Centennial Field

Walking into the University of Vermont’s Centennial Field, Jul-2002.

The grandstand dates to 1922, making it among the oldest in the nation still in use.

That’s not an optical illusion. There is plenty of foul territory here.

Chronological Tour: Stop 92

• Location: University of Vermont, East and Colchester avenues, Burlington, Vt. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1906 (grandstand built 1922)
• Home team: Burlington A’s, Provincial League (1955); Vermont Reds (1984-86), Mariners (1987-88), Eastern League; Vermont Expos (1994-2005), Lake Monsters (2006-19), New York-Penn League; University of Vermont Catamounts (1906-2009)
• Capacity: 4,000

Rating: 3 baseballs

Original UVM seat row end from 1922.

Watch for “Champ”, the Lake Monsters’ mascot. He’s named for Lake Champlain, the body of water about a mile west of the field out of which the mascot is said to have emerged just in time for the 1994 season.

Also notice the copious amount of foul territory. The park has been used as a track, among other things, so the distance from the dugout to the base line is almost as far as that from home plate to first base.

In 2009, UVM announced that it was dropping intercollegiate baseball, drawing further attention to the deteriorating conditions at Centennial Field, including substandard dugouts and clubhouses as well as a rapidly worsening playing surface. Rumors had circulated that the club might move at the end of the 2009 season, even as its owner, who runs a local trucking company, had no desire to leave Burlington. Sure enough, the Lake Monsters remain as Centennial’s main tenant.

Centennial Field received quite a few updates for the 2012 season, including a new video board, new field lighting, and a reworked playing surface. The stadium is still the same, though a new picnic pavilion has been added down the right-field line. More recently, the vast majority of the stadium seats were upgraded, though single wooden seats and classic UVM end caps remain at the end of some rows.

Despite all this, the park’s future was thrown into doubt at the end of 2020, when Major League Baseball eliminated the New York-Penn League as part of a significant restructuring of the minors for the 2021 season.