ABC Supply Stadium

All photos of ABC Supply Stadium available on Flickr.

I finally made it down to the much-needed and much-anticipated new Beloit ballpark yesterday.  Most people who move out of Wisconsin would probably not have "one last trip to Beloit" on their pre-move checklist, but as this blog has long established, I am not most people.  I met my friend Nate at a Park & Ride in Waukesha and we made the 50-minute drive together for the game.  Going to games with Nate is like going to games with my 28-year-old self, as he still gets to a ton of ballgames and ballparks a year and is an avid bobblehead collector.  We (he) needed to be in line prior to gates opening at 5:35 in order to make sure we received the Poopsie Mascot bobblehead.  While Nate talked about bobbleheads with all the other nerds in line, I meandered down Shirland Ave to snap some photos of the stadium.  The stadium site is very close to the state line of Wisconsin and Illinois - so close in fact that I actually had to cross to the other side of the road to Illinois to get some good exterior pictures.  The freeway exit to the park is even an Illinois exit.  So you can imagine the healthy mix of fans for a game in which Beloit played the South Bend Cubs.  We walked in right when the gates opened to receive our bobblehead vouchers and complimentary "paletas" (popsicles) for Copa Night.

I got the impression pretty immediately when we arrived at the ballpark that Beloit has fully embraced two strategies when designing this park - 1) build it and they will come, and 2) anything is better than Pohlman Field.  Beloit is clearly trying to make this ballpark the center of a downtown revitalization, as is the siren song of many urban ballparks.  It's a commendable effort for a city that was ravaged by the last two recessions, but I'm also just not sure it is realistic it is for one of the smallest markets in minor league baseball.  The daunting brick exterior that hugs the street, the connector to the Rock River riverwalk, and the adjacency to downtown and the bus depot all suggest that Beloit is really trying to make this park part of a destination.  They even allow fans the opportunity to rent suites and use the park on non-gamedays.  It's a very similar strategy to what Fort Wayne employed when they opened Parkview Field in 2009.  By all indications it has been an unmitigated success in Fort Wayne, but again that is a metro area that is about 10x the size of the Beloit-Janesville area.  So time will tell on ABC Supply Stadium, but what Beloit does have going for it - something it has always had in spades - is overwhelming community support.  Two major benefactors largely funded the construction of the new ballpark - Quint Studer the new owner, and Diane Hendricks the billionaire owner of ABC Supply - and committed to Beloit keeping a team in the area for the foreseeable future, at a time when their team was extremely close to contraction a few years ago when the minor leagues were reconfigured.  Over 1,400 fans were in attendance at a very steamy and smoky game on a Thursday night, which is more fans than you'd see in a typical week at Pohlman Field.  

