First Horizon Park - Nashville Sounds

Charlotte Knights (CHW) @ Nashville Sounds (MIL)

April 5, 2026

Sounds 7, Knights 5

W: Brian Fitzpatrick
L: Adisyn Coffey

S: Will Childers

HR: Luke Adams (NAS)

Attendance: 4,881
Time of Game: 2 hours, 50 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Nashville, TN
Opened: 2015
Capacity: 10,000
Level: Triple A
League: International

Following Friday night's game in Kentucky, I made the short drive down to Nashville on Saturday morning and spent most of the afternoon exploring the city, this being my first visit to Music City.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and am already itching to make a return trip in the future.  To me, it seemed like a much nicer version of Las Vegas and New Orleans, with the common theme among those three cities being that pretty much everybody goes there to have a good time.  The only negative was that a rainstorm swept through in the late afternoon which wound up postponing the game I had planned on attending that evening.  I had already made a contingency plan though and stuck around for the game the following afternoon instead, which happened to be Easter Sunday.

First Horizon Park is located a little bit west of downtown Nashville, and just a few blocks from the State Capitol building.  The park is aligned to provide a nice view of the skyline beyond right field from most seating areas.  Beyond the park in left field are residential buildings.  The exterior of the park on the third base side includes a restaurant with an outdoor patio which appears to provide great views of the action for those who want to eat, drink and watch baseball without actually buying a ticket.  This park has as large of an outfield concourse as I can recall seeing in a minor league park.  Right field, in particular, has wide open spaces for congregating and having fun.  That area includes games such as cornhole, ping-pong and even a miniature golf course.  This area is situated below and around the gigantic guitar shaped scoreboard in right-center.  I would imagine even someone who doesn't care a lick about baseball could have a good time out there.  A second level around the infield contains a good number of suites and club level seating.  There are also field level suites right behind home plate that I found to be an interesting design choice because it takes up a pretty large amount of prime real estate with not a lot of actual seats.  Perhaps I would have been more understanding of it if I had seen how the space is occupied for a mid-summer game with a larger crowd.  The overall large footprint of the stadium and all of these extra amenities gives First Horizon Park as close to a big league feel as I've experienced in the minor leagues.  It was not a big league sized crowd for this particular game, however.  Which made sense with it being Easter Sunday and the first weekend of April.  Following the Saturday night rain, temperatures dropped pretty significantly, making this a somewhat chilly afternoon.  Still pleasant though with the sun shining.

To begin the season, the Charlotte roster featured three of the White Sox top pitching prospects.  Fortunately, I was able to see one of them in person for the first time for this game:  hard-throwing right hander Tanner McDougal.  It was easy to see why he is so highly touted as he fired upper 90s heat with nasty breaking balls.  That said, he was not overwhelmingly dominant in this outing.  He walked four while striking out three in five innings.  Nashville did not do much damage against him though, only notching two hits and one run.  Meanwhile, the Knights offense did knock around Sounds lefty starter Tate Kuehner a bit, despite having a lineup mostly consisting of left handed hitters.  They scored one run in the third and then added three more in the fourth, highlighted by a two run double down the left field line by Drew Romo.  Nashville got one back in the bottom of the fourth on a solo home run by Luke Adams, who drilled a McDougal fastball to the berm in left-center, cutting the Knights lead down to 4-1.  Charlotte immediately responded with three straight hits off of Kuehner to start the fifth, the last of which was a RBI single by Jacob Gonzalez, ending Kuehner's afternoon.  The Knights recorded eight hits off of the Sounds starter, but then only one hit for the remainder of the game facing the bullpen.  Charlotte's bullpen, on the other hand, was far less effective.  The game completely flipped when the bullpens entered the picture.  The Sounds cut the lead to two with a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth.  They scored one on another RBI hit by Adams and another on a sacrifice fly by Brock Wilken.  Then the Knights bullpen completely self-combusted in the bottom of the eighth inning, despite Tyler Gilbert retiring the first two hitters he faced in the frame.  He then allowed an infield single by Luis Lara and hit Adams with a pitch, ending his day.  Adisyn Coffey came in and threw gas on the fire.  The first four batters he faced included three walks, another hit batter and a pair of wild pitches thrown in for good measure.  The Sounds scored four times in the inning with the only hit being an infield single.  The runs scored on a bases loaded hit by pitch, a bases loaded walk and two wild pitches during the same plate appearance, putting Nashville on top 7-5.  It was a truly ghastly inning for the Charlotte bullpen, particularly Coffey.  The Knights did put a couple runners on base in the top of the ninth on an error and a walk, but Will Childers came in to pitch for the Sounds and struck out the only batter he faced to end the ballgame and earn the save.  The Sounds got the 7-5 come from behind victory.

The Saturday rainout cut this trip down to just two games, both of which were lost by White Sox affiliates.  Because I wound up skipping Knoxville on this trip, I now have a return trip planned there very soon, during which I will once again try to see the Sox AA squad, Birmingham, play in Knoxville.  Here's hoping for good weather.

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Next ballpark: City Stadium in Lynchburg, VA

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