Suplizio Field

Grand Junction Rockies, Pioneer League

8/10

 Like other parks of this type, Suplizio Field shares an entrance with the football stadium next door.

This park has a ton of seats, this is from the back behind home plate.

The giant shared press box/suites for Baseball and Football.

I stopped in Grand Junction after driving all day from suburban Phoenix. I arrived late, during the third inning, of a game between the "GJ Rockies" and the Ogden Raptors, the LA Dodgers' affiliate. The team was in their 2nd season in Grand Junction, around 2 and a half hours west of Denver, after moving from Casper, Wyoming, where the team drew around 1,400 a game, 7th of 8 in attendance. The team was lured to the area by extensive renovations to Suplizio Field, which also hosts the Junior College World Series. The stadium has a similar setup to Hillsboro Ballpark, where the ballpark shares entrances and some concourse with a football stadium next door, only at Suplizio, it joins on the first base side.

Parking's a bit of a nightmare, the lots were filled when I got there, so thanks to my ballparking experience, I bailed, rather than searching for that elusive "only unoccupied spot in the parking lot" and parked a few blocks away, for free on the street.

The extensive renovations to this park entailed firstly rebuilding the shared grandstand down the first base line, which is actually where all the season's ticket holder sit, in seats with backs on them. The press boxes and suites are in this building too. It towers over the field and does an effective job of blocking the football stadium from view. Then, they put in all new bleacher style seating all the way from just to the right of home plate, around to the left field foul pole. Then, a bleacher section in left field put the capacity way up to 12,000 people. This has the unintended effect of having the cheapest seats have some of the best views, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The only knock on them is that there isn't much room between rows, I'm glad I sat at the end of mine.

I stayed for around 2/3rds of the game in my original seat at the back of the section behind home plate, then moved down the third base line. I ended up with two foul balls, both of which ended up with kids. The atmosphere was not bad, with all the season ticket/suite types in their own little world by 1st base, the rest of the park was left for the unwashed masses. A large group of kids were led in cheers by the mascot, who otherwise kept to himself. Concessions were cheap, with good quality, but pretty bad lines, which confused me all the more considering the park had a crowd of around 3,000. I'm sure the lines for the JUCO tournament get very bad. When I went to leave, the concourse was blocked to allow the home side into their clubhouse, like in Hillsboro, which I though made way more sense than parading the visitors past the crowd.

The game went into extras and ended with one of the more anticlimactic plays in baseball, the walk-off walk. Oh well, at least I saw 9 innings.

The attendance at Suplizio puts the baby Rockies into the middle of the pack in the PBL, after being stuck in 7th, beating only Helena. The attendance is still roughly doubled from Casper, which makes the move look pretty good. I'd say the atmosphere puts this one up to an 8. It's relatively new, but it's quirky setup and interested fans give it some personality that other new parks sorely lack.  I would absolutely go back if the opportunity presented itself.

Update 2016: Not much to offer in the way of updates here. Attendance has slipped to an average of 2,100, good enough for 6th of 8 teams, but still almost twice as many as the bottom two clubs. The team was also named the best Short Season franchise in the minors by Baseball America, based on how the team is run, community involvement and so on. 

Linescore
2013-09-04
                                                      123    456     789  10  11   R H E
Ogden Raptors(LAD)                        101    051     210   0    0   11 16 1
Grand Junction Rockies(COL)           103    104     101   0    1   12 16 6
Temp: 95F   Time: 3:56   Att: 2,289