I said after my City of Louisville post, I would put the Louisville Bats stadium up for the next post. The stadium is Louisville Slugger Field. As I said in the prior, Against the Grain Brewery and Smokehouse is attached to the stadium. So exiting a door and going to the stadium was easy. If you don't through through the Brewery, there's just a ton of parking nearby the stadium and near the Lakefront park so it's easy to go to. Outside the stadium, there is a cool statue of Paul Hornung, Green Bay's Golden Boy of the Lombardi era. Upon entering the stadium, you are greeted with a 360 degree concourse and either a lot of sun or shade in the ballpark. Fortunately for me, I was greeted in my seat with the sun. However, besides the heat and the sun, there is a lot to like about the park.
First off, there are a ton of options for food, drinks, merchandise and to see in the stadium. The food and drinks are affordable, and personally I would recommend the lemonade for this particular ball park. The merchandise in the team store is abundant and it's mainly affordable. In there, on a hot day you can cool off in the air conditioning while seeing the Reds play. Louisville is a heavy Reds city, being a Triple-A affiliate of the Reds and the town is full of Reds fans. The drinks of soda, water, beer are all affordable as well, though obviously don't drink and drive everyone!
The stadium itself has a lot to offer and is a premier Triple-A park in the world of Minor League Baseball. For kids, there are some games down the left field line to play, there is some open area in right field also to play for kids. For adults to get out of the sun, there are some good areas to get out of the sun with some shaded patios or by going through the concourse with the shade. The ballpark does well for this as well. Louisville Slugger Field is a very wide ballpark as well, and it is good with the fact that a lot of people attend this ballpark. There is ample space to move about and do just about anything you'd like. The only major downsides I feel to the stadium is the fact they don't have an ATM inside the ballpark itself. This can be troublesome if you don't get your ticket acknowledged by a staff member. This nearly happened to me before the guy let me back in. The other downside is at least on this night, the staff was under stocked on items. This happened at least at two vendors and it left some fans displeased through the course of the night. The concourses around the ballpark before going in are pretty neat as they feature players of yesteryear playing in Louisville as part of the organizations that have played in Louisville.
All in all, I would give Louisville Slugger Park a decent grade though. I don't think it reaches the height of Indianapolis, but it is better than Principal Park in Des Moines (as the only Triple-A parks I have seen a game in.) There are some knocks to it, but overall I believe they do a very solid job all around to see a game and buy merchandise from. I would definitely recommend this ballpark to Minor League Baseball goers.
