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Your Ballpark Guide

 

Wade Stadium / Duluth-Superior Dukes


Year Built 1940-41
Capacity 4,200
Dimensions 343 L, 380 C, 340 R
Last Visit August 2002
Next Visit Never to see the Dukes
Web Site http://www.dsdukes.com/
Online Broadcasts No
Online Ticket Sales Yes
Phone 218/727-4533
League Northern League
Affiliation None
Ticket Prices Reserved, $7; General Admission, $6; Bleachers, $4
Parking Free but limited
Address/Directions 132 N. 34th Av. W., Duluth. Wade Stadium is in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Duluth. To reach the stadium from either the north or south, exit I-35 on the 40th Av. W. exit, head west (to the left) on 40th Av. W., hang a right on Grand Avenue and stay on it until you reach 34th Av. W., on which you'll hang a right. Drive two blocks (past the bowling alley) and you'll see the parking lot for the Wade.
Rating

Wade Stadium / Duluth-Superior Dukes news ----->

Pictures from my most recent trip to Duluth ----->


Description
I will be upfront about my passion for Wade Stadium and Duluth, for I strongly believe that there's no better place to watch a baseball game on the face of the earth. The Wade isn't as spiffy as the newer parks in the minor and major leagues; it lacks amenities like luxury suites and theater-style seating, and until last season you couldn't really tell if the bathrooms featured indoor plumbing. There's no fancy scoreboard, no sideshows like trained pigs or Norwegians, no nuns dispensing massages. But the Wade -- which faced the wrecking ball in the early 1990s -- was lovingly restored by volunteers who were passionate about their city and their baseball, and that commitment to a pile of bricks -- 381,000 of them, to be specific -- and concrete makes the Wade a stadium that's truly cherished by the community.

Let's face it: ballparks constructed during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) are a dying breed, as many of them are too small and too old to serve the needs of today's baseball fans. The brick-faced Wade Stadium -- or, the Wade, as the locals say -- undoubtedly been torn down in the early 1990s had the Northern League not come to the area, according to city officials. At that time, Wade renovation was structural in nature, ensuring fan safety, while changes were made in the concourse area. In recent years the parking lot was (finally!) repaved and a new concession area was added to the third-base-line area.

I may be biased, but a strong argument could be made that the Wade is the best place to actually watch a baseball game in both the Northern League and in all of Minnesota. In the Northern League, only Fargo's Newman Outdoor Field offers comparably great sightlines from every seat in the house. Bleacher seats are usually an afterthought in most minor-league parks, but the horseshoe design orients most bleacher seats to second base and the pitching mound. And when you consider than nine-tenths of the seating in the Metrodome sucks for baseball, the Wade comes out ahead in that comparison as well.

There's only one drawback to the Wade: chilly weather. If you go to a day game on a sunny day, you can be reasonably sure that temperatures will remain steady. However, if you go to a night game, all bets are off. If a cold wind and fog rolls off of nearby Lake Superior, it can be 10 or 20 degrees cooler between the beginning of the game and the third inning. (I've been to more than one game that was called on account of fog.) Season-ticket holders tend to being quilts, blankets and sometimes parkas to night games, no matter how warm the temperatures are during the day. And those outfield metal bleachers can get mighty chilly at night.

Still, there are no bad seats in the horseshoe-shaped Wade, and the aforementioned bleacher seats are generally filled with the locals, who know that they can save a few bucks by sitting in the bleachers and not sacrifice a great view of the game. In fact, the best seats in the park might be the back row of the right-field bleacher seats. From here, you can see Lake Superior and the loading docks for the Duluth, Messabe & Iron Range Railroad; during my last visit I watched the 1,000-foot-long Mesabi Miner roll into the docks to pick up a load of taconite. If you're in the grandstand, you have a surprisingly intimate view of the action: the seats are ground level and you're close both the home plate and the dugouts. 

One of the most joyous occasions of my baseball-viewing life came when a group of Dukes players from Latin America were playing a pepper game with the then Dukes pitching coach, Mike Cuellar. They were laughing and joking and having the time of their life, playing baseball thousands of miles from home. You rarely see that joy of the game on the major-league level -- players don't appear to have fun too often (which is another reason why Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa captured our imaginations in 1998: they were having a ball!) and usually you're too far away from the players to actually see their emotions at work. Give me a choice between a fun-loving minor leaguer and an anal, no-fun pro like Chuck Knoblauch, and I'll choose the minor leaguers any day.

History
If you lump together all the years the city of Duluth has yielded a team in all the incarnations of the Northern League, you'd find a rich tradition of baseball in the port city spread out over 50 seasons.

Duluth entered the Northern League in 1903, the second year of the league. Throughout most of the history of the Northern League there were separate teams in Duluth and Superior, with the Dukes and Blues enjoying a fierce rivalry on the field. That rivalry ended with the 1956 season, when the Duluth-Superior Dukes participated in the Northern League until its demise after the 1970 season. That 1970 season was a bittersweet one for Duluth fans, as the team won the final championship of the original Northern League.

The Dukes originally played at Duluth's Athletic Park, next door to the current Wade Stadium location. When the Northern League reformed in 1933, Athletic Park was not available for professional baseball, so a Northern League team was placed in Superior under the ownership of the Wade family. When Athletic Park became available in 1936, the Wades moved their franchise to Duluth, but it quickly became apparent that a new facility was needed. A city commission issued a report in September 1938 that argued for a new stadium:

    "Duluth does not have a suitable stadium for professional baseball. The present athletic park, privately owned and used by Duluth's professional team, has too small a capacity, the seats are unsuitable, the sanitary facilities are seriously inadequate and the playing field is smaller than regulation size."

