Ambassadors to What?

Entrance to Bicentennial Park, Aug-1997.

The short center field, complete with combination post-up/electric scoreboard, is visible here.

Chronological Tour: Stop 112

• Location: Off Market Street, Allentown, Pa.
• Opened: 1930 as Fairview Field (renovated 1976, 2025)
• Home team: Allentown Cardinals, Interstate League (1947); Allentown Ambassadors, Northeast League (1997-2003)
• Capacity: 4,600

Rating: 1 baseball

However, the first one they got after the Eastern League left in 1965 was located in a poor excuse for a baseball field. The stands at Bicentennial Park look like they should be accommodating baseball, but the field itself appears to be a converted football field, with the center field “wall” a 40-foot screen only about 330 feet from home plate.

Making things worse is a hybrid scoreboard. Seems the facility had a regular 10-inning electric scoreboard, but several of the innings are shot, so they maintain the runs, hits and errors electrically while posting hard-to-read inning scores along the face of the board. All in all, it wasn’t a good start for the return of baseball to the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton corridor.

The Ambassadors announced the cessation of their operations 4-May-2004, leaving the Northeast League to operate a road team for the 2004 season. Affiliated baseball finally arrived in the Lehigh Valley for 2008 with the Ottawa Lynx moving to a new stadium in Allentown.

In March 2009, the Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority, which owns part of the land on which the field is located, indicated that it plans to reclaim its portion to expand its maintenance garage. The City of Allentown has said that they may be willing to sell the rest of the property to LANTA, which would signal the ultimate demise of the ballpark.

Things took a turn for the better in 2024, when Muhlenberg College entered into an agreement with the city to essentially rebuild the facility. By the fall of that year, the old bleachers had been torn down and work had begun on the park’s next life. The Mules expect to move in for the 2025 season.