AdventHealth Stadium - Rome Emperors

Hudson Valley Renegades (NYY) @ Rome Emperors (ATL)

June 20, 2026

Renegades 3, Emperors 2

W: Rory Fox
L: Zach Royse

S: Wilmy Sanchez

HR: Core Jackson (HV), Kyle West (HV), Eric Hartman (ROM)

Attendance: 1,788
Time of Game: 2 hours, 27 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Rome, GA
Opened: 2003
Capacity: 5,105
Level: High A
League: South Atlantic

The final weekend of my trip started with me making a relatively short drive from Madison, AL to Rome, GA.  This was a pretty interesting drive, much of it being on two lane highways going through the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  Rome itself, located in the northwest part of Georgia, is quite hilly too.  AdventHealth Stadium is located on the northern edge of town, a decent ways from downtown.  With the Southern League in my rearview mirror, it was time to close out a second league in as many nights with my final visit to a High A South Atlantic League ballpark.

This is maybe a tad unfair to AdventHealth Stadium that I saw it near the conclusion of a trip that otherwise included higher level ballparks and truly unique A-ball facilities, but I think I can safely say this was my least favorite stadium on this trip.  It reminded me a great deal of the home ballpark of the team the Emperors were hosting this night, the Hudson Valley Renegades, right down to the artificial playing surface.  Artificial turf in Georgia makes no sense to me.  This park opened in 2003, a little before the boom in modern minor league ballpark design.  There is ample onsite parking.  A retro brick exterior greets fans coming into the main entrance behind home plate.  The main concourse is located under the grandstand, which is where you will find most of the concessions, and interestingly, an indoor space that is the team store on one side and a bar area on the other.  The main grandstand has a walkway separating the 100 and 200 levels.  There are two large entryways from the concourse to this walkway.  Railings separate the sections.  In the 200 level where I was sitting, these railings made it difficult to move around, and the ramps leading up to the sections were not particularly well marked as to which sections they served.  A curious design choice, I thought.  The main grandstand is topped off with a row of suites surrounding the press box.  Seating only runs a little past third base on that side of the park.  The first base side, on the other hand, has large open spaces beyond the grandstand that house additional concessions, a picnic area, a kids zone and berm seating that stretches around into right field.  I mentioned in the Hub City write-up how unusual it was to see the PA announcer sitting at field level rather than in a booth somewhere.  Well, that was nothing compared to Rome where the PA announcer was really a jack of all trades.  In addition to normal PA announcing duties, he was also the primary emcee of in-game entertainment and a hype man.  And he did all of this while wandering all around the park, sometimes even announcing next batters while on the move.  Not sure what they pay this gentleman, but it is probably not as much as he deserves.  He has a great set of pipes too.

I happened to be wearing a Notre Dame t-shirt this day, without realizing until the evening that the starting pitcher for Hudson Valley was former Fighting Irish right-hander Rory Fox.  He was opposed by Zach Royse, who was selected 23 picks after Fox in last summer's draft.  This was Royse's High A debut.  Both pitched pretty well in this game outside of the home runs they allowed.  Royse surrendered the first home run to the second batter of the game as Core Jackson slugged one out to right into the Renegades' bullpen, giving Hudson Valley an early lead.  The Emperors didn't have as much as a hit against Fox in the first three innings, with the only base runner reaching on a dropped routine fly ball to right fielder Luis Durango.  The Emperors finally got something going in the fourth.  John Gil started the inning lining a single to right.  That was immediately followed by Eric Hartman hitting a towering home run to the kids zone in right, well beyond the outfield wall.  That put Rome ahead 2-1.  That was the extent of the damage done against Fox on the night.  He finished with just those two runs allowed on three hits, one walk and six strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings.  In the half inning right after falling behind, Hudson Valley retook the lead.  With one out in the top of the fifth, Eric Genther lined one to right and hustled to second for a double.  Then Kyle West parked one to deep right, into the trees for a two run homer.  That put the Renegades back ahead by a 3-2 score.  As it turned out, neither team would score again after that.  Hudson Valley missed several opportunities to score more throughout the night, but were unable to get key hits as they left 10 runners on base.  Luckily for them, it didn't matter as their two home runs were enough.  Other than the inning they scored their two runs, Rome wasn't able to muster multiple hits in an inning all night.  Wilmy Sanchez got the save by striking out three of the four Emperors he faced.  It was a 3-2 victory for Hudson Valley, with all five of the game's runs scoring on the three home runs.  Fox deservedly picked up the win.

