Building 244

Main entrance to V.A. Memorial Stadium, Aug-2001.

Looking at the main seating bowl from the third-base bleacher area.

The field sits in the middle of a tree-lined campus.

Chronological Tour: Stop 217

• Location: In Veterans Administration complex, OH 104 3 miles north of Route 35, Union Twp (Ross Co.), Ohio
• Opened: 1954 (1993 for pro baseball)
• Closed: 2008 (for pro baseball)
• Home team: Chillicothe Paints, Frontier League (1993-2008)
• Capacity: 3,000 (approx.)

Rating: 3 baseballs

The stadium itself is, well, bigger than Memorial Park in Quakertown but smaller than Veterans Stadium in Cedar Rapids. The covered grandstand appears to hold 1200, maybe 1500 if you use a giant shoe horn. Additional bleacher areas along each base line hold 500 or 600 fans apiece. The club says their park can hold 4000 fans, but that seems to be exceedingly generous even though there is a picnic area down the left-field line (“we had 300 in there tonight,” a club representative said) and a kids’ play area down the right-field line. The feel of the park was “Oneonta, only better”.

Field dimensions are slightly irregular, but they do manage to meet the guideline of 325 down the lines and 400 straightaway. There is quite a bit of foul territory going down the lines, as the stadium doesn’t pinch in toward the foul lines. They have a recent model Electro-Mech scoreboard, complete with runs, hits and errors, but not the inning scores. In lieu of that, they have installed a post-up inning score board so fans can track the progress of the game.

After 16 seasons as a charter member of the Frontier League, pro ball vacated V.A. Memorial Stadium. The Frontier League franchise was turned in and picked up by a group in Avon, west of Cleveland, for the 2009 season. However, the Paints continue as a member of the Prospect League, a college summer league.