Former Snappers Stadium Seeing Resurgence as City Looks for New Uses

Since 2021, Beloit’s continued history as a minor league baseball town has been written not at Pohlman, but at Pohlman’s replacement, ABC Supply Stadium in downtown Beloit, the home of the Beloit Sky Carp, the high-A Midwest League Marlins affiliate.

Beloit’s parks and public works crews are now bringing new useS — and new life — to the former home of the Beloit Brewers and Beloit Snappers, built in 1981 in the middle of a circa 1970s residential neighborhood.

City of Beloit Parks and Recreation Director Matt Amundson came aboard last fall. The new director said during his interviews with the city, officials told him that future use and improved conditions at Pohlman Field should be a priority.

This spring, Amundson’s parks crew along with the Beloit School District and other city staff got to work on the old minor league field as part of a program that will annually co-op its use with a few high school, college and youth developmental league baseball programs each spring and part of the summer months.

For now, and since this spring, the field is being used under a set of lease-maintenance agreements as the permanent home field for Beloit Memorial High School’s baseball team, and for Rockford University men’s baseball program.

The field’s natural grass surface is greener and smoother than it has been in a few years, Amundson said, the lines of its tan-colored, infield dirt cutouts contrasting sharply against the deep green grass. Amundson said those are products of the city’s work this spring to attack what had been more than two years of deferred maintenance to the field’s surface and stadium.

Amundson said his crews found a field that had a playing surface as bumpy and uneven as a common sandlot. That came from lack of regular use.

“That came first. We had to roll it flat with a heavy roller for a couple days. You learn that when you’ve got a field that’s not used every day, it’ll get as bumpy and uneven as a side yard at home that you don’t use very much. It’s from some of the grass going dormant,” he said.

Amundson said he hasn’t put a dollar amount to the work at Pohlman, but he said most of it was accomplished with costs spread out among various city departments involved, including city parks staff and public works staff who helped to remove and scrap out some hulking liabilities including a rotting, 35-year-old wooden party deck built along the stadium’s right field foul line.

“If you took the wrong step, you were going through,” he said, of those stands.

The wooden outfield fence itself also needs repairs, a reality that surfaced when the city this spring removed layer after layer of giant vinyl advertisements stuck to the walls. Part of the fence has been patched with new wood, including a spot where Amundson said a collegiate ballplayer ran straight through while trying to chase down a deeply hit flyball.

Eventually, Amundson said, he’d like to see the fence totally replaced, and there are plans to make more use of the corners of the stadium alongside the outfield, possibly as areas where hitters and pitchers can warm up off the playing field.

That likely won’t ever happen to the field that Amundson said is nicknamed by some as “the teacup,” because of its relatively small size. Pohlman’s centerfield fence sits about 20 feet closer to home plate than most other professional ball diamonds.

In the past, the city had owned Pohlman Field and maintained it and the stadium and other amenities tied to it under agreements with the main users over the 38 years it operated as a minor league park. It’s still under a protective covenant that requires its use to remain unchanged.

Amundson said that means it likely would always remain a baseball playing field, even if the parts of the stadium someday are removed.

Although college and high school ball is now drawing to a close for this season, Amundson said the city has worked out a deal with Bennie Baseball Academy, a youth and teen baseball instructional league based in South Beloit that caters to some of the area’s top high school-aged baseball prospects.

He said Bennie Baseball will use the field for games “a couple of days a week,” but also might book the field to run a series of exposure camps for local prospects affiliated with the league. That would put Pohlman back in use once again as a place where young players with great skill and great potential can cut their teeth.

He said a local architecture firm is designing what the field’s office and clubhouse annex could look like in the future, although the city has not yet planned or pulled the trigger on a revamp of that space.

Amundson said he’s not sure what could happen to some of the stadium’s underused amenities, such as the main field lighting system with aging, obsolete equipment that could cost $250,000 or more to replace.

Some of the fixes at the stadium and maintenance costs shouldered this year were offset by user partnerships and by scrap value of some of the bleachers and old infrastructure the city removed.

Amundson’s not sure at what pace the city would reshape or retool some parts of Pohlman. He said it would depend partly on what kind of ongoing demand there is for a former minor league ball diamond—and what use the city can cultivate at Pohlman.

“It’s a question of what do you do with all the components at an old minor league stadium. Very few people ever get to deal with these kinds of things. It’s unique,” Amundson said. “It’ll really be on an ‘as we go’ basis, trying to figure out what we’ll do.”

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