And with that, I had wrapped up my tour of the 12 South Atlantic League ballparks.  A caveat to that though.  I visited Aberdeen back in 2024.  However, this year they lost their Orioles affiliate status and were replaced in the SALLY by Frederick.  I wasn't able to make it to a game in Frederick this year, but will definitely go to a game there at some point.  I will go ahead and post my ballpark rankings for the league now though and will update accordingly once I've visited Frederick.  These rankings were much more difficult to do than the Southern League because I visited almost half of them over two years and 40+ ballparks ago.  I did skim through my write-ups of those older visits to jog my memory for these rankings.  And here they are.

South Atlantic League Ballpark Rankings

1. Hub City

2. Greenville

3. Winston-Salem

4. Asheville

5. Brooklyn

6. Greensboro

7. Wilmington

8. Bowling Green

9. Jersey Shore

10. Aberdeen

11. Hudson Valley

12. Rome

Perhaps it is recency bias, but I went with two ballparks from this trip for the top two spots.  Hub City was a pretty easy choice for the number one spot though.  Asheville was the most difficult to place, in the same way that I have a hard time deciding where to rank Fenway and Wrigley when rattling off MLB stadiums.  It is such a timeless gem that it can't be ranked near the bottom.  But it also isn't nearly as "nice" as the newest stadiums.  I settled on fourth, right ahead of Brooklyn, which is another ranking not so much based on the quality of the park, but because of its extremely unique location and surroundings.  Hudson Valley and Rome were pretty easy choices to put at the bottom of this list, though I could have gone either way with the order of those two.  As I keep pointing out, none of these parks are bad at all.  They are all much nicer than the Class A ballparks I remember visiting in my younger days.

Just one more day to go on this marathon trip down south.  That last Sunday would wind up being a long day of driving, with an afternoon game in Gwinnett mixed in.

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Next ballpark: Gwinnett Field in Lawrenceville, GA

Toyota Field - Rocket City Trash Pandas

Montgomery Biscuits (TB) @ Rocket City Trash Pandas (LAA)

June 19, 2026

Biscuits 11, Trash Pandas 2

W: Santiago Suarez
L: Ryan Costeiu

HR: Kenny Piper (MTG), Will Simpson (MTG), Jadher Areinamo (MTG), Raudi Rodriguez 2 (RCT)

Attendance: 4,959
Time of Game: 2 hours, 55 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Madison, AL
Opened: 2021
Capacity: 7,500
Level: Double A
League: Southern

On the final Friday of my trip, I drove pretty much the entire length of Alabama to the northern part of the state near Huntsville.  I arrived in suburban Madison just in time to watch the USMNT's second World Cup game at a nearby bar.  Then it was off to see the seventh and final Southern League game of this trip, completing my tour of the entire league this year.  Toyota Field is a pretty new ballpark and the Trash Pandas are a new franchise as well, both debuting after the pandemic in 2021.  The Huntsville area is not new to minor league baseball though.  The Huntsville Stars relocated to Biloxi six years prior to the Trash Pandas arrival.  The Trash Pandas effectively replaced the Mobile franchise in the Southern League.

