Bowling Green Ballpark - Bowling Green Hot Rods

Winston-Salem Dash (CHW) @ Bowling Green Hot Rods (TB)

April 3, 2026

Hot Rods 4, Dash 2

W: Gary Gill Hill
L: Grant Umberger

S: Jacob Kmatz

Attendance: 2,472
Time of Game: 2 hours, 16 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Bowling Green, KY
Opened: 2009
Capacity: 4,559
Level: High A
League: South Atlantic

I have started year three of my Minor League ballpark tour.  The plan for 2026 is to cover the entire Southern League, the remainder of the South Atlantic League, the last Eastern League park I've yet to visit, plus a handful of International League and Carolina League ballparks that cover this general geographic region in the South.  I got things started extremely early this year in the first weekend of April, which was the first weekend of the season with all four levels of full season affiliated minor leagues in action.  In fact, the first game I attended that Friday night was the season opener for those two teams.  That was in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  The reason why I decided to get my tour started early this year was because my White Sox top three minor league affiliates all happened to be playing on the road in Kentucky and Tennessee at ballparks I was planning on visiting sometime this year anyway, so why not take that opportunity to see those three teams in action?  As it turned out though, a Saturday night rainstorm caused me to cut this trip down to just two games.  I knew this was a likely occurrence as the week progressed, so I altered my schedule to make sure I knocked out the two ballparks that were the furthest drive for me and thus not as easy to make up some other time.  That started with a game in Bowling Green where the Hot Rods hosted the Winston-Salem Dash on Opening Night.

Bowling Green is a bit of a geographic outlier for the High A level of affiliated ball.  This is the westernmost franchise in the South Atlantic league.  Prior to the last minor league reorg, they were in the Midwest League, which was also not an ideal fit with this city being a fair bit south of most of that league.  I'm sure it makes some logistical sense for them to be in the South Atlantic League for their parent club of Tampa Bay though.  Bowling Green Ballpark (I assume they are currently in between stadium naming rights deals) is on the smaller side of ballparks I've visited the past few years and has a little bit of a throwback feel to it despite being less than 20 years old.  There are very few outfield seats, none in center or right.  A recent renovation did add a concourse that allows one to make a 360 degree walk around the entire field though.  Almost all of the actual seats are located on the lower level in the infield.  There are suites and a party deck on the second level.  There is a kids area down the first base line featuring a merry-go-round.  One unique quirk is that the roof overhangs a good portion of the main seating area in the infield.  So much so that the netting surrounding the field is close enough to the roof that they also have netting above all of the infield seating areas.  Not a great park if you are hoping to catch a foul ball from a vast majority of the seats.  The playing field has a unique shape to it as well with a concave right-center field wall.  I would think this might lead to some fairly cheap homers in that direction, but none were hit on this night.  On the other hand, the dimensions to dead center and the left-center alley are quite deep.  Both bullpens are located beyond the outfield wall, which I think is pretty rare for A ball.  There is a good-sized video board in right field.  However, one small complaint from me is that it doesn't show pitch speed.  The board on the left field wall has a spot for that, but it wasn't operational for this game.  It was always a roll of the dice to plan an early April trip from a weather perspective.  But at least for this night, it couldn't have been any nicer for my first baseball game of the year.

