Wahconah Park

Walking into Wahconah Park, Jul-1997.

A good look at the grandstand, festooned with plastic owls. This photo and the next are from 2001.

The unusual effect of the sun setting behind center field is shown here.

• Location: Wahconah Street, Pittsfield, Mass.
• Opened: 1892 (current stadium built 1950)
• Home team: Pittsfield Stanleys, New York State League (1894); Pittsfield Electrics, New England League (1913-14); Pittsfield Hillies, Eastern League (1919-30); Pittsfield Electrics (1941-48), Indians (1949-50), Phillies (1951), Canadian-American League; Pittsfield Red Sox (1965-69), Senators (1970-71), Rangers (1972-75), Berkshire Brewers (1976), Pittsfield Cubs (1985-88), Eastern League; Pittsfield Mets (1989-2000), Astros (2001), New York-Penn League; Berkshire Black Bears, Northern League (2002), Northeast League (2003)
• Capacity: 4,500

Chronological Tour: Stop 6

Rating: 3 baseballs

Sometime after 1919, when the land was deeded to the city, the field took on its current layout, unusual today in that the batter faces west. This worked before teams installed lights, when games were played in the early afternoon. After lights came in, though, “sun delays” were common – until the trees grew big and thick enough. The only other current park with that effect is Sam Lynn Ball Park in Bakersfield, Calif.

Another feature of the current grandstand, built in 1950, is the presence of artificial owls in the rafters, there in an attempt to keep birds from nesting and making an unholy mess.

The park saw Eastern League ball from the 1960s to the 1980s, and then became home to the New York-Penn League in 1989, when the New York Mets moved out of Vets Park in Little Falls, N.Y., and took up residence for a dozen years.

The Mets relocated their franchise to Coney Island (Brooklyn, N.Y.) after the 2000 season. An Astros farm team used the park in 2001 but then moved to a new stadium in Troy, N.Y., 40 miles northwest. The venerable park remained in use for another two seasons, as the Northern League placed a team at Wahconah Park for 2002, but in 2004 they moved into the vacated Yale Field in West Haven, Conn.

In 2005, the Berkshire Dukes of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a summer wood-bat league, relocated to Wahconah Park from Hinsdale, several miles to the east. Also that season, the park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for preservation funding.