As one might expect from a ballpark that opened this decade, Toyota Field is a very nice modern facility.  Not only is the park new, but the entire neighborhood where it sits seems to be relatively new construction.  It very much has a suburban feel to it, unlike most of the other Southern League ballparks that are situated in or near downtown areas of larger cities.  The park has a large 360 degree concourse which is good sized in the outfield as well despite no fixed seats out there.  People walking around the outfield can get a close up view of pitchers warming up in the bullpens.  The home bullpen is situated such that you could actually watch a pitcher's warmup from directly behind the catcher if you are so inclined.  The outfield also houses a large kids zone featuring a mechanical bull ride.  The bar in right field has rail seating that actually slightly overhangs the right field warning track.  There is a yellow home run line below that which creates some interesting house rules for what constitutes a homer and what is a ground rule double.  In general, the outfield wall has all sorts of directional quirks that likely play tricks on outfielders unfamiliar with the park.  Just off the concourse on the first base side is the large team store right next to viewable batting cages.  Across the way from that area is a berm seating area down the first base line.  The rest of foul territory on field level features traditional stadium seating, with some patio seating at the back of sections down each foul line.  There are a bunch of luxury seating options too, including a couple field level suites.  The second level is pretty much exclusively luxury sections.  There is a large stadium club on that level on the first base side with suites running from behind home plate and down the third base line.  Rocket City dubbed this BBQ weekend.  They played as the Bama Butts this night with special uniforms for the occasion.  A bunch of local BBQ vendors had tents set up down the first base line for tastings.  Even without that, there was an impressive selection of concession options in the park.  After the wet night in Pensacola, the clear and warm conditions this Friday night in Madison were much appreciated.

Santiago Suarez started this game on the mound for the Biscuits, just as he did in the game I saw in Montgomery the previous week.  He was far more effective this time around.  He was opposed by another righty, Ryan Costeui, who looked pretty good early in this game, but it all fell apart in his final inning.  It was the Raudi Rodriguez show all evening for the Trash Pandas offense.  In the bottom of the first, he lined an opposite field homer to the Rock Porch in right to give Rocket City an early 1-0 lead.  Montgomery tied it in the second on a scorching line drive homer to left by Kenny Piper.  In Rodriguez's second plate appearance of the night in the fourth, he once again hit an opposite field homer to right.  This time though, it was a towering fly ball that clanged off the porch facade, above the home run line.  That put Rocket City up 2-1.  Other than those three solo home runs, the pitchers were pretty effective through the first four innings.  That changed in the fifth though when Costeui got touched up by the Biscuits.  Two singles and a walk loaded the bases with one out.  Then Jadher Areinamo hit a seeing eye single up the middle to knock in a pair of runs to put Montgomery ahead.  Another walk reloaded the bases and ended Costeui's night.  Will Simpson immediately greeted reliever Chris Cortez with a two run single to left.  Cortez would later walk in a run to allow the fifth Biscuits run of the inning to score.  Montgomery kept the offense rolling in the sixth when Simpson hit a towering three run home run to left, his third hit of the night with five runs driven in.  That gave the Biscuits a commanding 9-2 lead.  Areinamo would add a two run homer in the eighth, his fourth hit of the game.  That put the Biscuits up 11-2, which was the final score.  Areinamo and Simpson combined for seven hits and nine runs driven in.  On the other side, Rodriguez's two solo home runs were the only runs scored for the Trash Pandas.  He had more than half of the team's hits in the game, three out of five.  Montgomery looked like a completely different team than the one I saw lose convincingly at home the previous week.  Rocket City dropped both of their games I was at on this trip.

New feature! When talking to people about my minor league tour, I'm frequently asked which are my favorite ballparks I've visited so far.  I usually preface my response by saying that it is very difficult to compare parks at different levels of the minors and go on to name a few of my favorites at each level.  Additionally, visiting so many new parks each year makes it difficult to remember specifics about parks I visited several years prior.  So to help me remember how fond I am of different parks, I want to put some rankings in writing.  Because I'm not sure if I will ever visit every ballpark at every level, I'm going to further split out these rankings by league.  Once I've visited every park in a league, I will post my ballpark rankings for that league.  The Southern League is the first minor league that I completed.  It will be one of the easier to rank since I was at all eight of these parks this year.  While I'm not using a thorough mathematical formula for these rankings, I'm going to use three primary criteria in the following order of significance:  (1) Overall ballpark quality, (2) Location/neighborhood, (3) Gameday experience (concessions/in game entertainment).  The last one receives the smallest weight because I know my personal experiences were largely determined by what particular game I attended.  I don't want to punish a stadium too much because I went to a Tuesday night game rather than a Saturday night with some major promo.  The other thing I want to state up front is that since the minor league reorg earlier this decade that saw many of the worst facilities lose their affiliation status, there really aren't any bad parks left in the minor leagues.  Even the ones that will show up at the bottom of these rankings are solid ballparks where you will likely have a good time if you visit.  But rankings are rankings and some parks have to finish last.  Without further ado, let's move onto my first minor league ballpark rankings.

