A Class Act Named for a Class Act

Home-plate entrance to Hank Aaron Stadium, Aug-2008.

The park’s unique design includes boxes at ground level, like Dodger Stadium used to have.

For big games such as fireworks night, the berm in left field fills up.

Chronological Tour: Stop 153

• Location: Boling Brothers Boulevard at Satchel Paige Drive (off Government Street near I-65), Mobile, Ala. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1997
• Home team: Mobile BayBears, Southern League (1997-2019)
• Capacity: 6,000

Rating: 4 baseballs

Hank Aaron Stadium, named after one of Mobile’s favorite sons, is one of the nicest new minor league facilities I’ve seen in a long time. I was impressed from the start by the concession stands named after old ballparks (Ebbets Field, Polo Grounds, etc.), as well as the attention paid to the fans in the form of podiums placed in front of the whiteboard for the day’s lineups.

The majority of the seating in the park is “upper deck”, but there are box seats below the second-deck portal level. Just above ground level is a series of luxury boxes, situated a la Dodger Stadium, above which the regular seats sit.

Even with the little bit of wear this park has taken in its dozen years, there’s no doubt in my mind that this ranks among the best minor league fields in the country. To top it off, the boyhood home of Hank Aaron is being relocated to a picnic area on the park grounds in 2009.

Alas, the park is showing its age, and attendance has suffered since the mid-2000s. In early 2018, it was announced that the BayBears would be relocating to a new park to be built in Madison, Ala., outside of Huntsville, about 350 miles north of Mobile along I-65. The new facility, part of a development called Town Madison, is set to open in 2020.