Speaking of Pohlman Field, as I eluded to earlier, the bar that was set for the design of this ballpark seemed to be just "hey, it's better than nothing."  I'm not trying to suggest that it's an unattractive stadium - on the contrary it's one of the more aesthetically beautiful ones in the Midwest League - but there seem to just be a lot of things in execution that could have been better.  But every time I would notice any small nuance or think "oh this could have been done better," my mind always went back to "well, it's much better than what they had."  I think with a little more thought and effort this could have been a phenomenal top-5 minor league park and it certainly has the nuts and bolts to get there someday.  For instance it has a beautiful facade on Shirland Avenue that almost nobody goes in or will even see outside of their car.  It reminded me a little bit of the ballpark in Montgomery where it was designed to hold an urban edge and create an urban fabric, and not look necessarily like a ballpark.  This facade on what is the south side, or 1st base side, of the ballpark features a ticket window, a private suite entry, and what looks like a beautiful colonnade but upon closer inspection is not any sort of area you can walk under.  It's just columns and archways for their own sake that surround a bunch of window bays that you can't even see into as they are opaque glass.  I completely get why they would want a striking exterior on this road, but it makes it very disappointing and misleading when you can't even use it.  To bring up Parkview Field again, it is a very similar dynamic to Fort Wayne, where they have this wonderful street edge that is very architecturally interesting and what looks like it should be the main entry, but most if not all people enter in an unceremonious gate in the right field corner.  One of my biggest pet peeves in any ballpark is a main facade that does not serve as the main entry, and unfortunately that is not a problem unique to Beloit.  As an architect this just drives me crazy.  If you traverse even further down the road and turn to walk down the riverwalk along the west (3rd base) side, the building here is just masonry block.  There was no attempt made to create anything accessible or interesting on that side.  So again - beautiful aesthetically, but just not executed great in terms of entry and activation along the street front.  Once inside, there are some similar issues with design choices that could have been done a bit better.  The concourse is very discontinuous, which is partially due to the constraints and elevation changes on the site, but it makes getting from the main concourse to the outfield a little tricky with no real signs telling you where to go.  This discontinuity also means that there is no real integration with the river that is a stone's throw from the 3rd base line.  I kind of get why since it is a pretty stagnant and unattractive river, but still to just hide it behind a tall plinth and a cheap railing was not super thought out.  Another pet peeve of mine at any ballpark is when it is directly adjacent to water and does not celebrate that or integrate itself in any way.  There could have been a nice sititng/viewing area there at the very least.  The last major thing I thought was executed poorly was the concourse is almost completely uncovered.  There is this huge, intricate 2-story brick structure wrapping the concourse, which does provide some shade just because of how tall it is, but if there were canopies or covered sections that were attached to this building, it really would have reinforced that storefront feel on the interior of the stadium and naturally created some social areas to congregate near all of the concession stands.  The only real place to tuck away and cool off or escape a rain storm is the team shop right now, which plenty of people were taking advantage of on this hot night.

Even if you spent the entire game in said team shop, just hearing the crack of the bat and watching the trajectory of almost every ball in the air would tell you how warm it was on this night.  South Bend defeated Beloit 6-0 behind a lot of loud contact and an onslaught of the Sky Carp's starter, Zach King.  Almost every ball put in play off of him was loud and deep (when he wasn't hitting batters).  King gave up 5 of the 6 runs and didn't make it out of the 3rd inning.  The bullpen gave a valiant effort, giving up only 1 additional run over 6.1 innings, but the Sky Carp hitters could not get anything going off of 2022 1st round pick Cade Horton.  He was masterful over 5.2 innings, giving up only 1 hit and touching up to 97 on the radar.  I was most impressed with Kevin Alcantara of the Cubs.  He only had one hit on the evening, but it was a long opposite field triple, and he also walked twice.  He had a great eye at the plate and had a nice easy swing out of the cleanup spot.

I've spent a large portion of this post shitting on this ballpark and Beloit in general, but I do want to emphasize that this is a DRASTIC improvement over Pohlman Field, and as you'll see from my rankings below, it is a very nice ballpark that the fans deserve and should be proud of.  The brick aesthetic makes the park feel lived-in but not kitschy, which is hard to pull off.  I also really appreciated that two areas that are typically afterthoughts in ballparks - the lawn seating and the kids area - were given very purposeful placement.  I'm always going to find things to nitpick in every ballpark I go to, but it truly is a pleasant place to watch a ballgame and it's exciting to see downtown Beloit making an effort.

park rankings and statistics:

aesthetics - 9
views from park - 5 (Beloit water tower)
view to field - 5 (lots of netting and obstructions)
surrounding area - 6 (downtown Beloit)
food variety - 7
nachos - 8
beer - 8
vendor price - 8
ticket price - 2 (probably the most expensive minor league tickets I've ever purchased)
atmosphere - 7
walk to park - 5
parking price/proximity - 7 (adjacent lot for free but the lots are very piecemeal)
concourses - 7 (would be a 9 or 10 if they were covered)
team shop - 8 (would be a 10 if they had Snappers retro gear)

kids area - 7

best food - Latin food stand
most unique stadium feature - main facade
best jumbotron feature - when they showed the final score featuring the wrong teams

best between-inning feature - bunch of kids chase a guy in a ketchup costume

field dimensions - 345/400/325

starters - Cade Horton (SB) v. Zach King (BEL)
opponent - South Bend Cubs
time of game - 2:35
attendance - 1434
score - 6-0 L
Brewers score that day - 3-2 W

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/30/23:

Brewers 43-38, --; 3 @ Pirates, 4 v. Cubs, 3 v. Reds

Twins 40-42, --; 3 @ Orioles, 3 v. Royals, 3 v. Orioles

2023 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 1

Peter - 11

Return to Willmar

All photos of Bill Taunton Stadium available on Flickr.

