The best thing about Minor League Baseball? In this writer's estimation, it's ballpark road trips. With 160 teams spread out over 14 leagues and six levels of play, there's no shortage of places to visit. It's a great way to see the country, giving fans a reason to visit locales

On Dec. 30, 2019, Bruce Rogers died at the age of 79. Rogers, who lived most of his life in Victorville, California, was a husband, father, military veteran and heavy haul trucker who enjoyed a career highlight of sorts when he transported a stolen one-man submarine back to its rightful

Four new Minor League ballparks are opening in 2020, the most in a single season since 2009. But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.The arrival of four new facilities means there are four ballparks that are no longer part of the Minor League landscape. This article,

SAN DIEGO -- At the 2018 Baseball Winter Meetings in Las Vegas, Jane Rogers received the New York-Penn League's Executive of the Year. Yesterday morning, in San Diego, she finally heard the applause. Rogers, the Class A Short Season Staten Island Yankees' first -- and therefore longest tenured -- employee, currently

Municipal Stadium, the home of the Hagerstown Suns, is 89 years old. As you might guess, octogenarian ballparks don't offer much in the way of amenities. But what they do offer is history, intimacy and, more often than not, plenty of charm. 

August 28th, 2019 wasn't just any evening at Pfitzner Stadium. It was the Potomac Nationals penultimate home game. The end of the season loomed and, just beyond that, a move 30 miles south to a new ballpark in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I was in town to say goodbye to the Pfitz (as

Daniel Rivas, seen in the photo at the top of this article, is a native of Laton, California who currently lives in Salinas and works as a high school math teacher. But when Daniel visits the Fresno Grizzlies' home of Chukchansi Park, he dons Ultimate Warrior-inspired facepaint and thus transforms

Nando DiFino is a relentlessly exuberant and deeply loyal individual. He brings people together, pays for their drinks and seeks out commonalities, all while deflecting the well-deserved praise he recieves for so consistently acting in this manner. To know Nando is to love him.

Tom Ando knows food. Tom, a Buffalo, New York native who now lives across the border in Fort Erie, Ontario, has experience as a food and beverage manager in a variety of professional sports settings. He currently handles club-level concessions at the Buffalo Sabres' home of KeyBank Center; this job followed

Hagerstown Suns co-owner Tony Dahbura holds a prestigious position at Johns Hopkins University, assists with his family's printing and commercial real estate businesses and freelances as a data analytics consultant. He's a man of many hats and thus goes by many names, be it Dr. Dahbura, Tony or his given

The Hagerstown Suns play in a small market and operate out of a facility, Hagerstown Municipal Stadium, that is nearly 90 years old. As a result, they regularly place at or near the bottom in South Atlantic League attendance. But in any Minor League community -- whether beleaguered, thriving or somewhere

It's Aug. 28, the penultimate day of the Potomac Nationals' home season. General manager Bryan Holland is sitting at his desk within an office cluttered with the detritus of another long Minor League season. But this year the team commonly referred to as the P-Nats isn't just wrapping up another

The Potomac Nationals, based in Woodbridge, Virginia, are relocating some 30 miles down the road to Fredericksburg next season. During their 36 seasons at Pfitzner Stadium, the Class A Advanced club had six different affiliates, won four Carolina League titles and -- most importantly for the purposes of this article

After visiting El Paso's Southwest University Field in April of 2014, one of my biggest takeaways was that the food was awesome.My next visit to this Triple-A facility, home of the Chihuahuas, did not occur until this past June. Five years later, I can report that the food is still

Between 2010 and 2018 I visited 174 stadiums, including every active Minor League park. That quest continued anew in 2019, as I visited the Minors' three new ballparks making their debut (as well as quite a few others along the way). For links to previous road trip content -- and

In February 2018, construction began on Las Vegas Ballpark. In April 2019, the Las Vegas Aviators hosted their first game there. While 14 months is a short amount of time to build a Triple-A stadium, Aviators president Don Logan offers a different perspective."It only took 18 years to pull this off."

The Las Vegas Aviators, Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, play in brand-new Las Vegas Ballpark. Call them the boys of Summerlin. Las Vegas Ballpark replaces Cashman Field, which served as the Pacific Coast League franchise's home from 1983-2018. The new facility is located in downtown Summerlin, an affluent planned community

When Cody Malone was hired to oversee the food and beverage operation at Las Vegas Ballpark, he had one goal in mind. "We had to be the best in class."Malone, an employee of Professional Sports Catering (PSC), spent the previous six seasons as director of food and beverage for the Tulsa

Brian Howard is the executive chef at Sparrow + Wolf, an eclectic fine dining establishment in Las Vegas's Chinatown neighborhood that incorporates Asian, French, Mediterranean and Latin American influences. Its menu, featuring items such as wood roasted lamb neck and swordfish aguachile, has zero overlap with the sort of food

At Albuquerque's Isotopes Park, green chiles are one of six toppings provided at the concourse condiment bars. They are New Mexico's favorite foodstuff, and you can put them on literally anything. But just because you can put chiles on everything, it doesn't mean that you necessarily should. Heading into the 2019 season,

While his name might not appear on the Albuquerque Isotopes' staff page, James Keefner has long had his own title: Ballpark Mayor.A 27-year-old with Down Syndrome, Keefner has been a constant presence at Isotopes Park for the past decade. He can often be found dancing in the aisles, mingling with

When I attended June 18th's El Paso Chihuahuas game at Southwest University Field, they did not play as the Chihuahuas. Rather, they suited up as as their "Margaritas" Copa de la Diversión identity. It's a striking look, to say the least. 

On Saturday, the Syracuse Mets played a game as the Butter Sculptures. Why? According to general manager Jason Smorol, it was because "people just love their local stuff."Butter Sculptures is a nod to the New York State Fair, a massive 13-day celebration of all things Empire State. The New York

I was in Amarillo to check out the dogs. "Dogs" as in "prairie dogs" as in the Sod Poodles, Amarillo's new Minor League Baseball team. But also dogs as in "hot dogs" as in "what you are most likely to eat while attending a baseball game."