The Birdcage

Entrance to Sioux Falls Stadium, Aug-2005.

The renovated seating bowl, as seen from the outfield concourse.

A look at the field from in front of the press box.

Chronological Tour: Stop 298

• Location: West Avenue at Bailey Street (south of Russell), Sioux Falls, S.D. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1964 (renovated 2000)
• Home team: Sioux Falls Packers, Northern League (1966-71); Sioux Falls Canaries, Northern League (1993-2005); Sioux Falls Canaries (2006-09, 2013-present), Pheasants (2010-12), American Association
• Capacity: 4,500 (approx.)

Rating: 2 baseballs

In 1993, Miles Wolff resurrected the Northern League as an independent loop, and Sioux Falls was tapped as an original franchise. The new club picked the nickname Canaries, a traditional moniker going back as far as 1889 and most recently used in the early 1950s for another Northern League team.

The success of the Canaries in the modern Northern League enticed the city to pour additional funds into a significant renovation of the park, complete with new seating, additional sections, and a completely new luxury suite and press box building directly behind the original stadium structure. There is space between the structures, and foul balls occasionally drop between them onto the lower concourse, which has also been improved with new concession buildings.

Fans enter the seating bowl by walking up (or using the accessible ramp) to a mid-level concourse. Box seats are below the concourse, while reserved seats are above it. The right-field line contains the Brioux Falls Beer Garden (yes, Brioux rhymes with Sioux), while they have a kid’s Fun Zone and berm seating down the left-field line. The outfield wall dimensions are quite irregular; this is a recent innovation, with an inside wall having been erected within the original stadium exterior.

The club was owned by the Goldklang Group (think St. Paul, Hudson Valley, etc.), whose motto is “Fun Is Good”. As a result, the club, which was renamed the Pheasants for three seasons, have a Director of Fun, in this case public address announcer Dan Christopherson, a local disk jockey whose claim to fame, according to his program bio, is that he “has been fired from every letter of the alphabet” during his radio career. The club is now owned by a different outfit that also owns a junior hockey team that plays in the arena across the street.

On my 2019 visit, I reduced my rating for the ballpark from three baseballs to two. I showed up for a day game, not having remembered (because my previous visits were for night games) that there is no shade in the ballpark at all until mid-afternoon, thanks largely to the orientation. The batter faces southeast here rather than the usual northeast.