Our whirlwind 2-week family visit to Minnesota of course concluded with another ballgame, this time in Willmar, which is about 50 miles southwest of my wife's parents' house in Cold Spring.  Willmar is home to the Stingers of the Northwoods League, which Erik and I visited way back in their inaugural season of 2010 as a part of our Target Field/Northwoods League trip.  We ended up having to take back county roads most of the way due to the major construction project on MN-23, so normally a drive that is a straight shot in 45 minutes took us about an hour, but it was very scenic past many farms and lakes.

We had the entire family in tow for this trip and got to the park around 4:30 for a 5:05 first pitch.  I'm always excited to see what has changed in a ballpark I have not been back to in that long, particularly one in this league that is constantly adapting, and was eager to walk around before we got to our seats.  And by walk around, mostly I just mean immediately and repeatedly taking my daughter to the bounce house.  From what I did see and from what I can gather when comparing to my 2010 photos, quite a bit has changed at Bill Taunton Stadium.  There was a pretty major renovation done 6 years ago that greatly enhanced the fan experience.  A picnic area was added at the main entry, a couple of new concessions tents/shacks were added, and a large beach area for private parties was added down the left field line.  The rickety standalone bleacher section that Erik and I sat in 13 years ago was replaced by a raised, shaded pavilion, and the ad-hoc bar rail along the left field line was refreshed with a whole new bar and stools.  As is pretty standard in the Northwoods League, the first few rows behind home plate were blow out and replaced with 4-top tables with waitstaff club service.  But perhaps the coolest addition were a couple of dugout suites, one at each dugout.  There is a small "enclave" for lack of a better term on the home-plate side of each dugout that was carved out and fenced off for use as a small suite, appearing to hold around 10 people each.  At first they seemed a little dangerous just seeing their proximity to the field, but they are protected well and really in an area that it would be pretty difficult to hit a foul ball, and certainly a risk I would be willing to take for that unique vantage point that is basically right on the field.  While I was very pleased with all of the upgrades (including the aforementioned bounce house that my daughter spent a considerable amount of time in), the major deficiency of this ballpark has unfortunately not yet been addressed, which is that there is only one concession area and one set of bathrooms, both of which are together in a very odd space adjacent to the grandstand, elevated behind the 3rd base dugout.  I'm guessing this park has been globbed onto and remodeled so many times throughout the years that this is just the original location of the concessions and bathrooms from when the park was much smaller and have never moved, but they definitely have the space to add at least a beer cart and a couple of Port-A-Johns on the opposite side of the field.  It wasn't too bad at the game we were at, but I can only imagine how awful the congestion is at the concessions area for a packed house at a local tournament or something.

We chose to sit in the 1st row of the 200 section on the 1st base side of the grandstand, and they proved to be the perfect seats for a couple of small kids and an old man with a back problem, with a wide unobstructed aisleway directly in front of us.  It was super easy to get in and out of our seats, with plenty of space for the kids to jump around and harass the mascot as he/she/it walked back and forth down the aisle.  We took in a great Father's Day matchup between the Stingers and the Mankato MoonDogs.  It was a back and forth affair for the entire game, with at least one team scratching out a run in every inning except the 3rd and the 5th.  The Stingers got a big game-tying homer in the 4th inning by their DH and Rainbow Warrior Sean Rimmer, and a monster 2-run shot by Gabe Swansen in the 8th that gave Willmar the lead for good.  Tyler Bryan tossed a 1-2-3 9th inning for the save in a brisk game of just over 2 hours (I will record this game using the box score time of 2:29 but that is wildly inaccurate).  Both starting pitchers fared well, going 5 and 6 innings respectively.  Overall it was one of the better quality baseball games I have seen in this league - good pitching, good situational hitting, a surprising amount of power, and stellar defense.

