Simmons Field is a baseball stadium in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It is the field of Comet Kenosha's home of the All-American Professional All-American Baseball League (AAGPBL).
Video Simmons Field
History
Simmons Field opened at Kenosha in 1920 as a field for the Simmons Bedding Company baseball team. The original capacity of the stadium is 7,000. This park allows the growth of the company Simmons Bedmakers team and provides a suitable baseball city competition where it takes place.
The concrete grandstand was rebuilt in 1930. By then, however, the city's baseball team had begun to decline despite the Midwest League championship for the Bedmakers in 1924.
In 1947, Simmons Company sold the field and the city made it available the following year for use by the city's professional female baseball team, Kenosha Comet. Comet, the All-American Women's All-American Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), has been playing at Kenosha at the Lakefront Stadium since the league was founded in 1943. The team played at Simmons Field from 1948 until his final season in 1951. AAGPBL folded the next three seasons.
Over the next few decades, Simmons Field is used by minor leagues, amateur leagues and for exhibition matches. Warren Spahn, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige pitched there. The Kenosha Pirates, the local semi-pro team, also played at Simmons Field during this era. But the stadium fell into collapse without the main tenant.
Then in 1984, the original Kenosha and former minor league pitcher Bob Lee changed the old place when he bought the Minnesota Twins Single-A Midwest League affiliate and moved the team to Simmons Field. This step provides an increase of approximately $ 350,000 to the field, including new clubhouse, new ground excavations, new wooden fences, new electronic scoreboard, concession facilities, and aluminum benches along the third pedestal line.
Kenosha Twins has been playing at Simmons Field for nine years, winning two Midwest League championships and producing over a dozen major league players, including four players on the 1991 Twins World Championship team in 1991. The World Championship team includes the American League Rookie of the Year Chuck Knoblauch and long Kenosha resident and former baseball head trainer of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Jarvis Brown, who played for Kenosha Twins in 1987 and 1988. Current head coach Carthage College college Augie Schmidt also played in Simmons for the Twins in 1986, before retiring from baseball professional.
In July 1991, Chicago Cubs legend Rick Sutcliffe recorded nine innings in an injury rehab for Peoria Chiefs against the Twins at Simmons Field. The 4,387 crowd attended the match, producing the biggest crowd of Bob Lee's era in Simmons. However, the decline in overall attendance and higher standards for small league baseball facilities forced Lee to sell the team after the 1991 season. New ownership moved the team to Fort Wayne, Indiana after the 1992 season.
The Kenosha Kings, the local semi-pro team, also took up residence at Simmons Field in 1984. Kings currently compete in the Wisconsin State League and win the league championship in 2006. The Kings are in their 25th consecutive season at the stadium, the longest running of any team during the history of the baseball stadium.
During the 1990s, Simmons Field was home to an amateur team of high school and college talents, as well as Kings. The locally-run Kenosha Chiefs semi-pro team was also the main tenant of the stadium in 1993, and Kenosha Kroakers of the summer league Northwoods league called Simmons 1994-1999 home.
In June 1998, Green Bay Packers players also appeared on Simmons Field for a charity softball game that also attracted thousands of fans. And in August 1999, pop chart-topping group 'N Sync also played a charity softball game in Simmons in front of about 2,800 fans.
In 2000, AAGPBL players returned to Simmons Field for a reunion and dozens of former players devoted plaques to commemorate AAGPBL's time at Kenosha.
Simmons Field was home to professional baseball once again in 2003 when the Dubois County Dragons of the Independent Border League moved on and became Kenosha Mammoth. However, Mammoth failed to attract a large crowd and the team moved again after a season at Kenosha.
In 2007, Kenosha Park Department rented Simmons Field to Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD). Since then KUSD leased the field to the Kenosha Simmons Baseball Organization (KSBO), a nonprofit group that works to improve and restore the stadium. Early improvements include a rebuilt infield, completed in the fall of 2007, and a new electronic scoreboard behind the left field.
In July 2008, the Prince Putra Senior Baseball League (MSBL) of Kenosha organized the Women's Classic Hall of Fame in 2008. The event hosted a large contingent of AAGPBL players in Simmons Field rededication to women's baseball. This event gives the best women's baseball player in the country a chance to try a position in the US team competing at the 2008 World Cup in Japan. The event concludes with a five-team international women's baseball tournament featuring Australian Hearts, Chicago Pioneers, Pride Nashua, New England Red Sox and Washington Stars. The tournament was won by Aussie Hearts coached by the original Kenosha Rob Novotny.
Maps Simmons Field
Current use
Simmons Field is the home of Kenosha Kingfish, who played their first season in the summer of 2014. The Kingfish Kenosha is one of 18 teams in the Northwoods League, a college minor league, summer league of college baseball players from across the nation. The Kingfish Administration renovated Historic Simmons Field in 2013. The newly renovated stadium has more than 2,100 seats, obtained from Camden Yards, containing two Home Plate Suites, a party deck, and a common lawn seating area.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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