"America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: It's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again."
-- Terence Mann, Field of Dreams
North Little Rock's Dickey-Stephens Park, the Arkansas Travelers' home since 2007, is mostly empty on a brilliant and clear Monday morning in late March, but there is work being done.
While Travs players are honing their skills at an Arizona training camp, concrete is being pressure washed and front office employees are at their desks, tending to behind-the-scenes minutiae in advance of the coming campaign -- 140 games in 151 days, with 70 of those matchups in this park.
"It's cram time," says Greg Johnston, the 52-year-old park superintendent who has worked for the Travelers since he was 11 years old, taking parking passes at the reserved lot at the old Ray Winder Field in Little Rock. "These two weeks right now are the worst two weeks of the year. Everything's got to be done at a certain time, and it all falls in the last two weeks."
Johnston -- in his 26th year as park superintendent -- and his full-time crew of nine are working steadily to have the field and what surrounds it in perfect condition for the first pitch at 7:10 p.m. on Thursday as the Travs, the Texas League AA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, open the season against the Corpus Christi Hooks. That means not only trimming and caring for the special Tifway 419 Bermuda grass on the field, but also making sure the attractions in the children's play area beyond right field are up to par and everything else in the stadium is in working order.
"We've got inspections going on at our bouncy houses, we're verti-cutting the whole ball field, adding clay to the infield, adding the warning track material and getting it all leveled off, checking the measurements on our mound and home plate and making sure the specs are all right ..." Johnston says. "It's go, go, go. Everything's got to be done."
...
The park came to be after North Little Rock voters in 2005 approved a temporary 1 percent sales tax that raised money to build the stadium on ground donated by businessman Warren Stephens, chief executive officer of Stephens, Inc. The total cost for the project, which began with a groundbreaking ceremony on Nov. 30, 2005, was $40.4 million.
The park is named for Stephens and his brother, Jackson T. Stephens, along with Bill Dickey and George Dickey, brothers from Kensett who were major leaguers (Bill, who played for the Yankees, is a Hall of Famer). The first game, against the Frisco Roughriders, was played on April 12, 2007, before 7,943 fans (alas, the Travs lost, 6-5).
There are 5,800 fixed seats in Dickey-Stephens, with more seating available on grass berms overlooking the outfield. The stadium also has 24 luxury suites and a striking view of the Little Rock skyline across the Arkansas River.
"There's not a bad seat in the house," says Travelers General Manager Paul Allen. "You walk in and you're on the concourse level where you can see everything. It feels so intimate because you're so close to the action."
Allen, a 36-year-old Las Vegas native, came to the Travs organization as an intern in 2005, the second-to-last year the club played at venerable Ray Winder.
"It was a unique stadium," he says. "It had that classic, historic feel. Concrete dugouts. A lot of things happened there."
It also had its quirks.
"If you were standing at home plate and you looked at the right fielder, you would basically see him from the knees up," Allen says, because the field had developed a fairly pronounced slope.
"There's no comparison," Johnston says of the two parks. "At Ray Winder, if we had a problem, it was $100 to fix it. Here, it's $1,000. At Ray Winder, we had four or five air conditioning units, here we have 50."
"I kind of miss it," says Travs season ticket holder and baseball super-fan David Sosnoski of Little Rock. "I have a lot of good memories from Ray Winder. It had the look and the smell of an old ballpark. But there was just no way to refurbish it and modernize it."
...
The fan experience at Dickey-Stephens is much like at any ballpark. Hot dogs, freshly made corn dogs and cold beer are popular, of course, as are funnel cakes and other tasty treats. For porkophiles, there's a bacon station that serves Petit Jean bacon in a cup along with BLTs.
New this year is a hot dog bar, where hungry fans can construct their own frank-in-a-bun combo, with an interesting twist from the great Northwest.
"Because of our affiliation with the Mariners, I wanted to incorporate Seattle-based foods," Allen says. "There's a thing called a Seattle Dog, with grilled onions and cream cheese on a grilled bun. That's going to be an option."
Pizza vendor Mama DeLuca's is also new this season.
There have been two full-service restaurants at Dickey-Stephens -- Bill Valentine's Ballpark Restaurant, named for the longtime Travs executive, and a sports bar called Umps. When Umps closed, management took advantage of the vacant space to expand the park's offices and retail shop, Allen says.
Fans curious about Travelers history can peruse the museum, located on the concourse, where photos, trophies, memorabilia and other ephemera are on display.
And, as this is the minor leagues, wacky promotions like Clunker Boat Night (June 8), Clunker Car Night (Aug. 24) and Midget Wrestling (Aug. 12) are part of the milieu. Mascots Ace the stallion and Otey the swamp possum (named for North Little Rock native, former Traveler and longtime Ray Winder park superintendent R.C. Otey) will also be on hand to entertain the crowd.
...
