The Cove

Exterior of Coveleski Stadium, Aug-2006.

The seating bowl, as seen from the outfield berm.

The park is squeezed into an industrial district not far from downtown.

Chronological Tour: Stop 10

• Location: Railroad Avenue across from the train station, South Bend, Ind. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1987 as Stanley Coveleski Regional Stadium (renovated 2011)
• Additional names: Four Winds Field (2014)
• Home team: South Bend White Sox (1988-92), Silver Hawks (1993-2014), Cubs (2015-present), Midwest League
• Capacity: 5,000

Rating: 3 baseballs

Entrance through one of the main portals leads you to an upper concourse. The seating bowl is below this concourse, while the concessions are all up on the concourse, allowing purchasers to watch the game as they order their food. The concourse is covered by a luxury box level. Behind home plate, the press box blocks the view from the concourse. Behind right field, trains roll into the city’s Union Station.

Sound familiar? This is how the majority of 1990s parks were constructed. “The Cove”, built in 1987 and first hosting pro ball in 1988, predates them and undoubtedly served as a model. Indeed, one-time New York-Penn League team owner Robert Hilliard cited this ballpark in a memoir as the template for the facility standards that were adopted in the 1991 Professional Baseball Agreement, standards he would be required to follow when building a yard for the New Jersey Cardinals a few years later.

I visited this park in 1990, before it dawned on me that taking photos of ballparks would be a cool hobby. I got back in 2006, by which time the outfield berm was open to spectators and a party deck had been added down the first-base line. Several years after that, the stadium added a wrap-around concourse.

Around 2010, the field was replaced with an all-weather FieldTurf surface; however, the turf was ripped out after the 2014 season, when the team announced a new affiliation with the Chicago Cubs and adopted the parent club’s nickname.

The Four Winds casino group (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians) bought the naming rights for the 2014 season and slapped its name all over the park. A statue of Stanley Coveleski, a Hall of Fame pitcher whose career spanned the years 1912-28 and who lived in South Bend for the last 55 years of his life, was added by the center field entrance.