Pat Thomas Stadium-Buddy Lowe Field, Leesburg, Fla.

Venetian Gardens

Home plate approach to Pat Thomas Stadium, May-2020.

The stadium seating. There are no seats down the first-base line.

Lake Harris is barely visible through the trees beyond right field.

Quick Facts:

Location: Venetian Gardens at Dixie Avenue (SR 44), Leesburg, Fla. (map it using Google Maps)
Opened: 1937 as The Ballpark at Venetian Gardens (expanded 1940)
Additional names: Pat Thomas Stadium (1972), Buddy Lowe Field (2003)
Home team: Leesburg Gondoliers (1937-38), Anglers (1939-46), Pirates (1947-48), Dodgers (1949), Packers (1950-52), Braves (1956-57), Orioles (1960-61), A’s (1965-68), Florida State League; Lake County Black Bears, Florida Winter Baseball League (2009); spring training: Rochester Red Wings (1937); Philadelphia Phillies minor leagues (1946-66)
Capacity: 2,000 (approx.)

Venetian Gardens is a park on the shores of a cove of Lake Harris, the largest lake entirely within the appropriately named Lake County. (The larger Lake Apopka is mostly within Orange County.) In 1937, the city of Leesburg built a ballpark on the east end of Venetian Gardens and outfitted it with lights, reportedly the first ballpark in Florida to do so. This made it attractive to the Florida State League, and over the next three decades several of their clubs came in and used the facility. It also served as the separate minor league training facility for the Phillies until they consolidated operations in Clearwater, a hundred miles to the southwest.

Pat Thomas, the stadium honoree, was the Leesburg city manager for over a decade and championed the ballpark’s continued use by professional teams throughout his tenure. The field is dedicted to Buddy Lowe, who coached Leesburg High School, which continues to use the field along with the Leesburg Lightning, a college summer league team. The park also saw several weeks of use in the winter of 2009, as the home of a club in the extremely short-lived Florida Winter Baseball League. Lake-Sumter Community College (now Lake-Sumter State College) also used the field for many years until moving to their own on-campus facility.

Game	Date	Conference	Level	Result
70	Mon 28-Jun-2021	Florida Collegiate	College Summer	LEESBURG 4, Sanford 2
78	Sun 1-Aug-2021	Florida Collegiate	College Summer	LEESBURG 9, Winter Park 1, 7 inn
99	Sat 29-Jul-2023	Florida Collegiate	College Summer	LEESBURG 5, Winter Garden 4

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