Hank Aaron Stadium

Hank Aaron Stadium in Mobile, AL, was the home of Mobile affiliated baseball from 1997 through 2019. In 2021, after losing the 2020 season to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Mobile BayBears of the Southern League began playing in a new ballpark in Madison, AL, as the Rocket City Trash Pandas.

Madison is a suburb of Huntsville, which lost its Minor League Baseball team after the 2014 season. Its new ballpark was actually ready in plenty of time for its planned 2020 debut.

Nearly two decades before, "The Hank" finally gave the former Charlotte Knights a new home: Bumped by Triple-A expansion and blocked from New Orleans, LA, by another Triple-A move, the franchise had shared the Nashville Sounds' home in 1993 and 1994 as the Nashville Xpress and played 1995 and 1996 at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington as the Port City Roosters.

The BayBears drew more than 300,000 in their first season, but never again - eventually falling under 70,000, which is well beyond the normal novelty-wears-off drop.

Aaron's boyhood home was moved to The Hank in 2008 and repurposed into an in-park museum two years later. Outside, Satchel Paige Drive salutes another Mobile great. (The two greats faced each other once, in a 1968 Atlanta-Richmond exhibition game; Aaron lined Paige's 0-1 pitch softly to third.)

Shortly after Mobile voided its lease on the stadium, Aaron's family called for the home to be moved again, to somewhere it would be visited. The city said in April it would move it to James Seals Park near the Mobile Civic Center. A spokseman said the city hopes to have the move completed by July but that it may not be the structure's last move.[1] Apparently, the Seals move was skipped, as the Mobile Mayor's Office said June 20th that the city will instead move it back to its original Toulinville neighborhood - subject to Mobile City Council approval that could come a searly as June 27th.[2]

The city is still working on its proposed Hall of Fame Courtyard. The concept, which was announced in January 2021 with plans revealed in March 2022, would salute Mobile's remarkable professional baseball heritage: Despite its size, Mobile is either the native or boyhood city of five Hall of Famers: Paige, elected in 1971; Aaron, 1982; Willie McCovey, 1986; Billy Williams, 1987; and Ozzie Smith, 2002. Only New York and Los Angeles have more, and columnist George Will points out that means Mobile is #1 per capita.[3]