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Wade Stadium / Duluth-Superior Dukes
Wade Stadium / Duluth-Superior Dukes news -----> Pictures from my most
recent trip to Duluth ----->
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.
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." 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.
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.
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. 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.
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