Southern League Ballpark Rankings

1. Knoxville

2. Chattanooga

3. Rocket City

4. Birmingham

5. Montgomery

6. Pensacola

7. Biloxi

8. Columbus

The top spot really came down to the two new Tennessee ballparks in Knoxville and Chattanooga.  I went back and forth on which one to put up top as both are among my favorite parks in all of the minor leagues, but ultimately settled on Knoxville because of location.  New construction is ongoing in both neighborhoods though, so this might change years from now.  Rocket City and Birmingham are upper echelon stadiums as well.  I probably could have ranked Montgomery, Pensacola and Biloxi in any order and felt okay about it.  Columbus was a fairly easy choice to put last, despite being a perfectly decent park in its own right.  It just doesn't have anything particularly special about it like the rest of the Southern League parks do.

So that closes out one league.  The next night, I would close out another in Rome, Georgia.

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Next ballpark: AdventHealth Stadium in Rome, GA

Blue Wahoos Stadium - Pensacola Blue Wahoos

Birmingham Barons (CHW) @ Pensacola Blue Wahoos (MIA)

June 18, 2026

Barons 16, Blue Wahoos 13 (8 inn)

W: Carson Jacobs
L: Nigel Belgrave

S: Morris Austin

HR: Alec Briley (BIR), Grant Magill (BIR), T.J. McCants (BIR), Garret Forrester 2 (PNS), Dillon Lewis (PNS)

Attendance: 3,723
Time of Game: 3 hours, 14 minutes (3:40 delay)

Stadium Facts

Location: Pensacola, FL
Opened: 2012
Capacity: 5,038
Level: Double A
League: Southern

Thursday wound up being what was probably the most memorable day of this trip.  I drove along the Gulf Shore from Biloxi to Pensacola, passing through Mobile, Alabama along the way.  It rained a good portion of the drive as the first tropical storm of the season was hitting the coast.  Thankfully, that rain wasn't too heavy at the time I was driving, because apparently it got much worse soon after I passed through, particularly in Mobile.  When I got to my hotel in Pensacola, I turned on the local news to reports of significant flooding in Mobile that temporarily shut down some major throughways.  This first wave of the storm actually missed Pensacola completely.  It was dry, but quite windy and humid as I explored downtown Pensacola.  The forecast in Pensacola improved as the day wore on so it looked like the game would go off without a hitch.  That wasn't exactly the case, however.

Blue Wahoos Stadium is very similar in design to the ballpark in Biloxi I had visited the night before.  It also has a nearly completely open air concourse above the main seating bowl.  The third base side has a slightly overhanging roof above a second level party area.  The first base side though has only tarp coverings above.  Crucially, there are a couple of indoor spaces at the back of the concourse, including an indoor bar area named after pro golfer and partial team owner Bubba Watson.  Bubba's Sandtrap came in handy later in the evening.  This park features a much different type of scenic view beyond the outfield walls than Biloxi.  It is located right on the Pensacola Bay.  Well hit home run balls to left field have a very good chance of getting wet.  By seating capacity, this is the smallest park in the Southern League, holding just over 5,000.  Regular seats run most of the way around foul territory, but the sections have fewer rows than most other parks, keeping all the fans very close to the action.  There is some lawn seating in right field, but otherwise no outfield seats.  This park doesn't have a lot of luxury seating areas either.  There are party areas down each line though.  I was a bit confused by the choice of an artificial playing surface, which was apparently just installed a couple years ago.  However, that made a lot more sense later as there is no way a grass field would have been able to handle the amount of rain that was to come.  At the beginning of the game, the wind was howling in from right field.  It almost seemed like hitters were playing the elements and trying to hit the ball to left, even left-handed hitters.  Conditions changed rapidly as the night progressed.  On this night, the Blue Wahoos took on an alternate identity of the Pensacola Mullets, wearing special uniforms for the occasion that celebrated both the fish and the hairdo.