I was excited to see Winston-Salem in person because they are probably the most prospect laden team in the Sox org to start this season.  And on the other side, all of the Rays affiliates are consistently among the best teams in their respective leagues.  The pitching matchup in this Opening Day tilt was southpaw Grant Umberger for the Dash and righty Gary Gill Hill for the Hot Rods.  Gill Hill was just a couple weeks removed from pitching for Great Britain in the WBC.  Both he and Umberger pitched pretty well in this game, but Umberger was let down by shoddy defense behind him.  Both teams scored a run in their first inning of the season.  The Dash got on the board first on a single blooped over the first baseman's head by Anthony DiPino.  The Hot Rods immediately answered in the bottom half.  Rays top prospect Theo Gillen doubled down the first base line and came in to score on a groundout by Emilien Pitre.  The Dash defense began to unravel in the second.  A two out liner to third baseman Colby Shelton clanked off his glove and allowed the runner to reach second on the first of four errors charged to Winston-Salem on the night.  That runner came around to score on a base hit by J.D. Gonzalez, giving Bowling Green a 2-1 lead.  The Dash tied it up in the third when DiPino, after having been hit by a pitch, scored on a sac fly to deep left during which he had to hustle back to third to tag seemingly having lost track of the number of outs.  Anyway, that was one mistake Winston-Salem got away with.  Not so fortunate in the bottom of the fifth.  On the Hot Rods second single of the inning, Dash right fielder George Wolkow made an errant throw back into the infield that allowed the lead runner to advance two extra bases and score to put Bowling Green back in front.  A second run scored in the frame on a single by Adrian Santana to make it 4-2 Hot Rods.  Wolkow had another adventure in right the following inning, as he dropped a fly ball going back towards the wall on a relatively deep drive.  This fourth Dash error didn't wind up costing them any more runs.  But the offense went quiet the rest of the night.  They only had one hit after the third inning.  The Hot Rods won this one by a final score of 4-2, with the game played in a swift two hours and sixteen minutes.  This was the second straight year that my first minor league game featured Winston-Salem.  At least they kept this game close unlike the home game I saw them play last year.

With that, my first game of 2026 was in the books.  Rain washed away the game I had planned on attending just down the road in Nashville the following night.  There are worse places than Nashville to spend some extra time though as I stuck around there for an Easter Sunday afternoon game.

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Next ballpark: First Horizon Park in Nashville, TN

Victory Field - Indianapolis Indians

Iowa Cubs (CHC) @ Indianapolis Indians (PIT)

September 11, 2025

Cubs 6, Indians 2

W: Michael Soroka
L: Jack Little

S: Gavin Hollowell

HR: Hayden Cantrelle (IOW), Jack Suwinski (IND)

Attendance: 8,205
Time of Game: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Indianapolis, IN
Opened: 1996
Capacity: 12,230
Level: Triple A
League: International

The last minor league baseball game for me in 2025 took me back to Indiana for a game in downtown Indianapolis.  While it would have made sense to include Indianapolis on my June tour of the Midwest, I opted to skip it because the Indians were only home the second week of that trip which would have forced me to do some backtracking.  So instead, I saved it for my next trip back to Indiana in September on my way to South Bend for a Notre Dame football game.  This was not my first game at Victory Field.  I saw the Indians host the Charlotte Knights in a game back in 2016.  I think that may have been the first time I ever saw a game in a AAA ballpark, so I didn't have much of a frame of reference for judging the park at that time.  After this stop, I actually thought the park was quite a bit nicer than I had remembered.  But that could just be because I didn't remember much from that first visit.

Victory Field is located in the heart of downtown Indianapolis.  With the exception of Charlotte, I think it might have the best city skyline view of any minor league park I've seen.  The most distinguishing aspect of that is the JW Marriot hotel rising above the stadium beyond left field.  The primary entrance to the park is in center field which leads to a concourse that circles the entire stadium and provides views of the field throughout.  The outfield features exclusively lawn seating, ranging from pole to pole.  There are picnic and patio areas down each line.  There is an extensive second deck of seating in foul territory that features regular reserved seating, plus a club seating area behind the plate and plenty of suites as well.  The listed stadium capacity of 12,230 doesn't include all of the extra people they can accommodate in the outfield lawn areas, so this is a quite large stadium by minor league standards.  For a park that was built before the turn of the century, Victory Field has aged quite nicely.  And fans seem to enjoy visiting it as well.  The crowd for this Thursday night game in September was over 8,000.  I think there were more butts in seats (or on grass) for this game than the MLB game in Washington, D.C. that I attended a week earlier.  Of course, they weren't all rooting for the Indians as there is no shortage of Cubs fans in the Indianapolis area either.  This wound up being a perfect night for baseball.

