A Corny Baseball Field

Outfield entrance to The Corn Crib, Sep-2010.

The sun sets beyond the first-base line. The field faces southeast.

The entire field is artificial turf, a brand called SprinTurf.

Chronological Tour: Stop 355

• Location: Raab Road 0.6 mile west of Main Street, Normal, Ill.
• Opened: 2010
• Home team: Normal CornBelters, Frontier League (2010-18); Heartland Community College Hawks, Midwest Athletic Conference
• Capacity: 4,000

Rating: 2 baseballs

The Corn Crib, sponsored by the Illinois Corn Growers Association, features stands of corn below the scoreboard in right-center field. Unfortunately, it also features artificial turf (much as in Marion), as the park will be shared with Heartland Community College, who will use it for other sports including soccer. That need to accommodate other sports also led to a foul territory area that was reminiscent of Evansville: very short backstop, but lots of foul ground down the lines.

That contributes to the other drawback of the field, as I see it. With only 16 seating rows all set fairly far back from the field (except directly behind home plate), the fan loses perspective on a high fly ball. Several times, balls I thought were easy pop-ups actually went to the outfield wall. One good countering feature was that the press and luxury boxes create a wind break that help keep the seating bowl much more comfortable when the wind comes sweeping across the prairie.

I also had several gripes with the game presentation, at least in September 2010. The public address announcer was insufferable when he announced the home team batters. The program and scorecard contained no visiting team roster, and the home team roster hadn’t been updated in three weeks. The brand of scoreboard they obtained (from Sportable Scoreboards) features two-digit numbers for runs and hits, but the digits are too close to each other and very difficult to read when the total of runs or hits ranges from 10 to 19.

On the plus side, the CornBelters’ logo is cool, and as befits a team in the corn belt, they do serve corn on the cob ($3 per cob in 2010). But these were not enough to offset the negatives in my book. The place is OK for watching a game, but just OK.

Following nine years in the Frontier League, the CornBelters withdrew after the 2018 season. They now play in a college summer league.