We spent one more night in Cold Spring and headed back to Wisconsin the following day, having notched another 4 ballgames during our time in Minnesota.

park rankings and statistics

(see original post and rankings from 07/31/2010):
aesthetics - 6
views from park - 5
view to field - improves to 8
surrounding area - improves to 4 (there is now a waterpark next door)
food variety - improves to 5
nachos - improves to 6
beer - 5
vendor price - 9
ticket price - decreases to 7
atmosphere - 7
walk to park - 3
parking price/proximity - 10
concourses - 4
team shop - 5

kids area - 4 (new category)

best food - Minnesota Wild Rice Brat
most unique stadium feature - dugout suites
best jumbotron feature - n/a

best between-inning feature - Culver's Food Race beyond outfield wall

field dimensions - 326/373/324

starters - RJ Elmore (MAN) v. Mitch Gutknecht (WIL)
opponent - Mankato MoonDogs
time of game - 2:29
attendance - 950
score - 5-3 W
Brewers score that day - 5-2 W

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/22/23:

Brewers 38-36, -1.5; 3 @ Guardians, 4 @ Mets

Twins 37-38, +1.0; 3 @ Tigers, 3 @ Braves

2023 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 1

Peter - 10

Royal Park

All photos of Royal Park available on Flickr.

One of the many things I love about baseball is its accessibility.  Unless you are purposely trying to get off the grid (in which case you probably wouldn't read what I'm writing anyways), chances are that just about everywhere in the lower 48 states will be within a couple hours of some level of collegiate or organized baseball.  I love that whether I am going to a wedding in a remote mountain town in Colorado, or driving through a wind farm in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana, I can always find a ballgame if I want to - and in both of those cases, I have.  Even visiting my wife's family in rural Minnesota, which is over an hour from the Twin Cities and 20 miles from anything resembling an urban area, I am never short on ball options.  Thanks to the magic of the Minnesota Baseball Association - colloquially known as Town Ball - I will have literally hundreds of ball fields at my disposal after we move out here.  My father-in-law and I visited one in the neighboring town of Richmond yesterday for a Sunday matinee.  It was one of the most perfect weather days I have ever spent at a ballpark - 70 degrees, sunny but not hot, with a steady cool north breeze.

Richmond is a part of the "Ro-Co-Ri" school district along with Rockville to the east and obviously Cold Spring.  The population is roughly half of Cold Spring, and it is about 5 minutes down MN-23, or roughly 15-20 minutes west of I-94.  It's definitely a much more rugged and sleepier town than Cold Spring, and that could not be more evident than comparing the Richmond ballpark experience to the Cold Spring experience.  Cold Spring Baseball Park very much feels like a civic gathering place, part of the community fabric in the center of town, where most people walk or bike to the park and are mostly there to chat with neighbors or support friends and family in the game.  Royal Park seemed more about the baseball and doesn't have that "buzz" that watching a game in Cold Spring does.  I don't intend that as a slight to fans of either town, I just got the sense that people really come out to support the Royals because there isn't much else to do in Richmond.  It's off the beaten path - quite literally as it is ringed by a dirt road - so it's definitely not just a park you stumble upon while walking through town.  It's an interesting setup as you kind of drive right up to the park and there isn't really a distinction of where the parking ends and the field begins.  You enter on either the west or east side of the dirt road which loops around the south end of the field, and then you just kind of park where you feel like on the grass behind the fence.  Some people literally pulled right up to the fence and watched from their car.  The ballpark consists of a small grandstand that was donated by the local Lions Club in 1990, a section of metal bleachers on each side of the grandstand, a standalone masonry concessions building, a pressbox/dugout/restroom buliding, and a tally scoreboard, which is all very impressive for a town this size and was quite unexpected.  Greg and I actually brought lawn chairs and our own beverages as we were not expecting much more than some rickety wood bleachers and a chain link fence.  We were also not expecting admission to be $5 per person.  At first I was appalled that I had to pay to watch town ball, but I quickly came to realize that this money likely went right back into the upkeep of the ballpark.  It's very clear from hodgepodge nature of the park and the city center itself that Richmond just does not have the financial resources and tax base that Cold Spring has, so I assume they cannot afford the luxury of offering free admission.  But the thing both parks have in common is an immense amount of pride in both the team and the facility, which I am sure is true of every town ball park.   There had to be over 100 people there, not to mention another dozen or so volunteers working, which for a town of 1,500 people on a Sunday afternoon is again pretty impressive.  My favorite part of the park by far was that they sold entire 12-packs and cases of Busch Light for $25 and $45 respectively.  I had not seen a stunt like that since Erik and I bought a pitcher of beer in Sheboygan, which is ironically also a home to an amateur league team.  A lady in the bleachers next to us actually bought a case for the New Munich contingent that made the trek into town to see their SilverStreaks battle the Royals.