With this game taking place just about a week before the end of the minor league season, both teams seemed to have pretty strict innings limitations placed on their pitchers.  Southpaw Jordan Wicks, who has been up and down between Iowa and Chicago the past three years, got the start for the Cubs.  He was opposed by another lefty Hunter Barco who made his MLB debut with the Pirates not long after this game.  Barco, along with Bubba Chandler who I saw pitch for Indianapolis in June, hope to join Paul Skenes in giving the Pirates an exciting young rotation.  Barco ran into trouble in the second inning, loading the bases with nobody out, but managed to escape the inning without allowing a run.  For the game, he gave up a pair of hits with no runs and three strikeouts in his three innings of work.  Wicks also pitched three innings, but did give up a lone run in his final inning.  That run scored on a flared ground rule double down the right field line by veteran Nick Solak.  Iowa got on the board for the first time in the fifth inning when the top three hitters in their lineup strung consecutive hits together.  James Triantos, who went to high school just down the road from me in Vienna, VA, singled up the middle.  Then Cubs top prospect Owen Caissie hit one off the top of the wall in right field for a RBI double.  It was the first of two doubles for Caissie in this game.  He was promoted to Chicago for his second MLB stint right after this game.  Jonathon Long followed Caissie with another double to right to give Iowa a 2-1 lead.  Rehabbing pitcher Michael Soroka, who got hurt in his first outing with the Cubs after being traded from the Nationals, pitched 2 1/3 innings of relief for Iowa.  He was pretty dominant, but did allow a game tying home run to fellow rehabbing big league veteran Jack Suwinski on the first pitch of the bottom of the sixth.  While this was technically a rehab stint for Suwinski, he actually played more games for Indianapolis than Pittsburgh this season.  The Cubs retook the lead in the top of the seventh on a two out RBI single by catcher Carlos Perez, his third hit of the game.  They added two more runs in the eighth on a two run homer by Hayden Cantrelle.  One more run in the ninth inning made it a 6-2 final score in favor of Iowa.  Indianapolis was perhaps a tad fortunate this scoreline wasn't even uglier.  The Cubs outhit them 16 to 4 and left 13 runners on base.

So that brought an end to my second season of touring minor league baseball.  Just like 2024, in 2025 I made it to games in 20 different ballparks, bringing my total to 40 so far.  I do plan to keep it going in 2026, with the Southern League and other affiliated clubs in that league's footprint being my primary target.  I also intend to finish up the rest of the Eastern and South Atlantic League stadiums that I have not yet visited.  Until then, I bid adieu.

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Next ballpark: TBD 2026

Virginia Credit Union Stadium - Fredericksburg Nationals

Fayetteville Woodpeckers (HOU) @ Fredericksburg Nationals (WAS)

August 24, 2025

Woodpeckers 6, Nationals 3

W: Raimy Rodriguez
L: Victor Farias

HR: Brenner Cox (FBG), Jorgelys Mota (FBG)

Attendance: 3,661
Time of Game: 2 hours, 31 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Fredericksburg, VA
Opened: 2021
Capacity: 5,000
Level: Single A
League: Carolina

After Spending Saturday night in Norfolk, I began my trip back home the following day.  Along the way, I stopped in Fredericksburg to see the Nationals Low A affiliate play in a ballpark I had yet to visit.  Following the pandemic cancelled 2020 minor league season, the Potomac Nationals moved from Woodbridge to Fredericksburg, about 30 miles south, making it a slightly longer trip from DC and also from where I live.  I attended a few games in Woodbridge over the years.  While this additional distance to the commute makes it a little less convenient for me to take in a game, I retroactively wholeheartedly agree with the decision to move the franchise because Virginia Credit Union Stadium is such a massive upgrade over old Pfitzner Stadium.  This Sunday evening game started with clear skies and comfortable temperatures.  It didn't quite end that way though.

Virginia Credit Union Stadium is located just off of I-95 in Fredericksburg.  On one hand, that location makes it easily accessible from a route standpoint.  On the other, I-95 is best to be avoided at most times due to usually excessive traffic, particularly the stretch between DC and Fredericksburg.  It is a relatively small and unassuming facility from the outside.  It actually reminds me a great deal of the only other Low A ballpark I've visited so far in this two year minor league tour:  Atrium Health Ballpark in Kannapolis, NC.  No frills in the design of the park, but an open and well laid out concourse that encircles the entire park.  I'm starting to discover that having bullpens outside the field of play in the outfield isn't as rare in the minors as I had previously thought.  This stadium has that setup.  On top of that, there is a very unique field box section in left field that allows patrons to peer into the home bullpen and look through the left field fence to watch the game at field level.  Right field houses a picnic area and a scoreboard deck with a manually operated scoreboard, providing a bit of an old fashioned flare to an otherwise very modern park.  Down each of the baselines are full service terrace boxes.  Thanks to a work colleague, I was sitting at a table in the left field terrace section for this game.  The upper level contains party decks on each end with suites in between.  This is a pretty cozy facility on the whole, so virtually every seat in the park is quite close to the field of play.  My only real complaint with the stadium is the fact that they chose to make the playing surface artificial turf.  It makes no sense to me for a brand new facility in this part of the country not to have a natural grass field.  Hopefully that is something they can rectify down the road.

