A Once-Powerful Location

Main entrance to Appalachian Power Park (down the right-field line), Jul-2005.

Seating here is in a single level.

A look down the first-base line, a view that includes the capitol dome.

Chronological Tour: Stop 294

• Location: Brooks and Lewis streets (entrance on Morris), Charleston, W.Va. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2005 as Appalachian Power Park
• Additional names: GoMart Park (2023)
• Home team: West Virginia Power, South Atlantic League (2005-19), Atlantic League (2021), Charleston Dirty Birds, Atlantic League (2022-present); University of Charleston Golden Eagles, West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
• Capacity: 4,303

Rating: 3 baseballs

The Toast Man still holds court.

The main entrance to the park is not where one expects it. Most parks have a box office near home plate, but not Appalachian Power Park. Their box office (and general offices, and the Power Alley Café) is located in a building down the right-field line, and you actually have to walk all the way around to where the right-field foul pole is in order to buy a ticket.

That wasn’t the only quirk to the park. They have a wrap-around concourse that includes a few seats from Watt Powell Park in left-center field, under the scoreboard. But when you walk down the left-field line toward the picnic area, you can’t continue straight along that concourse. You have to step down and around some little structure in order to keep going, a bit of an inconvenience (but a courtesy to those in the picnic area).

I also thought their sound system was way too loud. Sounded nice, but way too loud for my taste – I couldn’t talk to people while announcements were happening. And while there is an awning along the third-base side, basically covering the concourse, there is very little shelter from sun or rain within the seating bowl.

At least the beautiful state capitol dome is visible if you look down the first-base line. The dome was covered with a tarp for renovation when I visited in 2005, but that is hardly the park’s fault. And “Toast Man” Rod Blackstone, who is well enough known in these parts that he has served as a deputy mayor in town, is still holding court in an equivalent spot in the new park.

There had been calls to name the new team the Charleston Charlies, after the International League club of the 1970s, but when the team made a deal with Appalachian Power (the local electric utility) as a park-naming sponsor, the team became the West Virginia Power. There were plenty of plays on words throughout the park and the game; for instance, the souvenir stand was the Power Outlet.

Surprisingly, Appalachian Power Park found itself without a professional tenant at the conclusion of the year-long drama during which Major League Baseball restructured the minor leagues. The Power joined the MLB Partner independent Atlantic League and then rebranded as the Charleston Dirty Birds for 2022. That may have portended the end of sponsorship by Appalachian Power; the park is now sponsored by GoMart, a convenience store operator with more than a hundred locations in Charleston and vicinity.