Where Fun Is Good

As of Aug-1998, you know you’re looking at fun the moment you show up.

Sunset at Midway, Aug-2010.

From the main grandstand, the view is of the train tracks and industrial district.

• Location: Energy Park Drive (off North Snelling Avenue), St. Paul, Minn.
• Opened: 1982 as Municipal Stadium
• Home team: St. Paul Saints, Northern League (1993-2005), American Association (2006-present)
• Capacity: 6,329

Chronological Tour: Stop 140

Rating: 3 baseballs

Midway Stadium is an older park sandwiched midway between active train yards. Actually, the name comes from the original Midway Stadium, where the St. Paul Saints played from 1957-60 prior to the relocation of the Washington Senators to nearby Bloomington as the Minnesota Twins.

Stadium seating isn’t the most comfortable in the world. Additional bleacher seating has been provided along both base lines, and a post-up out-of-town scoreboard stands in right field, complementing the electric scoreboard in left.

The stadium staff and the public address announcer work hard (too hard?) to make everything fun, going so far as to berate patrons who insist on not removing their ties after work. And every time a train passes by on the track running past left field, the announcer is obligated to say the word “Train”. The old message board (in 1998) then displayed “Choo choo ... choo choo”; this is no longer the case with the modern message center.

There’s a wacky promotion every night; the night I visited, in August 1998, was Backwards Night, on which the St. Paul players wore special backwards jerseys (number on the front, logo and buttons on the back) and the announcer gave many of his announcements in reverse word order. But it’s all in the spirit of fun, and it keeps people flocking to the park, which they've continued to do even though the Twins have a new ballpark 11 miles away in Minneapolis.