While I planned this stop well in advance, the timing turned out to be quite fortuitous.  With the first overall pick in this July's MLB Draft, the Nationals selected shortstop Eli Willits.  It was a bit of a surprise selection at the time as most figured they would be targeting either fellow prep shortstop Ethan Holliday or LSU pitcher Cade Anderson.  Willits is only 17 years old, so he's even quite young by high school draftee standards.  That made it uncertain if the Nats would send him to a full season affiliate to get his professional career started this year.  They did indeed send him to Fredericksburg just a few days before I arrived.  He got off to a hot start with three hits in his debut and at least one knock in each of the games leading up to this one.  In this game, he recorded a single as well.  But his most impressive moment actually came in a strikeout, which I will get to later.  Things were looking pretty good for the FredNats early in this one.  They had multiple hits in each of the first three innings off of Woodpeckers starter Cody Bolton who was on a minor league rehab assignment and has some big league experience over the past few years.  The Nationals scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the second on a two out triple to the left-center gap by Luke Dickerson, scoring Willits who had singled right ahead of him.  Then in the third, leadoff man Brenner Cox started the inning lining a Bolton fastball the opposite way over the left field fence to give Fredericksburg a 2-0 lead.  Unfortunately for the FredNats, the offense completely dried up after that.  They did not have another base runner until the ninth inning.  Fayetteville bulk reliever Raimy Rodriguez was dominant.  He pitched four scoreless, hitless innings.  Meanwhile, the Woodpeckers offense finally got to work in the sixth inning, with a whole lot of help from the Fredericksburg pitchers and defense.  The frame started with an error by third baseman Jorgelys Mota.  Then FredNats pitcher Victor Farias beaned the next two batters.  The latter of those was the third time Woodpeckers shortstop Kyle Walker was hit by a pitch in this game.  Next came a bases loaded liner by German Ramirez that Willits almost made a leaping catch, but couldn't quite hang onto it.  He got a force out at third, but the first Fayetteville run of the game scored on the play.  Farias then reloaded the bases with yet another beanball.  That was the third hit batter of the inning and sixth of the game by Nats pitchers.  Farias was mercifully pulled after that one.  He was relieved by Ryan Minckler who was rudely greeted with a two run single by Brandon Forrester on the first pitch he threw.  A couple walks pushed in another run to make it a four run frame for the Woodpeckers.  This was very much a Low A minor league kind of inning.  Forrester, the nine hole hitter for Fayetteville, kept his big game rolling in the seventh with another RBI single, scoring the second of two Woodpeckers runs in that inning.  So in two innings, the Woodpeckers turned a two run deficit into a four run lead.  During that seventh inning rally, rain began to fall.  It was a fairly light but consistent drizzle for the remainder of the game.  Fayetteville turned to Leomar Rosario to pitch the final two innings.  He was throwing gas, touching 100 MPH on the radar a few times.  To start the ninth, he surrendered an absolute bomb by Mota off the roof of the bar in left field, cutting the lead to three.  A walk allowed Willits to bat one last time with two outs in the ninth.  Rosario kept throwing heaters that Willits kept fouling off.  Eventually, the impressive nine pitch battle ended on Willits swinging at a pitch in the dirt for his first professional strikeout, which ended the game as a 6-3 Fayetteville victory.

At such a young age, I would expect Willits to spend most of next season in Fredericksburg as well.  So perhaps I will go down there to see him play again at some point.  It was a nice cherry on top of this weekend trip in Virginia.  That left me with just one more minor league game to attend in 2025:  a stop in Indianapolis on my way to South Bend for a Notre Dame football game.

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Next ballpark: Victory Field in Indianapolis, IN