New Ballpark for Laredo

Main (home plate) entrance to Uni-Trade Stadium, Jul-2012.

A look in from the right-field concourse.

The view from directly behind the plate.

Chronological Tour: Stop 362

• Location: Sinatra Parkway at Bob Bullock Loop, Laredo, Texas
• Opened: 2012
• Home team: Laredo Lemurs, American Association (2012-16); Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos, Mexican League (2018-present, some games)
• Capacity: 3,940

Rating: 3 baseballs

While the new ballpark is clearly superior to the old one in many ways, I found it difficult to give it a superior rating. Part of the problem may be that the park was still incomplete. They promise a 12,000-square-foot kids’ play area down the left-field line as well as a walk-around concourse, but the play area was all dirt and the berm was not all in place when I arrived two months into the Lemurs’ first season in the American Association.

In addition, there is no lineup board in the ballpark; also, while all the players are identified on the video board as they come to bat, the public address announcer does not generally announce the fielding position for each batter. That makes it difficult for a fan who missed the starting lineups to fill in a scorecard. I don’t think I had all the positions marked properly until the fifth inning.

The park faces a traditional northeast, but the designers made the left-field alley shorter than the one to right field. If Laredo had the prevailing westerlies that are common in the northern part of the state, that would be fine. However, winds along the Rio Grande tend to blow upstream, and so the ball travels exceptionally well to left field.

The Lemurs went extinct after the 2016 season. A nasty dispute between team co-owners involving allegations of fiscal misappropriation could not be resolved to the satisfaction of the city, which owns the stadium. As a result, the club was dissolved only a few weeks prior to opening day. The league placed a (mostly) road team into the schedule to replace them, although that club will play a few games in Salina, Kan., which was home to a Pecos League team in 2016.

For 2018, a Mexican League franchise was transferred from Veracruz to Nuevo Laredo and adopted the name Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos which was used from 1985 to 2004. Los Tecolotes (the Owls) will split their home schedule between Uni-Trade Stadium and Estadio Nuevo Laredo, part of the Ciudad Deportiva sports complex on the Tamaulipas side of the Rio Grande.