Drew Heid, 29, played outfield for the Travs 2012-2014 and said there were a few quirks to Dickey-Stephens stadium that makes it unique for players and coaches.
"I've never been to a park like Dickey-Stephens that had so many entrances to the field for players," says the Washington state native, who is retired now and hopes to continue in baseball as a coach. "It was really nice because it made it convenient. A lot of times, workers would be using the same tunnels, but we could work around them by using a different entrance."
The stadium's view is unique among Texas League stadiums, Heid says. The grass? Not so much, at least not when he played.
"The way the field looked, the way it overlooked the city, that was really cool. The turf, though, was maybe just average compared to other fields."
The clay on the base paths, however, "was really good. It got bad if it rained because it got sticky, but other than that it was great to slide on and if it wasn't raining, I got really good traction on it."
Heid, who lives in Little Rock, still makes it to games every now and then, though now he's in the bleachers and watching as a coach would.
"I critique things. It brings back the old days," he says. "The fans are great and really nice. They always cheer on the Travs and that's great to see."
...
Since the park's debut season, 3,303,544 people have come out to watch the Travs play, according to Allen.
For the 54-year-old Sosnoski, who attends with his wife and two sons and isn't shy about heckling players, the stadium is almost home away from home.
"Last year I probably missed six games," he says. "It's a family thing, going to the ballpark. I'm a big baseball fan, but it's also a huge social event."
Sosnoski, who grew up in Pennsylvania following the Phillies, says his favorite seats are in Section 104, Row A: "Seats 10-13. I'm right between the Travelers dugout and the beer garden, not that I'm a big drinker, but it's where everything happens."
A professional baseball game is a place where foul balls regularly come screaming off of bats at more than 100 mph, and where bats can slip from players' grip and go cartwheeling into the stands. A park can be a dangerous place.
On July 22, 2007, during Dickey-Stephens' inaugural season, Tulsa Drillers first base coach Mike Coolbaugh died after being struck in the neck by a line drive as he was standing in the first base coach's box.
"It was a horrific, freak accident," Allen says. As a result, Minor League Baseball required all coaches on the field to wear batting helmets.
"Would wearing a batting helmet have saved Mike? No," Allen says. "Would it save someone in the future? Probably."
In the crowd, fans preoccupied with technology can also be in harm's way.
"You look around and see a lot of people with their heads down, looking at their phone or tablet, or taking selfies," Allen says of a typical crowd.
Sosnoski says he's not shy about telling those around him to keep an eye on the game.
"I warn people around me, 'Hey, pay attention. Baseballs come through here pretty hot.' Some people listen, some people don't."
Just a moment of inattention can lead to serious injury, so Major League Baseball has required stadiums to provide netting to protect everyone 70 feet or fewer from home plate. For the new season, Dickey-Stephens has done even more extending backstop nets to another 70 feet on each side of home plate at a cost of about $34,000.
"We took it as an opportunity to invest in fan safety," Allen says. The new netting is made of a product called Dyneema and, though strong, is also thin and easy to see through. "It's a Kevlar-type material that can take a good hit and still flexes."
...
There has been some flexing of the Dickey-Stephens field on a couple of occasions in the form of sinkholes.
In 2008, a sinkhole appeared in the outfield and was repaired, but by December 2015, with the nearby Arkansas River at historically high levels, the sinkholes returned, again in the outfield.
"The city did a great job of rehabilitating those over the 2015-2016 offseason," Allen says.
Johnston says, "I don't think we're going to have any problems."
Soon, cram time will become game time and the rhythms of the baseball season will overtake Dickey-Stephens and its staff. Fans will arrive on lazy, muggy summer evenings to watch players chase their dreams on this cozy field next to the river as the smell of corn dogs, funnel cakes and bacon waft across the air.
Allen and his staff, along with a small army of part-time workers, will practically live at the park on game days, while Johnston and his team will mow and water and spread sand and clay and fix whatever needs fixing in this young stadium.
"I don't want to sound weird, but when I go to the park, it's like an extension of my family," Sosnoski says. "You can tell that they all really like what they do and that's really special."
Style on 04/04/2017
Arkansas Travelers
Single game tickets: Box seats, $12; Reserved, $8 adults, $5 children 4-14; Outfield berms, $6 adults, $4 children 4-14; “Hookslide Corner” and bleachers (smoking allowed), $6
Season Tickets: Box seats, three years (2017-2019), $400; one year (2017), $550; Reserved seats, three years (2017-2019), $300; one year (2017) $450
(501) 664-7559
travs.com
John Sjokeck, director of stadium operations, hoses down the pitcher’s mount at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.
Brenda Meeks stocks Arkansas Travelers caps in the team shop at Dickey-Stephens Park.
Fans gather at the beer garden in Dickey-Stephens Park.Arkansas Democrat-Gazette file photo
Otey the Swamp Possum, one of the Travelers’ mascots, greets fans at the park.
The museum at the park has lots of items that tell the history of the Arkansas Travelers.