Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville

Jacksonville Suns, Southern League

8/10

The design of the exterior of the park, as well as the name "Baseball Grounds"give this particular ballpark a retro feel.

A sparse crowd enjoys the break between rain-shortened games.

               EverBank Field and the Commodore Point Expressway dominate the right field skyline.

I stopped in Jacksonville on a weekday afternoon, to catch a getaway game featuring the Jacksonville Suns , the AA affiliate of the Miami Marlins and the Tennessee Smokies. The park is part of a plan to revitalize Jacksonville with brand new everything. It has a brick façade and backstop and even the name “Baseball Grounds” is a tribute to old time baseball. The park is a good example of a smaller retro style. The park holds 11,000 and features both infield and outfield seating. My ticket was 25 dollars and in the front row(I’m not a fan of the front and moved to the back). The park has a small video scoreboard in left field, which displays the usual animations and player photos during the game.

The baseball grounds are located near the shores of the St. Johns River, across a parking lot from Everbank Field, home of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and up the street from Jacksonville’s Arena in a Sports district. There’s not much else in the immediate area otherwise, downtown is a short drive away and has a little more in the way of activities. Parking was across the street in the arena parkade for 5 dollars. The game I went to was lightly attended, so in and out was easy.

The game was sparsely attended, due to impending heavy rain throughout Florida, the hometown Suns and Tennessee Smokies made up the previous nights game before playing a 7 inning game at the scheduled start time. I was unaware of the situation coming in. Only about 500 people were in the stands for game 2, despite an announced(they didn’t announce it at the park, because of how off it was) of around 2,700 people for game 2. A good number of kids day camps were there and did most of the cheering, as besides them, there were roughly 100 in the stands.

The concessions were mostly closed with the front office staff manning the one that was open. Lines got long and selection was somewhat limited to burgers, sausages, dogs and snacks. Price for a regular/medium pop and a sausage was 8.50.  There were some specialty stands open, but a lot weren’t.

Jacksonville is a city of over 1 million Metro at the crossroads of I-95 and the eastern end of I-10. The city is also home to the NFL’s Jaguars and sees a great deal of other events. It looked in the quick glance I got to be a nice place and I would definitely go back, given the chance. The mascot is a dog named Southpaw, who, because of low attendance, gave himself the day off.

Assuming the low attendance and lack of atmosphere, plus the poor selection at the concessions are all unique to the game I went to(which is being nice), the park itself is very good, with a bit of a retro feel. Parking is close and cheap and the level of competition for AA is a cut above the low-minors for sure. I wouldn’t mind going back for a better attended game, as I’ll likely get a better impression. 

Update 2016: Rescoring this one, initially, I thought it would drop to a 7, but in actual fact, the park itself is well designed and worthy of an extra point. I'll still hopefully get back here soon, possibly even this summer.Also, sorry about the tiny font, the editor is fighting me hard for some reason. I make it bigger, it saves as smaller. Next revision....

Linescore 
2012-06-25 
                                            123     456     7    R  H  E
Tennessee Smokies(CHC)   000     300     0    3  5 0
Jacksonville Suns(MIA)        000     127     X    10 9 0 
Temp: 87F   Time: 2:00  Att: 2,247
Note: The teams played two 7 inning games to make up the previous night's. This was game 2.