Valley Strong Ballpark
Visalia, CA
Review by Mike
Where do I even begin? Valley Strong Ballpark, formerly Recreation Ballpark, home of the Low-A Visalia Rawhide of the California League, is quite simply one of the most singular baseball stadiums I have ever seen. Having been inside over 250 ballparks, this is saying something. It’s really small but jam-packed with absolutely everything that they could think of, stretched to the point of bursting. It’s 100 pounds of ballpark in a 50-pound bag.
Let’s begin at the beginning, back in 1946 when the park was first built. The main, and presumably original, grandstand is a steeply pitched affair with individual fixed-back seats that just about covers the area around home plate, extending not even halfway to the bases. With the incline and extreme closeness to fair territory, the players must feel like specimens playing under a microscope.
However, the proximity and pitch are not the most unusual thing about this stand. It is not so much as built from concrete, but rather it is built ON TOP of concrete. That’s right, a giant blob of concrete was poured, and the stands attached to it. It’s like a 3-sided pyramid with no top. I don’t even know how to describe it. You’ll need to look at the pictures.
Sitting at the very top of the grandstand, where the concrete falls away to the front and back, are perched a series of “suites”, which are really just groups of seats with a counter that are separated from the main seats by some plywood walls and a nice little roof. The tiny press box sits top and center, so close to the field that the batter knows if the play-by-play man is eating nachos.
There is, however, so much more than just this odd, 80ish-year-old grandstand, that I’ll just start in one corner and work my way around. The Toyota Terrace is a place where you can sit at tables and watch the game THROUGH the right field fence, protected by a metal roof. In the deep right field corner is a grass berm that wraps around the foul pole. Above that, and along the right-field line is a long building and walkway, about a dozen feet above the playing surface that contains the gift shop, bathrooms and concessions.
As we move towards home plate, you can go down some stairs to field level, where you’ll find half a dozen rows of seats that run along the 1st base line, but because of the angle of the seats and the screen, it’s really hard to see home plate from here. If you stay topside, you reach a large clubhouse/restaurant with a few rows of seats in front. Everything on this side is really crowded, packed with people on narrow walkways. Plaques for each member of the Visalia Hall of Fame are found along the lower walkway.
When you reach the gap between the right field ammenities and the main stand, hang a left to walk around the back of Concrete Mountain and here you’ll find a little solitude, some picnic tables (from which you can’t see anything but the road), and a few food carts that don’t have massive lines. I got a lovely Boba drink during my stroll around the mountain.
Emerging along the left field line we find more… stuff. First, we find the logos of previous affiliates to play in Visalia painted on the rounded end of Concrete Mountain. These are not professional paintings, but they are cool and randomly arranged as though people were just given brushes and paint cans and told to have at it! The result is chaotic and fun.
Keep going and you’ll find more open-air concessions and a covered bar called the Equity Saloon, done up to resemble an Old West town, like a fake movie set on the exterior. A large, covered picnic area for parties and events completes the journey to the left field corner. The scoreboard is snazzy and modern and the crowd was big and lively.
Valley Strong Ballpark felt as much like a carnival as a baseball game, with so much to see in such a small space, like an entire Midway crammed into the parking lot of a Dollar Tree. I don’t know if I’d want this to be my home ballpark, it would be exhausting, but for a tired traveler after a long day of driving, it was an exhilirating experience I won’t soon forget.
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2024
257
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