As a result, a referendum was placed on the upcoming November ballot that authorized the city of Duluth to sell unemployment bonds to finance a new stadium. It passed.

A slump in the economy, however, led to delays in the construction process. The original budget for Wade Stadium was $163,232, with $75,000 coming from the city bonds and the rest from the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA). However, the project went over budget (eventually costing $230,880), which led to first a shutdown in construction and then a bailout from Duluth Mayor Edward Hatch, who purchased the construction materials needed to finish the project. Wade Stadium -- then known as the Duluth All-Sports Municipal Stadium -- finally opened to a crowd of 2,500 on July 16, 1941, watching the Dukes takes on its biggest rival, the Superior Blues.

Concession Highlights
There's nothing exceptional about the concessions at the Wade. Inside the concourse, you're looking at your standard minor-league ballpark fare: Duke Dogs at $2, , nachos, popcorn, peanuts, hot cocoa. Two beer stands serve Leinenkugel Honey Weiss and Miller Genuine Draft on tap. New in 1999 is an expanded coffee selection. You can buy your cup of locally roasted Arco for between a buck and $1.75 (with one free refill), or you can opt for the more expensive cappuccino. While the cappuccino is from a machine, it's still pretty tasty on a cold night.

New this year is a concession item taken directly from Newman Outdoor Stadium: a box of pretzels with pickled peppers, a hard-boiled pickled egg, and an optional side of ranch dressing.  They sell this combo (sans the ranch dressing) in Fargo, and there they usually go through a huge jar of pickled eggs every night.

There's also an expanded concession stand/beer garden down the third-base line, serving the needs of a picnic seating area. It's a gathering spot for both kids and mosquitoes, so plan accordingly. The Dukes have followed the trend of Thirsty Thursdays, where $9 gets you all you can eat and drink on the third-base deck, complete with a live band.

The Dukes are bringing back and expanding upon the old Happy Hour. Starting immediately, everything in the Hard Ball Café and Beer Garden is half price between 6 and 7 p.m. (except for Thursday nights). In addition, the Dukes also resurrected the much-beloved Beer Batter. It's a great promotion: if the opposing batter strikes out, beers are half price the next inning. It also manages to distract some of the younger batters in the league.

Also new: the Dukes have moved concessions from the grandstand to a freestanding stand down the first-base line. 

Smoking
You can smoke in the back rows of the bleachers, where it's also the windiest. On a cold night, you certainly are braving the cold for a nicotine fix, but on a sunny summer day the left-field bleachers become a sun field. Cigars are also allowed in this area.

Parking
There's a large parking lot outside the Wade, and on a crowded night you can also park in the parking lot of an adjacent bowling alley. During sellouts, there's overflow parking a block away. Best of all, it's all free.

For the Kids
There's a play area of sorts down the first-base line, but it's basically a big open area where kids play catch and chase down foul balls -- there's no playground equipment, for example.

Before the Game
There's not much within walking distance of the Wade, except for Mary's Place and the Stadium Lanes bowling alley. Your best bet is to hit the game early for the Dukes Happy Hour: 8-ounce beers and Duke Dogs are a buck apiece.

You should also check out the action in the parking lot. There is a group of dedicated and hearty tailgaters comprising the Duluth Tailgate Club.

You could also spend time perusing Duluth and taking in the scenic views. Duluth is a busy shipping port, with taconite from the Iron Range and grain from the fields of the western United States and Canada making their way to the rest of the world. The Canal Park area of Duluth features a small museum detailing the history of shipping in the region, and if you're lucky you can watch one of the huge ships make its way through the canal before heading to a storage area to load up. (Call 218/722-6489 for the latest arrival and departure information.) Canal Park used to be a run-down industrial area, but it's now a vibrant area filled with restaurants (including the legendary Grandma's), shops, and the Blue Moon Cafe coffeehouse.

Just off of Canal Park is the Great Lakes Aquarium. My family and I were so impressed with it that we bought a family membership, and we make a point of visiting it every time we're in Duluth.

After the Game
Duluth has always been a party town of sorts. In the old days, the partying was on the rough side, especially when there were a lot of sailors and Iron Rangers in town. (As you might expect, they made quite a mixture.) And while you can still find that kind of partying in parts of Duluth, you'll probably want to head down to Canal Park, where a large variety of restaurants and bars (Grandma's, Little Angie's, Green Mill, Timber Lodge Restaurant, Old Chicago, Lake Avenue Cafe) pack them in during the summer. In addition, Minneapolis's Pizza Luce opened a Duluth outpost at the corner of Lake and Superior.

Where to Stay
There's nothing within walking distance of the Wade, and the few hotels in the general area cater more to truckers than tourists. You'll want to stay in Canal Park, a short drive away, where four hotels face Lake Superior and allow easy access to the Lakewalk, which runs alongside Lake Superior all the way up to the Glensheen mansion. The best of the four is the Inn on Lake Superior (350 Canal Park Dr., 218-726-1111; $85-$110 per night), with an assortment of standard rooms and lakefront suites. Families will also want to check out the Hawthorn Suites (325 S. Lake Av., 218-727-4663) and the Comfort Suites (408 Canal Park Dr., 218-727-1378). Other downtown hotels worth checking out includes Fitger's and the Holiday Inn.

Wade Stadium / Duluth-Superior Dukes news ----->

Pictures from my most recent trip to Duluth ----->