Suffolk County’s Own Park

Main entrance to EAB Park, Jul-2001.

Construction here is similar to many ballparks of the same vintage.

The triple-deck signage emphasizes the lack of view.

Chronological Tour: Stop 197

• Location: Carleton Avenue, off exit 43A of the Southern State Parkway, Islip, N.Y. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2000 as EAB Park
• Additional names: Citibank Park (2002), Suffolk Co. Sports Park (2010), Bethpage Ballpark (2011), Fairfield Properties Ballpark (2021)
• Home team: Long Island Ducks, Atlantic League (2000-present)
• Capacity: 6,002

Rating: 3 baseballs

The place looks nice from the outside, but inside, it’s just more of the same. I could have been in Atlantic City or Bridgeport or Somerset or Camden, or Trenton or Wilmington or Frederick, if I didn’t know better. They’re all built to the same seating pattern: a split seating bowl, walkway halfway down, with all the concessions on the upper concourse, luxury boxes above, and a press box jutting out into the two center sections of the upper reserved seating. This is starting to get old.

Worse yet, there’s practically no view here. The ad signs are stacked three high around most of the field, except where they’re replaced by the scoreboard. The big EAB ad sits above the three-sign-high batter’s eye in center field.

A redeeming feature of the first game I saw, back in 2001, was a live organist. For this contest, they had a Technics organ out on the concourse next to the press box and hooked up to the public address system, with a woman listed as Dy Anne Awe tickling the ivories and, I must say, doing a good job. Sadly, I haven't seen (or heard) the organ since.

The original name for the facility, EAB Park, came from the bank that sponsored it, European-American Bank. That bank was bought out prior to the 2002 season and the facility was known as Citibank Park for eight seasons. After one year without a naming sponsor, it became known in 2011 as Bethpage Ballpark, for Bethpage Federal Credit Union. For 2021, the new naming sponsor is Fairfield Properties, a developer and manager of residential properties, mainly co-ops and condominiums, in Nassau and Suffolk counties.