Wade Municipal Stadium

Wade Municipal Stadium is a ballpark located in Duluth, MN and known to locals as The Wade.

It was built as a Works Progress Administration project in 1941. With a two-year interruption during World War II, it served as the home of the Duluth Dukes of the Northern League starting that year until 1970, including the team's later incarnations as the Duluth-Superior White Sox and the Duluth-Superior Dukes. However, the franchise folded after the 1970 season (soon followed by the entire league a year later), and the ballpark was left empty as the northern Midwest was left devoid of minor league baseball for the next couple of decades. The park was also used by three teams in the short-lived Twin Ports League in 1943.

The ballpark, which was threatened by demolition, underwent a renovation in the early 1990s as the Dukes were reborn in the now independent Northern League. The team played there until 2002, when they moved to Kansas City, KS to become the Kansas City T-Bones. It has since been used for college baseball by the College of St. Scholastica and by a summer collegiate baseball team in the Northwoods League, the Duluth Huskies.

The ballpark's capacity in 4,200. It was built of bricks removed from nearby roadways that were being asphalted and that were recycled into building materials. It is a park favorable to pitchers due to long distances down the foul lines (although center field is relatively close) and because of cold winds blowing in from nearby Lake Superior.

Related Sites

• Wade Stadium (Duluth) at the SABR Bio Project