Déjà Vu All Over Again

Main entrance to State Mutual Stadium, Jul-2003.

The main seating bowl. Access to every seat is not always easy.

The park was built in a secluded area near one of Rome’s three rivers.

Chronological Tour: Stop 244

• Location: Braves Drive, off Loop 1 highway, Rome, Ga. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2003 as State Mutual Stadium
• Additional names: AdventHealth Field (2022)
• Home team: Rome Braves (2003-23), Emperors (2024-present), South Atlantic League
• Capacity: 5,100

Rating: 2 baseballs

The directions printed in Baseball America’s Directory during the club’s inaugural season in 2003 failed to make clear that the park was located along a highway known as Loop 1, rather than Georgia state highway 1 (which is also U.S. 27). I had heard that the new park was very nice, but, like Applebee’s Park in Lexington, I was underwhelmed by it. That could be a result of this park using an almost identical blueprint to the one in Lexington.

Just as at its South Atlantic League counterpart in Kentucky, Floyd Co. Stadium (as it was to be known until State Mutual Insurance contracted for naming rights through 2021) has a very narrow concourse between the lower and upper seats, a club seating area directly behind home plate (here called The Three Rivers Club), and concession areas located below decks. There are television monitors throughout the lower deck so that someone caught down there doesn’t miss any of the action.

One problem the park has is that access to certain sections of the upper deck is counter-intuitive. One might expect to go from the concourse directly upstairs to the seats behind the plate, but those seats are actually only accessible via stairwells next to the club.

There is a certain amount of eye candy here, and it is a fairly pleasant place to watch a game, but I find the facility somewhat dysfunctional.

After two decades bearing the name of their major league parent, the club here opted for a separate identity in 2024 and became the Rome Emperors. This follows a trend throughout Minor League Baseball, where at one time the majority of Braves farm teams were simply known as the Braves.