Birmingham Barons (CHW) @ Pensacola Blue Wahoos (MIA)
June 18, 2026
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
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.
Next ballpark: Toyota Field in Madison, AL
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