Thomas J. White Stadium

Home-plate entrance to Thomas J. White Stadium.

The main seating bowl.

A distracting net shields spectators near home plate.

Chronological Tour: Stop 256

• Location: St. Lucie Sports Complex, off I-95 exit 121, Port St. Lucie, Fla. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1988 as Thomas J. White Stadium
• Additional names: Tradition Field (2004), Digital Domain Park (2010), Tradition Field (2013), First Data Field (2017), Clover Park (2020)
• Home team: St. Lucie Mets, Florida State League (1988-present); St. Lucie Legends, Senior Professional Baseball Association (winter 1989-90); spring training, New York Mets (1988-present)
• Capacity: 7,500

Rating: 2 baseballs

Most of the seats are regular stadium seating. The field faces north-northeast. Also, a full screen covers the home plate seating areas, although it isn’t quite as distracting as the one at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers. One outstanding feature is that, despite the lack of bells and whistles common at newer spring training facilities, the park does feature a significant overhang, so much of the seating bowl is in shade even during summer day games. The cantilevered overhang echoes the one across the state at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg.

For the 2004 season, the naming rights to the ballpark were sold. The park became known as Tradition Field, after a new residential-commercial development four miles south of the park which bears the name “Tradition”. The park also received a major facelift, with brickwork replacing the concrete exterior and new picnic pavilions being added along the left-field line and in right field. In addition, the scoreboard was moved from right-center to left-center to allow for the picnic pavilion. The rights were resold in early 2010, and the park became known as Digital Domain Park, but Tradition Florida resecured the naming rights in 2013. That lasted until 2017, when First Data took over. That company, now known as FiServ, put its Clover brand of payment processing on the park for 2020.

Hurricane Frances did an estimated $4 million in damage to the ballpark in September 2004. Most of the damage was to the new suite level. According to Paul Taglieri of the Mets (quoted in a local paper), the suite windows opened under the force of the winds, allowing rain to get into the ceilings and weaken the structure. Small concrete chunks fell from the suite level to the stadium exterior. Repairs were completed by 2005 spring training.

A two-year renovation project was underway as of April 2019, with much of the stadium structure blocked off during Florida State League games. The entire stadium was available by spring training in 2020.

In 2021, this ballpark, along with the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, hosted the Americas qualifier for the Olympic demonstration event in Tokyo.