Chronological Tour: Stop 220

The Hangar

Main entrance to Ripken Stadium, Jul-2002.

The seating bowl, from the third-base line.

Some fans can watch the game from a café directly behind the plate.

• Location: Off MD 22 at I-95 exit 85, Aberdeen, Md. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2002
• Home team: Aberdeen IronBirds, New York-Penn League (2002-present)
• Capacity: 6,000

Rating: 3 baseballs

This new yard is the first part of a baseball complex being built by former Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken Jr. in his home town of Aberdeen, Md. The complex, which also hosts youth baseball camps and tournaments, features miniature parks designed to be reminiscent of various major-league facilities. Predictably, Ripken Stadium has a few touches that remind fans of Camden Yards.

It’s a one-deck facility with a center concourse dividing box seats from reserved seats. Sky boxes sit above the concession concourse, along with the press box, but there is also a concourse obstruction, consisting of a special concession stand for the Café area directly behind home plate. As is common with new parks, there are also a few party decks, and there is a small grass berm down the left-field line.

There is essentially only one way in and out of the park, making access and especially egress difficult. Offsetting that inconvenience is the fact that parking is free. While there is no lineup or standing board, each patron receives a 24-page half-size program, also free, that includes the standings, rosters, and statistics. Impressively, this is produced anew each day. (As of 2022, there is a lineup board on the concourse, but the game day program has gone digital.)

So what’s an IronBird? With the Aberdeen Proving Ground nearby, the club designed a logo featuring a fighter jet with the number 8 on the tail, the number Ripken wore when he set baseball’s iron-man record (2632 consecutive games played) with the Birds in Baltimore.