Chain of Lakes Park

Ticket gate at Chain of Lakes Park, Aug-2003.

The seating area, as seen from the left-field berm.

A good look at the field from behind the plate.

• Location: Cletus Allen Road, off Cypress Gardens Boulevard just east of US 17, Winter Haven, Fla.
• Opened: 1966 (renovated 1993)
• Demolished: 2024
• Home team: Winter Haven Sun Sox (second half of 1966), Mets (1967), Red Sox (1969-92), Florida State League; Winter Haven Super Sox, Senior Professional Baseball Association (winter 1989-90); spring training, Boston Red Sox (1966-92), Cleveland Indians (1993-2008)
• Capacity: 7,000

No Florida State League team has played here since 1992, when the Red Sox moved to Fort Myers, but the Cleveland Indians arrived in 1993 for spring training. They had planned to move to Homestead, but Hurricane Andrew destroyed their prospective park in the fall of 1992.

The park was abandoned again by the spring training circuit when the Indians relocated their operations to Goodyear, Ariz., for the 2009 season. RussMatt, a scheduler of college baseball games for primarily schools from northern climates looking to play in early spring, had utilized the field since then. But with the facility in disrepair, the decision was made to tear it down in April 2024. New fields will rise in its place, to be utilized by RussMatt and others as early as 2025.