The game itself was a win by mercy rule for the visiting New Munich team, by a score of 12-0 in 7 innings.  As you can imagine it takes some time for the box scores for these types of game to make it online or into the local paper (if at all), so as of this post no game stats are yet available, but Richmond was pretty outmatched from the beginning.  Both starting pitchers faired pretty well; I want to say the Richmond starter lasted about 4 innings and gave up only 1 of the 12 runs, and New Munich starter went about 6 innings.  But outside of the starter, not much else to write home about for the Royals.  They had more errors (6) than hits (5) including several just plain dropped fly balls.  They seemed to be operating at just an entirely different gear than New Munich and were incredibly slow off the ball on both offense and defense.  New Munich beat out quite a few infield hits, including two on grounders to 1st because the big fat reliever could either not make it to first in time to cover the bag or just chose not to.  The aforementioned big fat reliever was who the SilverStreaks broke the game open against.  They put up a 9-spot off of him in the 5th inning, mostly clobbering his fastball that was so slow it had an arc to it.  I'm probably being a little harsh on the Royals as this is just amateur baseball, but at least I can say it was entertaining.  Had the game not gotten so far out of hand, the lone umpire probably would have been the story of the day.  He had an enormous neck-to-shin strike zone that was almost as wide, and he got nailed in the face several times by foul balls, but remained committed to staying in the game and calling just about everything a strike.  The players I remember most on New Munich were the leadoff hitter #20 and the 3-hole hitter who wore #00.  #20 had at least 3 hits on the day, and #00 came in from right field to finish the game on the mound in the 7th.

Our move to Minnesota is still a year away so I don't want to get too sentimental just yet, but let's just say that Town Ball is in the "PRO" column and will help soften the culture shock from Milwaukee to Cold Spring.  No matter if I am living in a metro area with 1.5M people, or a town with two stop lights, it is nice to know that a constant I can count on in my life besides family is baseball.

park rankings and statistics

(for purposes of amateur/town ball rankings, some categories are changed to just yes/no questions):
aesthetics - 2
views from park - 2 (trees)
view to field - 9 (dangerously close to and unguarded by fence)
surrounding area - 1
concessions - yes
nachos - no
beer - yes
vendor price - 10
ticket price - 1 (I know the money went to a good cause...but $5 for town ball come on)
atmosphere - 4
walk to park - 1 (run-down residential)
parking price/proximity - 10 (could literally park in foul territory)
concourses - 2
team shop - yes ($20 hats)

best food - 24-pack of Busch Light for $45
most unique stadium feature - press box on top of dugout
scoreboard - yes

lights - no
best between-inning feature - n/a

field dimensions - 330/350/330
teams - Richmond Royals v. New Munich SilverStreaks
time of game - 2hrs-ish
attendance - 100-ish
score - 12-0 L
Brewers score that day - 8-6 L

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/12/23:

Brewers 34-32, -1.0; 2 @ Twins, 3 v. Pirates, 3 v. Diamondbacks

Twins 33-33, +1.5; 2 v. Brewers, 4 v. Tigers, 4 v. Red Sox

2023 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 0

Peter - 7

Initial Reactions to Rule Changes

Memorial Day has already come and gone, which is often considered the bellwether date of every baseball season, so I thought it appropriate to take a step back at this point and assess how the crop of rule changes in 2023 have affected the game.

