Beep Beep

Main entrance to Edinburg Baseball Stadium, Aug-2005.

A look at the stadium from the third-base line.

The view from the concourse.

Chronological Tour: Stop 303

• Location: Sugar Road at Schunior Street, Edinburg, Texas
• Opened: 2001 as Edinburg Baseball Stadium
• Additional names: UTRGV Baseball Stadium (2015)
• Home team: Edinburg Roadrunners, Texas-Louisiana/Central League (2001-2005), United League (2009-10, 2013), North American League (2011-12); Edinburg Coyotes, United League (2006-08); University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros, Western Athletic Conference
• Capacity: 5,500

Rating: 2 baseballs

Edinburg is a city in south Texas, about 20 miles north of the Rio Grande and 35 miles west of the Gulf of Mexico. The most frequently seen Roadrunners in this town were the players on a pro baseball team that began its life in this new ballpark in 2001.

This park, Edinburg Baseball Stadium, is a city-owned facility consisting mainly of a single seating bowl extending around the field to the foul poles. The park contains stadium seats in the central areas and aluminum benches down the lines. Several luxury suites flank the press box.

Most of the vending is down on the concourse behind the luxury and press box building, and the rest rooms are in separate buildings at that level. There is no portal through the luxury and press box building, so one must go around the building to reach even the home-plate seats. There are two shaded areas, one on each base line, which serve as picnic areas. Otherwise, there is little shelter, but little is needed as games are played at night and the area seldom sees rain during baseball season.

When I rate parks, I rate the entire experience of attending a game. Not only did the park lose points for its inconvenient access to the seating bowl, but the public address announcer on duty (who I understand was there the entire season) was the most obnoxious I had heard in a long time. In addition, the names of home-team batters were displayed only briefly on the video board, so if the over-the-top announcement was unintelligible (as was often the case), I had nowhere to turn to get the information.

The ownership group that controlled the Roadrunners had a feud with the city, so when the United League came looking for a team after the Central League folded, a new group came in and called the new franchise the Coyotes. I suppose this was because, unlike in the cartoons, this time the coyote actually got the roadrunner. The change in nickname presented an opportunity for a new mascot, so the club then featured the near-rhyming Cody the Coyote. But for 2009, the team was back to being the Roadrunners. Cartoon justice prevailed! Ultimately, though, UT Pan American – which became UT Rio Grande Valley in 2015 thanks to a merger with another state school from Brownsville &0150; prevailed in becoming the field’s primary tenant, as the city refused to lease the park to the United League for 2014.