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

Keesler Federal Park - Biloxi Shuckers

Columbus Clingstones (ATL) @ Biloxi Shuckers (MIL)

June 17, 2026

Clingstones 9, Shuckers 4

W: Shay Schanaman
L: Tanner Gillis

HR: Kevin Kilpatrick (COL), David McCabe (COL), Archer Brookman (COL), Andrew Fischer (BLX)

Attendance: 2,608
Time of Game: 2 hours, 57 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Biloxi, MS
Opened: 2015
Capacity: 6,098
Level: Double A
League: Southern

The final week of my trip started with me reaching the furthest point from home of the voyage in Biloxi, Mississippi.  What was supposed to be one day without baseball in Biloxi became two as the Tuesday night game got rained out.  This was part of a very wet stretch of weather I encountered while on the Gulf Coast.  I did not wind up seeing the sun much at all during what turned into three days in Biloxi.  I had predetermined that Biloxi and Pensacola would be the two stops on this trip that I was committed to stay until I was able to see a game since neither would have been particularly easy to return to in the future.  This was my first time ever in the state of Mississippi, now allowing me to make the claim that I have been to every state east of the Mississippi River.  Biloxi is a pretty interesting place.  It is a resort and casino city right on the recently renamed Gulf of America.  Several casinos line the highway that runs right along the ocean shore.  These casinos appear to be the driving force of the local economy.  While I didn't do much gambling, it worked out nicely to have indoor entertainment options on these rainy days.

Keesler Federal Park is situated in the shadows of what is probably the most visually impressive of the Biloxi casinos, the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino, which provides a unique and scenic skyline view when looking out beyond the outfield wall in right-center.  Once inside the park, I became thankful that they didn't try to play the game the night before because there would have been hardly anywhere to go to avoid the rain within the ballpark's perimeter.  There is an open air concourse above the main seating bowl with only the very back of the concourse where the concessions and vendors are located that has cover from the suite level above.  I found this to be a curious design choice for a ballpark in a region that I have come to assume is prone to precipitation in the summer months.  Virtually all of the seats are on the field level in foul territory, with standard seating stretching most of the way from pole to pole, except for a terrace section down the left field line.  There are no fixed seats in the outfield.  However, right field features a kids splash zone and a tiki bar surrounded with sand and beach chairs, clearing going for an ocean beach feel out there.  The only seats that aren't on the lower level are attached to the suites above the concourse, bookended by party decks on each side.  This is a bit of a no frills ballpark, as the modestly sized video board in right field provided the only signage in the entire park that contained game status information, as far as I could tell.  With this ballpark situated just a block from the ocean, it was unsurprising, yet quite attention grabbing to see tons of seagulls flocking around the playing field the first few innings.  They seemed to migrate elsewhere as the night progressed though.  The wind was blowing pretty stiffly off the ocean, in from right field on this night.

After having seen all of the Southern League teams in action the previous week, this second week of Southern League games meant I was seeing both teams for the second time on this trip.  In the case of Columbus, this was the second straight game of theirs that I witnessed.  They were far more impressive in this game than the one at home a few days earlier.  Meanwhile, Biloxi had a few new faces added to the roster just in time for this game.  Outfielder Josh Adamczewski and third baseman Andrew Fischer, who are both among the top handful of prospects in the Brewers deep system, made their AA debuts on this night.  Both made positive contributions for the Shuckers in this game too, but they didn't get a lot out of the rest of the lineup.  Right handed pitcher Tanner Gillis got the start for Biloxi and southpaw Herick Hernandez got the nod for Columbus.  Both had fairly pedestrian evenings.  Fischer announced his presence quickly leading off the bottom of the second.  He lined the third pitch he saw well past the wall in right field, against the wind, for a home run in his first AA plate appearance.  That gave the Shuckers an early 1-0 lead.  It was erased in the top of the third though.  With one out, nine hole hitter Kevin Kilpatrick lined one into the left-centerfield gap for a double, starting a big night for him.  A few batters later, David McCabe lined one to right for a single, causing seagulls to scurry and allowing Kilpatrick to score to tie the game.  It was the first of three run scoring hits for McCabe on the evening.  The Clingstones really started to get to Gillis in the fifth.  Kilpatrick crushed a solo home run to left to put Columbus ahead.  He would finish the night 4-for-4 with three runs scored and just a triple shy of the cycle.  Three batters later, McCabe crushed a two strike offering the opposite way for a two run homer, his 16th long ball of the year, which led the Southern League at that point.  It also gave him homers in both games I saw him play on this trip.  That put the Clingstones on top 4-1 and ended Gillis' evening.  Hernandez wouldn't survive the fifth either.  In the bottom half, he walked the bottom two hitters in the Shuckers lineup.  Then Adamczewski picked up his first AA hit and RBI with a double off the wall in left-center that scored one.  After a pitching change, consensus #1 prospect Jesus Made turned around to hit left handed for the first time in this game and grounded out to first base, scoring another run to cut the Clingstones lead to one.  Two more walks followed that, but the Shuckers left the bases loaded and the Clingstones clung to their lead through five.  The sixth started with a scary play in which Made and Adamczewski collided on a shallow fly ball to left, which was ruled an error on Made.  Both players remained in the game for the time being, but Made was replaced an inning later.  He returned to the Biloxi lineup a couple days later.  That play led to Columbus scoring an unearned run on a sac fly.  The Clingstones added two more in the seventh on a pair of RBI doubles, by Patrick Clohisy and McCabe.  McCabe wound up with three hits and four RBIs on the evening.  This put Columbus ahead 7-3.  Both teams scored single runs in the eighth.  In the ninth, Columbus catcher Archer Brookman ended the scoring by hitting a towering home run to left to make it 9-4.  The Clingstones scored in each of the final five innings to win this game by five.  This was the final week of the Southern League's first half.  With the loss, Biloxi's South Division lead over Pensacola was cut to 1/2 game over Pensacola.  They would go on to win the division first half crown though, with the game I would see the next night in Pensacola figuring prominently in that title race.

I wound up spending one more day in Biloxi than I had planned, but I can think of worse places to spend extra time.  It was a nice start to the homestretch of this trip, leading into a very eventful Thursday a couple hours east in Pensacola.

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Next ballpark: Blue Wahoos Stadium in Pensacola, FL