New Britain Stadium

New Britain Stadium in New Britain, CT, was the home of New Britain affiliated baseball from 1996 through 2015. After that, the New Britain Rock Cats of the Eastern League moved to nearby Hartford - which announced in late 2014 that it would build a new downtown ballpark - as the Hartford Yard Goats.

The Minnesota Twins promptly dropped the Cats, who joined the Colorado Rockies. Their last Friday game drew a stadium record 8,672.

The departed Cats' territorial rights keep the ballpart from hosting an affiliated team, but the presence of the independent New Britain Bees of the Atlantic League - and hard feelings - kept them from being a temporary solution when construction problems pushed the Hartford opening to 2017. Following the cancelled 2020 season, the Bees left the Atlantic League, becoming a summer collegiate team in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League.

New Britain built the ballpark to keep the club it had attracted from Bristol, CT, in 1983. Beehive Stadium opened that year and hosted the team's first 13 seasons, but it was not up to standards MLB enacted in 1990 for its farm teams' ballparks. The two stadiums stand next to each other in Willowbrook Park.

The franchise's 1973 move to Bristol marked its seventh city in 19 years; the next 43 saw just two cities, three stadiums, two parent clubs and two nicknames.