If They Could Turn This Park Around ...

Walking into Sky Sox Stadium, Aug-1995.

The designers picked the plain to overlook, rather than the mountains.

Only you can fight forest fires! Smokey Bear dances on the dugout roof.

• Location: Powers Boulevard at Barnes Road, Colorado Springs, Colo.
• Opened: 1988 as Sky Sox Stadium
• Additional names: Security Service Field (2005)
• Home team: Colorado Springs Sky Sox, Pacific Coast League (1988-present)
• Capacity: 9,000

Rating: 2 baseballs

Because of issues with the direction of the sun, most fields face eastward. (That’s why a left-handed pitcher is called a southpaw – when he faces west to pitch to the batter, his pitching arm is on his south side.) But Sky Sox Stadium is built at the top of a hill. To the west, you have the Monument River valley and the majestic Front Range beyond, a gorgeous view. But since the field must face east, you wind up looking out over a gentle but barren slope that stretches all the way to Kansas City.

On top of that, the park is one of the last to have been completed before the current “retro” trend. The facility does look OK from the outside, but the interior is utilitarian. Still, it’s the only affiliated minor league ball in the Centennial State, as the Zephyrs took off for Louisiana in 1993 with the arrival of the Colorado Rockies in Denver.

Correspondent Chris Moyer of Colorado Springs advises that since my 1995 visit, the city of Colorado Springs has expanded sufficiently that the view from the park now includes numerous additional housing developments as well as a golf course. In addition, in 2005 the Sky Sox arranged with Security Service Federal Credit Union for an infusion of cash for ballpark renovations in exchange for naming rights. The park is now Security Service Field.