Black Sox Park

All photos of Freeport Black Sox Classic available on Flickr.

Saturday was a whirlwind of a day and I learned that when it comes to Town Ball schedules, you have to be flexible and adapt.  I had planned to attend a game in St. Augusta which is about 20 minutes east of our house, but when I arrived a little after 1pm, not a soul was to be found on the field.  I tried not to panic (admittedly difficult for me) and quickly turned down the next street to park and collect my thoughts, for a long enough period of time that the owner of the house I was in front of might have been suspicious of something nefarious going on.  Instead it was quite the opposite - I was scouring ball schedules on my phone.  I finally found another game occurring at Black Sox Park in Freeport, which was over a half-hour back in the opposite direction.  I hustled back west on I-94 as fast as I legally could and arrived at what the internet told me was the Freeport ballpark, but was actually just a playground.  By this point, I had been driving over an hour and my frustration was building, but I was also pot-committed and determined to watch ball somewhere, so I just started stubbornly driving around to other fields in Freeport I could find on Apple Maps, hoping that one of those was Black Sox Park.  Amazingly, this town of 675 people has 3 ball fields, and third time was a charm as they say.  This experience taught me two things.  #1 is that I always need to have a backup plan from now on, as it is not uncommon for these type of games to be cancelled with no warning or update whatsoever (the same thing happened to me in Luxemburg last year).  #2 is that many of these town ball parks have incorrect addresses or just no address at all, so just entering the name of the field on my phone is not always good enough.  Once I actually found the field and parked, I had a quiet chuckle about the ridiculous ordeal, and I couldn't help but think that Erik's "drive towards the light towers" method of navigation would have actually worked much better than an actual map in this case.

I got out of my car and laughed again when I saw the very address I was trying to locate was in large black letters on the roadside monument sign.  The field was empty but there was still a crowd of fans, so I thought maybe the game was over already but I was at least going to walk around and have a beer while I was out this far.  After snapping a few pictures, a team comprised of what looked to be younger players took the field for fungoes, so my next thought was maybe I missed the town ball game but there is some sort of junior game happening now.  I also noticed several other teams changing clothes and milling about.  I finally realized what was happening - I had stumbled upon a tournament!  Black Sox Park was hosting their annual Freeport Black Sox Classic for the entire weekend, and I happened to arrive there between games.  Eight teams are invited to played a double-elimination style tournament, and the game I was about to see was the Clearwater River Cats v. the Aitkin Steam - which explained why so many other teams were on the road today when I was looking at schedules.  I parked myself a couple rows from the top to witness some of the most regimented fielding practice I've seen in a long time.  A good round of fungoes is almost like watching circus performers or basketball passing drills where everyone is beautifully in sync with no wasted motion.

As for the ballpark itself, this was another impressive one, which was not overly surprising since they are a host site for a tournament.  On the player side, it had a very well maintained field with a nice symmetrical outfield fence, an above-average electronic scoreboard, a locker room/restroom building, ample space for batting cages, and quality masonry dugouts - all luxuries that are not a given at any particular town ball park.  The main structure as you approach the field from the parking lot is a 30+ foot tall rectangular building with equipment housed on ground level and the press box at the top, with a large canopy extending over 10 rows of bleachers between this building and the backstop.  To the right of the grandstand is a concessions building fairly close to the field.  These two structures really framed the seating area nice as in Spring Hill, but this site was a little more open and less closed in, with farmland as far as the eye can see to all sides.  The concession stand here was one of the more exceptional ones I've seen in town ball, featuring hamburgers with fried onions grilled fresh to order, various other meats from a local butcher, for some reason golf on a projector screen, and also a wide selection of team merchandise for sale, including cool Black Sox caps and bleacher back seats.  However, with this variety and menu comes higher prices.  The gold standard for town ball park prices seems to generally be $3 dogs and $25 12-packs of Busch Light, and in Freeport those are priced at $4 and $30 respectively - still not breaking the bank by any means, but worth mentioning.  Maybe the prices were just higher because it was a free tournament, which would make sense.  I liked the brick wainscot that tied all of the individual structures together and I thought it was a really comfortable and well composed park.  Most town ball parks seem to face the "incorrect" cardinal direction of west, so if you're lucky enough to find one with a covered grandstand like Freeport has, that will greatly impact your experience.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't actually see the Freeport Black Sox play, and it was a little disappointing because I was excited to see if they were wearing Field of Dreams style uniforms.  Between all of the driving around and the long warmup before the game, I also only stayed for a couple of innings.  These were two of the younger, more athletic teams I have seen at this level.  I'm accustomed to more of a bar-league softball level of talent, but Clearwater in particular had some good looking ballplayers, aside from the enormous first baseman who had a gut hanging over his belt and made other players go fetch bats for him.  It was another gorgeous day for baseball and I wish I could have stayed longer, but I left for a good reason - more ball!  After attending my first ever tripleheader just a couple months ago, Saturday would be another one for me as I saw parts of two more games in Cold Spring at their annual "Day at the Park" celebration.  This is an annual event consisting of the Springers, the Rockies, the local Legion team, and the senior team playing a quadruple header that culminates with live music after the final game.  It's the ballpark's main fundraising event of the year and one of the few games they actually charge admission to, and I was happy to finally get to go to this awesome community gathering.  Megan and the kids met me at the Cold Spring games, and I can't think of any way I'd rather spend Father's Day Weekend than watching ball with my family.

park rankings and statistics

(for purposes of amateur/town ball rankings, some categories are changed to just yes/no questions):
aesthetics - 7
views from park - 4
view to field - 6 (lots of foul ground)
surrounding area - 1
concessions - yes
nachos - no
beer - yes
vendor price - 8
ticket price - 10 (free)
atmosphere - 6
walk to park - 1
parking price/proximity - 10
concourses - 5
team shop - yes

kids area -  if you count the lone plastic slide, yes

best food - burger w/ onions
most unique stadium feature - concessions/team store combo stand
scoreboard - electronic

lights - yes

best between-inning feature - watching fungoes between games

field dimensions - 325/380/325
teams - Aitkin Steam v. Clearwater River Cats
time of game - unknown
attendance - there were more players there than fans
score - 6-2 Clearwater
Brewers score that day - 4-3 L

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/22/26:

Brewers 46-29, +5.0; 3 @ Reds, 3 v. Cubs, 4 v. Reds, 3 @ Diamondbacks

Twins 38-41, - 3.5, -1.0 WC; 3 v. Dodgers, 3 v. Rockies, 3 @ Astros, 3 @ Yankees

2026 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 3

Peter - 15