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Ballpark
Oddities
 One cold, gloomy day in Jacksonville, I was attending a Jaguars football
game at Alltel Stadium, which sits directly next door to Wolfson Park. It
goes without saying that the very definition of being a baseball-park fanatic is
feeling more excited about photographing a run-down, empty Minor League
baseball stadium like Wolfson than attending a live NFL game. But that was
indeed the case, as I must have snapped a dozen photos of the ballpark, while
taking only one or two of the football game across the street.
At one point while waiting for the football contest to start, I wandered
around the upper deck of Alltel Stadium looking for interesting camera angles
from which to shoot more photos of Wolfson Park a few hundred feet away.
Suddenly, it hit me. The scoreboard for Wolfson was actually across the
street from the outfield wall (see the close-up photo below). How very
odd! Why would they construct a ballpark this way???
 It got me thinking about other oddities at ballparks around the country,
and I quickly decided that there were enough in the Southern part of the U.S.
alone to warrant a page in BASEBALLPARKS.COM. Parks with funny shapes and
funny angles. Parks with strange "unfinished" areas. Parks
with uneven fields.
Now, I'm not viewing these oddities as being mistakes that necessarily
need to be corrected. To the contrary, in some instances they add to that
ballpark's uniqueness, or reveal something about its past (in the case of
Wolfson, it turns out that years ago, that scoreboard actually was inside
the outfield wall. When the infield was moved closer to the stands, the
outfield walls were brought in as well -- leaving the scoreboard outside the
park!). Here, now, are some of the most odd elements
of ballpark design around the South.
And I bet you know of some oddities in ballparks near you. If you
do, please write
us and let us know. We might use it in future updates of this page.
Five County Stadium, home of the Carolina Mudcats of the Southern
League -- By a wide margin, the most "happening" thing in Zebulon,
North Carolina is this ballpark! In other words, don't plan a trip to
Zebulon expecting to find lots and lots of tourist attractions. As far as
the ballpark goes, a lot of money and energy have gone into renovating this
park, and indeed, it is a nice, modern facility.
 
However, the stadium's upper deck is so big, steep and close to the field,
that when you are sitting in the lower deck, you almost feel claustrophobic.
Knights Castle, home of the Charlotte Knights of the International
League -- The way the stands abruptly end on both the first- and third-base
sides gives this stadium an "unfinished" feel. And, indeed, I
believe it was designed this way intentionally so that thousands more seats
could be added easily if a Major League tenant could be lured to North
Carolina's largest city (of course, this stadium isn't located in Charlotte . .
. nor is it even in North Carolina. Instead, it is in nearby Fort Mill,
South Carolina).
It's also noteworthy that the adjacent water tower is painted to look like a baseball
. . . which is a neat -- but unusual -- touch!
  When
it comes to the seating-bowl area, two Southern ballparks that are anything but
symmetrical are Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium (left) in Kannapolis, North Carolina
and BellSouth Park (right) in downtown Chattanooga. Both have the
vast majority of their seats on the first-base side. In neither instance,
though, is the ballpark unattractive in its "lopsided" design.
The Intimidators (formerly the Piedmont Boll Weevils) of the South Atlantic League play in Kannapolis and
the Lookouts of the Southern League play in BellSouth Park.
Pfitzner Stadium, home of the Potomac Cannons of the Carolina
League -- If you want to read all about my (negative) thoughts on this
place, take a look at the essay "A Bad Day at the
Ballpark." In this piece, you'll note that finding your way
around this facility is made incredibly more difficult than it needs to be
because there are three different "Section Ones," three
different "Section Twos," etc. For this and a number of other
reasons, this is not a ballpark to go out
of your way to visit.
 Watt Powell Park, home of the Charleston (WV) Alley Cats of the
South Atlantic League -- You hear a lot of talk about the importance of
"competing on a level playing field." Well, the Alley Cats never
do when they're at home, since there is a slight incline in the ground as
you go from the infield toward the right-field wall (the photo shows the view
from the warning track looking "downhill"). That's nothing,
though, compared to the massive mountain just beyond the right-field wall of
this beautiful-but-quirky old park in the hills of The Mountain
State!
To be fair, the "incline" in rightfield is nothing like the
sharp rise that Cincinnati's old Crosley Field had as its warning track, but it
is still kind of odd!
 Herschel Greer Stadium, home of the Nashville Sounds of the Pacific
Coast League -- Jacksonville's Wolfson Park isn't the only place with a unique
scoreboard. Greer Stadium -- which, by the way, is really not up to par in
a city as nice and progressive as Nashville -- has a scoreboard that is also
unusual. Unlike Wolfson, it's not its placement that is noteworthy . . . it
is its shape.
How fitting that Music City has a scoreboard in the
shape of a guitar! Now if the city would just work a little harder on
coming up with a new park for the team . . .
What "oddities" have you spotted in ballparks? Write
us and let us know. If you'd like, send along a scanned photo.
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