Strictly looking at it from a statistical perspective as a whole, the results are staggering.  Game times as of this post are averaging 2 hours and 37 minutes, which is a 26 minute reduction from last year.  This is the first year since 2015 that games have averaged under 3 hours and is the shortest average time in the last 15 years.  In 2022, over 10% of games lasted at least 3 1/2 hours, and this year that number is less than 1%.  Average time between plate appearances is also down more than 20 seconds, which if you add that up over even just the minimum 54 PAs amounts to 18 minutes by itself.  There have also been only 170 automatic strikes called and 391 automatic balls called in over 264,000 pitches thrown league wide, which tells you that players have adjusted very quickly to the pitch clock.  Stolen bases and stolen base attempts are also up a bit as a result of the larger bases and pitcher disengagement rules, but I don't think to the significant amount that was touted.  There are on average 0.9 steal attempts per game in 2023, which is fractionally better than last year and the highest amount since 2012.  As a point of reference, there has not been a year that averaged greater than 1 attempt per game since 1999, but while the number of attempts has not shifted dramatically, the success rate is up almost 5% which is not insignificant.  The last major rule change this year was banning infield defensive shifts, which has resulted in an increase in batting average on ground balls to .250, which is not a huge jump from last year but if you separate out lefties who were the most impacted by the shift previously, their average has jumped over 10 points.  Overall, league batting average is still way down in general from historical numbers, which is a greater reflection I think on the dominant pitching in today's game than any sort of shifting.  I think it's too early to tell with some of these metrics, but there is no denying that when you add all of this up in total and consider that the overall goal of the rules was to increase pace of play and reduce the amount of time during a game where nothing is happening, I would call the overall package an unmitigated success (unless you ask any team's President of Business Operations about beer sales).

However, as with everything else in baseball, there are two sides to everything - there's the analytical side, but there is also the intuitive/human side.  Anybody who has really been paying attention to baseball this year will notice two things immediately - poor defense and greater number of pitcher injuries.  This is not a statistical thing I can back up or tie to any of the rule changes directly, but again it is that intuitive side of the game - it can't be a coincidence that defense appears worse and more pitchers seem to be getting injured in a year where there are pace of play and shifting rules implemented.  Players seem to like the rules overall, but they are also creatures of habit and routine and undoubtedly they must be particularly taxing to pitchers.  

If these rules are to stay around for a long time - and there's no reason to believe they won't - the biggest change of all will be fundamentally changing how the game is taught in the minor leagues.  Pitchers today are taught to be max effort guys in short stints and rely on the strikeout.  Defenses today are predicated on putting a player in the best spot on the field based on what the data tells you, and players having the "flexibility" to change positions on a regular basis.  Hitters are taught today that contact is not important and should sell out for the homerun because that is what wins games, and more importantly, that is the stat that drives salary.  Nobody is really taught how to steal bases or even how to run bases properly for that same reason.  I think that all of those things are going to change in the coming years, and beyond pace of play, that is really what is at the heart of all of these rule changes - getting baseball back to the game it used to be 40 years ago.  Action packed, lots of contact, speed, and defensive wizardry; in other words, athleticism.  I can only speak most for my hometown team the Brewers, and they certainly seem to be ahead of the curve on a lot of this already.  They are near the top of the league in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and steals, and they are near the bottom in strikeouts as a pitching staff, thanks in large part to a crop of rookies and ground ball pitchers.

It is always interesting to see how baseball evolves year to year and generation to generation as a sport, and I am eager to see how these rules will manifest themselves on the field in the next decade.

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/5/23:

Brewers 32-27, +0.5; 3 v. Orioles, 3 v. Athletics

Twins 31-29, +3.5; 3 @ Rays, 3 @ Blue Jays

2023 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 0

Peter - 5