Maimonides Park

• Name: Maimonides Park
• GPS-able Address: 1904 Surf Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11224
• Ballpark Owner: City of New York
• Architects: Jack L. Gordon Architects
• Groundbreaking: 8/22/2000
• Minor League Baseball/Professional Development League Teams: Brooklyn Cyclones (A+) 2021-present; Brooklyn Cyclones (A-) 2001-2020
• Pro Baseball Class/League History: A+/South Atlantic League 2022-present; A+/High-A East 2021; A-/New York-Pennsylvania League 2001-2020
• First Pro Baseball Game: 6/25/2001; stadium debut of Class A-Short Season Cyclones
• Others Playing or Operating Here: New York University Violets (baseball)
• Previous Ballpark Names: MCU Park 2010-2021; KeySpan Park 2001-2009
• LF: 315 CF: 412 RF: 325
• Seats: 6,278
• Stated Capacity: 7,000
• House Baseball/Softball Record Attendance (as currently configured): 10,073, 9/7/2007

Maimonides Park in Brooklyn, NY, is the home of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the New York Mets' High-A South Atlantic League farm team. It was also the Mets' 2020 and 2021 Coronavirus pandemic alternate training site.

Opened as KeySpan Park in 2001, it would become the first stadium hosting a short-season team ever to draw 4 million to one venue.

After KeySpan Energy was sold, Municipal Credit Union bought the ballpark's naming rights and dubbed it MCU Park in 2010. When MCU didn't renew, Maimonides Medical Center took over in 2021. The medical center in turn derives its name from a Jewish rabbi, theologian and philosopher from the Middle Ages. The current naming contract has become a point in a class-action lawsuit that accuses Maimonides leadership of mismanagement and includes the naming contract on its list of alleged "decadent marketing strategies" that threaten the hospital's finances. Hospital management has denied any wrongdoing.[1]

Two new New York City teams in two new New York City stadiums was not a coincidence but a compromise. The Mets and New York Yankees both wanted nearby farm teams but each vetoed the other's every effort to bring one in. In 1998, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani offered each MLB club a new farm-size stadium in exchange for one withheld veto. Each opened in 2001 for a transferring New York-Pennsylvania League team. The Mets bought the St. Catharines Stompers, built a ballpark at St. John's University, played 2000 there as the Queens Kings, and donated the playpen to SJU. The Yankees placed their team on Staten Island, playing in an existing college stadium during the interim season.

MLB's 2021 Minor League Reorganization raised the 'Clones and two other NYPL teams three levels while eliminating the Staten Island Yankees and the rest of the circuit from Organized Baseball.

Despite suffering the most Hurricane Sandy damage of any stadium in affiliated baseball, MCU was ready for its 2013 home opener - but the game was, ironically, rained out.

The ballpark appears in the movie Bottom of the 9th (2019). It features, on its outside concourse, a life-sized sculpture of Pee Wee Reese wrapping his arm around teammate Jackie Robinson. It recreates a famous moment during Robinson's historic rookie season, in which he broke MLB's 57-year-old color line with the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers.