Funko Field at Everett Memorial Stadium

• Name: Funko Field at Everett Memorial Stadium
• GPS-able Address: 3900 Broadway, Everett, WA 98201
• Ballpark Owner: Everett School District
• Architects: Unavailable
• Groundbreaking: c1997
• Minor League Baseball/Professional Development League Teams: Everett AquaSox (A+) 2021-present; Everett AquaSox (A-) 1995-2020; Everett Giants (A-) 1984-1994
• Pro Baseball Class/League History: A+/Northwest League 2022-present; A+/High-A West 2021; A-/Northwest League 1984-2020
• First Pro Baseball Game: 6/16/1998; stadium debut of Class A-Short Season AquaSox
• Others Playing or Operating Here: Everett Community College Trojans, Everett Merchants (summer collegiate)
• Previous Ballpark Names: Everett Memorial Stadium 1998-2019
• LF: 330 CF: 395 RF: 330
• Seats: 3,682
• Stated Capacity: 4,118
• House Baseball/Softball Record Attendance (as currently configured): 5,189, 7/10/2016

Funko Field at Everett Memorial Stadium in Everett, WA, is the home of the Everett AquaSox, the Seattle Mariners' High-A Northwest League farm team. Outside its left-field wall, a plaque in the pavement marks the approximate landing spot of Hall-of-Famer Ken Griffey Jr.'s first professional home run.

As easy as it is today to assume the future Mariners great was playing at home, Everett's team was then actually a San Francisco Giants affiliate and Griffey was playing for the visiting Bellingham Mariners. The 17-year-old left-handed hitter drove the pitch about 387 feet to the opposite field.

The football-baseball complex is owned by the Everett School District, which opened it for high school sports and civic events in 1947 on land donated by the local Elks Lodge to memorialize Everett's World War II dead. The original complex included a baseball field, but little more - seating was in lawn chairs and a few wooden bleachers.[1]

In 1983, Bob and Margaret Bavasi bought the Walla Walla Bears, an independent team in the NwL that until just the year before had been a farm team of Bob's father Emil "Buzzie" Bavasi's San Diego Padres. The Bavasis signed a player development contract with the San Francisco Giants and moved their club to Everett, where community leaders funded building a serviceable ballpark around Everett Memorial's baseball field. The former Bears moved in as, befitting their new affiliation, the Everett Giants. They didn't take the name AquaSox until they joined the Mariners' system in 1995.

During the 1997-1998 off-season, in a $5 million bond-funded project, the baseball side of the complex was improved to Minor League Baseball standards[2] that MLB enacted in 1990 - finally creating the professional baseball facility that exists today.

Funko Field Scoreboard in Centerfield

The ballpark, which converted to artificial turf after the 2017 baseball season, revived the Northwest League All-Star Game in 2013. Felix Hernandez's 2016 rehabilitation pitching start drew the playpen's largest baseball crowd, 5,189.

Following a 2019 field-specific naming-rights deal with pop culture product source Funko, the baseball side is separately signed from the football side. However, the ESD gets 25% of that revenue.

A major renovation, or more probably a replacement, has been necessitated by new ballpark standards MLB mandated in its 2021 Minor League Reorganization - which also took the NwL from short- to full-season baseball. The ESD-owned facility continues to host high school and other baseball, and scheduling conflicts are inevitable now that the Sox start play in April instead of June. Both the city of Everett and Snohomish County are working on finding the best place to put a new stadium - likely a multi-use venue.

The state is providing a good bit of financing. In April 2023, the Washington State Legislature approved and Gov. Jay Inslee signed a capital construction budget that includes upgrades of several Washington baseball stadiums, including $7.4 million toward an Everett solution.