It turns out, Birmingham was involved in the two most exciting games of my trip, though they could not have been more different types of games.  It started out harmlessly enough as the starting pitchers, lefty Lucas Gordon for the Barons and righty Eliazar Dishmey for the Blue Wahoos, cruised through the first few innings.  It was Gordon's second straight start that I got to see in person.  Pensacola scored first in the bottom of the third.  One of the Marlins top prospects, Aiva Arquette reached on a hit by pitch, stole second, and scored on a throwing error by third baseman Caleb Bonemer.  Bonemer was playing for Winston-Salem when I saw them the previous week, but was promoted to Birmingham during my trip.  He would single and score a run in the next half inning, which was a three run frame for the Barons.  They had four straight hits, with the big blow being a two run double by Dylan Campbell.  Birmingham tacked on three more runs against Dishmey in the fifth inning on a three run homer by recently renamed Alec Briley.  It was a towering fly ball the opposite way to left that kept carrying.  That put the Barons up 6-1.  The game turned on a dime in the bottom half of the inning though.  Gordon struck out the first hitter of the inning, but then surrendered a home run to Garret Forrester, his first of two homers in the game.  He also homered in the game I saw the Blue Wahoos play in Columbus.  Another strikeout followed that.  But with two outs, things went off the rails for the Birmingham pitching staff.  The next 10 hitters reached base safely against three different pitchers.  That streak featured five hits and five walks.  Reliever Aric McAtee didn't retire any of the five hitters he faced and mixed in a wild pitch and a balk too.  The last of those 10 hitters to reach base was Arquette lining a ball to left-center for a bases clearing three run double.  When it was finally over, the Wahoos put up a 10 spot in the inning to take a seemingly commanding 11-6 lead.  Turns out, the Barons had a wild offensive inning in them too, the very next half inning.  After a strikeout to start the frame, Birmingham's eight and nine hole hitters, Grant McGill and T.J. McCants, hit back-to-back homers.  McCants is a Pensacola native, so perhaps he was powered by some home cooking.  It was his first AA homer.  The floodgates opened on an error by Arquette, a natural shortstop playing third base.  Two batters later, he was unable to make a play on another fairly routine grounder that was ruled a hit.  The Barons wound up scoring seven runs in the inning with four of them being unearned.  They retook the lead by a score of 13-11.  It was after this half inning that I was walking back to my seat when I overheard a team employee say that a storm was approaching and due to arrive in about 10 minutes.  That proved to be spot on.  Dillon Lewis led off the bottom of the sixth with a home run to left, probably the best hit of all the homers on this night.  Lewis joined Forrester in hitting homers in both Pensacola games I saw on this trip.  A couple pitches into the seventh, the skies opened up and the game came to a halt.  It was absolutely pouring, about as hard as I could recall ever seeing with me outside experiencing it.  Fortunately, I was able to find cover in the aforementioned Bubba's Sandtrap.  It continued to pour for at least a half hour at which time I was pretty certain there was no way the game was going to resume, particularly since it was already an official game.  I kept waiting for a break in the downpour so I could make my way to my car.  That never really happened, so I eventually made a mad dash to the parking lot, and got drenched in the process.  For MLB games, we are frequently reminded that once a game is started, the decision to call a game is up to the umpires in consultation with the league office.  Well, apparently in the minors, the home team has some sway in such decisions as well.  As the hours wore on, there was no logical reason why this game wasn't called, except that Pensacola was in the thick of a first half division title race with just a few games left and they couldn't really afford a loss in this game.  So the teams waited over 3 1/2 hours before the game eventually resumed well past midnight.  I'm not going to write much about what happened after the resumption since I was long gone.  I read the next day that 12 fans remained in the park when the game resumed.  Birmingham wound up scoring in each of the next two innings, plus Pensacola added a run on Forrester's second homer.  Then the game was halted again because a 1 a.m. curfew had been hit.  Initially, they called it a suspended game to be resumed the next day.  However, the Southern League office stepped in and put an end to the madness declaring it an official game after eight innings.  The Barons won by a final score of 16-13.

That was truly one of the craziest games I've ever been to.  And now I can say I have first hand experience of what tropical storms can be like on the Gulf Coast.  Thankfully, this wasn't a powerful enough storm to reach hurricane status.  It brought an end to a very wet four days on the Gulf Coast.  Fortunately, the weather was much nicer for the rest of the trip as I started my trek back north.

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Next ballpark: Toyota Field in Madison, AL