Chronological Tour: Stop 62

Prince William Stadium

The home-place entrance to G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium, Jul-2006.

The ballpark has a nearly all-aluminum seating bowl.

Woods surround the field, on the edge of the county administration complex.

• Location: County Complex Court, Woodbridge, Va. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1984 as Prince William Co. Stadium
• Additional names: G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium (1997)
• Home team: Prince William Pirates (1984-86), Yankees (1987-88), Cannons (1989-98), Potomac Cannons (1999-2004), Potomac Nationals (2005-19), Carolina League
• Capacity: 6,000

Rating: 1 baseball

Prince William Stadium (which is now known as G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium) looks fine from the outside. It’s when one gets in that it becomes a headache. The seating is mainly aluminum benches affixed to an aluminum superstructure (the park does have molded plastic box seats), and there’s absolutely no roof to help keep the spectators cool during hot summer games.

I saw the Cannons play in August 1994, when they were scheduling Sunday games in mid-afternoon. The place was just brutal. The Cannons, who changed their location designation from “Prince William” to “Potomac“ in 1999, now play mostly Sunday evening games, which is a little better. But the stadium has absolutely no charm to it, which is a shame.

The club eventually affiliated with the Washington Nationals, who arrived from Montréal in 2005, and that provided a slight attendance boost. There had long been talk of building a more modern ballpark further out on county complex land, and in June 2017 the county board of supervisors finally approved an industrial bond to build a new park that would open in 2020. However, that proposal never took off, and the Nationals announced plans to move to a new facility in Fredericksburg, 35 miles down I-95, for the 2020 season. (As of October 2019, there was a chance that the new park would not be ready for the home opener, but the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic rendered that moot and the FredNats park opened for the 2021 season.)

The team had added specialty concession areas outside the main body of the stadium, but the concourse could still get cramped on a busy night. In addition, they got $5 to park; not sure whether that accrued to the team or to the county. The other fault, if you can call it that, is the park location, about six miles off I-95 and thus not the most easily accessible park.