And We’re Playing Here in Allentown

First-base (main entrance) side of Coca-Cola Park, Jun-2008.

A look at the seating bowl from the wrap-around concourse.

The view from behind the plate.

• Location: IronPigs Way and Highland Street (between Dauphin Street and Airport Road, between American Parkway and Union Boulevard), Allentown, Pa.
• Opened: 2008
• Home team: Lehigh Valley IronPigs, International League (2008-present)
• Capacity: 8,100 permanent seats

Chronological Tour: Stop 330

Rating: 5 baseballs

The Lehigh Valley had been waiting for affiliated baseball for decades. Allentown’s last team had been in the Interstate League in 1952. The independent Northeast League had played for seven years in a substandard facility off Lehigh Street, but that team had collapsed after the 2003 season. Another park was started just south of Easton off I-78 for a different independent team, but that facility was never completed.

The Coke bottle is ready to explode.

Domino, who has been involved with the Reading Phillies for two decades, had the opportunity to set things right for this old iron-mining region. He made arrangements to bring the Ottawa franchise in the International League to Allentown, and he secured an affiliation with the Philadelphia Phillies, who play just 50 miles to the south. (That move set off a string of five affiliation shifts in the International League for 2007. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, a Phillies farm team for 18 seasons, wound up going to the Yankees.)

The Ottawa Lynx played one final season of Triple-A ball as a Phillies farm club, while Domino’s team built a new park off Airport Road, just inside Allentown city limits on the south side of the Lehigh Valley Thruway (Route 22). The park was ready for the home opener of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (the name is a play on the term “pig iron”, iron that comes straight out of the blast furnace before being refined into steel) in April 2008.

An Ambassadors fan!

One look at Coca-Cola Park (sponsored by the Lehigh Valley bottling company) shows you that Domino knew exactly what he was looking for in a ballpark. There is a section of ultra-premium seats directly behind the plate, right at ground level, in front of team offices, as well as a premium upper deck. There is also a substantial main deck with reasonable ticket prices, and general admission (stand on the concourse or sit on the grass berm) is just $6. On my first trip to the park, with nearly 10,000 fans in attendance, I sat for much of the game at the base of a light tower down the right-field line. As one might expect, sightlines are excellent.

The park features the requisite number of freestanding concession stands, the Blast Furnace Grill in right field, a kids’ play area in left field, a walk-around concourse which is sufficiently wide behind the main seating bowl, and a scoreboard with an exploding Coke bottle (a firework shoots off behind it whenever the IronPigs score).

By the way, the IronPigs’ main mascot, Ferrous the pig, wears No. 26. Why? Because that’s the atomic number of iron. Extra credit if you remembered that from chemistry class (I didn’t).