching pitchers warm up and standing in line to see Tommy, I really can't say that I was as attentive as I would have liked to have been at this game. From what I did see, it was a very sloppy defensive game, and the 66ers starting pitcher Marion Arias got rocked for 6 runs on 10 hits in 4 innings. The Sixers could never really muster any offense the entire game. DH Josh Blanks was the star of the game for Lake Elsinore, going 3-5 with 3 RBI. He was by far the best statistical player in the game and I expect to see him in AAA by the end of next year. We also got a kick out of the fact that the 1B for the Storm was named C. Cooper (he had two hits as well, by the way).

Tomorrow we hopefully get to see a bit of LA before heading to Fullerton to watch the OC Flyers of the Golden League.

park stats and rankings:
aesthetics - 4
views from park - 7 (would be better if it wasn't hazy)
view to field - 10
surrounding area - 2
food variety - 9
nachos - 6 (tons o' cheese left over)
beer - 10 (Miller Lite for $1)
vendor price - 8
ticket price - 9
atmosphere - 7 (Tommy Lasorda and the Dodger cheerleaders salvage this category)
walk to park - 2
parking price/proximity - 7 ($3 in A-ball?)
concourses - 4
team shop - 4

best food - bacon-wrapped hot dog with fried onions
most unique stadium feature - Tommy Lasorda
best jumbotron feature - video feed to jumbotron was totally just a guy who walked around with a small handheld camera
best between-inning feature - us in the keg roll

field dimensions - 330/410/330
starters - Steve Garrison (LE) v. Marion Arias (IE)
opponent - Lake Elsinore Storm
time of game - 2:39
attendance - 1530
score - 3-2 W
Brewers score that day - off