Welcome Back to Birmingham

The side of Regions Field that faces 14th Street (and I-65), Jul-2013.

From center field, the off-balance luxury box seating (which helps block the sun, too).

From behind home plate, Children’s Hospital and the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham are visible.

Chronological Tour: Stop 365

• Location: 14th Street & 1st Ave South, Birmingham, Ala. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2013
• Home team: Birmingham Barons, Southern League (2013-present)
• Capacity: 8,500

Rating: 4 baseballs

While the Hoover Met was a serviceable ballpark that also hosted high school football, there was a desire to bring the game back into the city proper. The annual Rickwood Classic, played since 1996 at the ballpark built in 1910, was a consistent hit, although the draw may be that the game is played at the oldest operating professional park in the nation rather than its location within the city.

So for 2013, the Barons moved into this new ballpark only a few blocks from downtown and within walking distance of the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The stadium’s construction is the cornerstone of an effort to revive a section of town that has fallen upon hard times, and by extension a city that, during its heyday as an iron mining and steel producing capital in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, became known as the Magic City for having risen from practically nothing in a very short period of time.

Getting to the Game

Watching the Game

The lineups are posted on a wall near the home plate entrance, although the lineup board is not that easy to find if you entered the park through another gate. The club does hand out a playbill-sized program to patrons.

There is no dedicated scoreboard here. The line score usually appears on the main video board in left field, though not always, and during the game the score also appears most of the time on the auxiliary matrix board mounted below the first-base club level – but, again, not always. At the game I attended, basic game information did not appear for two or three batters, and the public address announcer actually gave the ball-and-strike count at one point before the operations staff figured out how to display game info. But it is very possible to have no indication between innings of the game score.

Enjoying the Game

I did not notice any bad views from seats in the ballpark. Very seldom is a new park built these days without attention being paid to sightlines.

The club runs the usual amount of between-innings promotions. In addition, there are two extensive kids’ play areas, one of which features a Wiffle Ball field where children can hit off a tee under the supervision of game-day staff.

As of 2013, there was very little in the way of before- or after-game activity in the neighborhood. I did notice one watering hole on 14th Street across from the ballpark. Naturally, the Barons and the city hope to change that in upcoming years. By 2016, a new housing development had opened across 16th Street from the park, and establishments were springing up in the vicinity of 20th Street on the south side of the tracks, within shouting distance of the field.