Victory Field is home to the Indianapolis Indians. It is situated next to seemingly the worlds biggest Marriott, a state park and zoo and Lucas Oil Stadium, aka that stadium that Peyton Manning created (yes and home to the Colts.) So after my trip was done in Peoria, I set out for this massive city in the Midwest to go to an Indians game on this Sunday. The weather? Still cold, but considering it was in the 20's in Peoria, 45 and only a slight breeze felt summer-like in Indy. With that, I parked in the parking garage, took the three minute walk to the stadium and got to see my second Triple-A baseball park in my lifetime. As an additional point, Indianapolis is the Triple-A affiliate of the Pirates.
Victory Field upon entering is a pretty cool ballpark. There is a massive front entry to the park that is a walkway to either side of the stadium to where you walk towards the seats. This park does have two tiers of seating, the upper level and the field level. I sat on the field level and actually sat in the second row near the field. That picture on the right shows how close I was. But it is a really cool field as there are no bad sightlines in this ball park. On a given night, Indianapolis can get more than 14,000 fans in the stadium and typically do this for major events or during most weekends in the summer. On this day, there were only a couple thousand fans through the gates as the weather was still cold. But there was still plenty to be had at this ballpark.
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| Victory Field from the second row |
The food here is actually pretty good. I went chicken tenders and fries, but when the summer months hit, this park has a lot of different vendors for food and drinks. They have a party/social gathering out in the left field area when open and there are different kinds of beer they sell there as well for those beer drinkers in the crowd. But there are many different kinds of drinks here and you won't be going wrong either way. I thought the chicken and fries were quite good, but I would recommend most anything on the menu here. It is reasonably priced for a triple-A team, similar to that of the Iowa Cubs in terms of anything, from food, soda, beer and souvenirs.
The on-field action was good, as the Indians beat Columbus 5-3 on this day. The weather certainly affected the ball as it didn't get out of the ballpark on this day but it was back to the grind-it-out action baseball that made it a national recognizing sport. So these sorts of games are fun I feel. Indianapolis did a really good job with the production. The field itself in April in the brisk conditions was very good. Everything worked for them. And I was very happy with the way the staff were to me. They answered any question they could and overall made me feel good as a fan.
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| Lucas Oil Stadium |
As I left Indy for Fort Wayne, my next stop, I couldn't help but be excited that the Indians do very well for their fans at Victory Field. The ballpark itself is very cool, very wide for people to walk and everything around. They have a lot of different options for you to eat and drink and just have fun. I have only been to two Triple-A ballparks, here and Des Moines for the Iowa Cubs, and I can say that both have equal great value for their fans. If I were to just rank them, I would say probably Indy #1 and Iowa #2, but Iowa could probably get a Top 5 or 6 rating if I visited every ballpark in the Triple-A minor league system. I credit the Indians organization and they have a great ballpark for Minor League Baseball in a pretty big Major League city.
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