Mike Lansing Field

Main entrance to Mike Lansing Field, Aug-2002.

Looking at the seating bowl from the picnic area down the third-base line.

The most exciting view here is of the city event center atop the hill.

Chronological Tour: Stop 224

• Location: Crossroads Park, North Poplar Street, Casper, Wyo.
• Opened: 2002
• Home team: Casper Rockies (2002-07), Ghosts (2008-11), Pioneer League
• Capacity: 2,500

Rating: 1 baseball

For 2002, the team moved into this new facility with practically no character of its own. There are three rows of stadium seats on concrete for the box seat area, but the rest of the park consists of aluminum bleachers.

The park is large, owing in part to Casper’s altitude of nearly a mile. In the game I saw, five triples were hit.

Owing largely to its small size as a market, the experiment in Casper lasted just ten seasons, with the team announcing at the end of the 2011 season that it was relocating to an existing park in Grand Junction, Colo., for 2012.

One of the more interesting characters here was the mascot, Hobart the Purpleus Platypus. He’s called Hobart because Hobart is the capital of Tasmania, where most platypuses (platypi?) are found. And why did they choose a platypus? Because Casper is on the North Platte River.