Horse Play

The cupolas, reminiscent of nearby horse tracks, almost look out of place.

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

The park sits in a warehouse district; there are trees well off in the distance.

Chronological Tour: Stop 208

• Location: North Broadway (US 27/68) inside New Circle Road (KY 4), Lexington, Ky. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2001 as Applebee’s Park
• Additional names: Whitaker Bank Ballpark (2011), Lexington Legends Ballpark (2021), Wild Health Field (2022)
• Home team: Lexington Legends, South Atlantic League (2001-19), Atlantic League (2021-22, 2024-present); Lexington Counter Clocks, Atlantic League (2023)
• Capacity: 6,033

Rating: 2 baseballs

Lexington Legends Ballpark, as it was known until hours before their first game in April 2001, when the bar chain Applebee’s signed on, is sandwiched between a strip mall and an industrial park, leaving the place with absolutely no view.

To make up for that, the stadium and several of its outbuildings are designed to look like classic racetrack buildings. The roofs of these buildings are light green, with white cupolas, several of which are topped off by weathervanes.

The park itself seemed like a step back, though, as the place doesn’t have the typical concourse from which you can see the game. Instead, seats rise and descend from the concourse level, with the field sunken by several feet, similar to Skylands Park in Augusta, N.J. And while there is a cross aisle, access to many of the sections cannot be easily obtained from that aisle, making navigation difficult.

They get an “E” for effort, as the place is serviceable, but it didn’t do much for me. Someone at Major League Baseball must have concurred, as the facility was omitted from the restructuring of the Minor Leagues for 2021. The Legends subsequently joined the MLB Partner independent Atlantic League.

The latest ballpark naming sponsor, Wild Health, is a health care provider in the Lexington area. In association with the sponsor, a second Atlantic League team playing at the field to balance out the schedule in 2022 was be known as the Wild Health Genomes.

For 2023, the team rebranded as the Counter Clocks, paying homage to the American horse racing introduction of circling the track counterclockwise (the reverse of the British standard). The name was not well liked, and new ownership reverted to the Legends name for 2024.