|
Franklin Rogers
Park / Mankato MoonDogs
Franklin Rogers Park is one of those older ballparks you can find scattered across the United States: too small to house a minor-league baseball team but large enough to attract the attention of entrepreneurs looking to bring in a summer collegiate team. Such is the case with Franklin Rogers Park, home of the Mankato MoonDogs. Even though Franklin Rogers Park has been around for thirty or forty years (no one could give me an exact age, but one fortysomething spectator told me he played ball there as a high schooler, and it was old then), the park's been renovated several times during the past seven years, so there's very little to Franklin Rogers Park that's really old. It's not especially distinctive in any way, but it is a comfortable place to watch a ballgame. And intimate. We have no idea what the capacity of the park is anymore; at one point it was 1,100, but over the last several years the MoonDogs have added seating here and there as well as a party deck over the right-field concession stand. The grandstand has two sections, with five rows of backed seating followed by nine rows of bleachers. (The backed seating, by the way, was moved from Milwaukee's County Stadium before it was razed.) There are also some picnic tables down the first-base line and a spacious party patio down the third-base line, and there were also some folks who just wandered in the open areas beside the grandstand.
New in 2006: upgraded lighting. Franklin Rogers Park was a dangerous place for outfielders straining to find the ball during the late innings of night games, but the new lighting improves this situation immensely.
History
Concessions Sadly, the beer selection is limited to Bud, Bud Light and Michelob Golden -- but at $3 a glass, we're not complaining too much. Parking For the Kids For younger kids, there's a playground directly to the west of the ballpark. You can't see the game action from there when you bring the kids out, but you can easily follow the action and you have a pretty good chance of claiming a foul ball. Before/After the
Game Downtown Mankato also features a fair number of watering holes, both in the Old Town area and in the region of the Civic Center, where you can find Buffalo Wild Wings and Finnegan's Pub (520 S. Front St.), where wood-fired pizza is the specialty. Farther east on Madison Avenue is the River Hills Mall (which is nothing really remarkable, unless you like hanging out at JC Penny's) and a Barnes and Noble bookstore. Older Photos
|
|