MacKenzie Stadium

The seating at MacKenzie Stadium, Jul-2005.

The view from behind the plate.

• Location: Holyoke High School, Cherry Street (US 202) and Northampton Street, Holyoke, Mass.
• Opened: Unknown
• Home team: Holyoke Millers, Eastern League (1977-82); Nashua Angels, Eastern League (one game in 1983); Pittsfield Mets, New York-Penn League (one game in 1997, one game in 1998)
• Capacity: 3,000 (2005 est.)

Despite the presence of a cinder running track through the outfield, the stadium acquired a Double-A team for six years, a club that was relocated from Wahconah Park fifty miles to the west in Pittsfield. The Holyoke Millers lasted for six years before being sold and relocated to Nashua, N.H., where they stayed for four years before moving on to Harrisburg, Pa., where the franchise remains.

The Nashua Angels did play a single game at MacKenzie, in 1983. Then, in early July in both 1997 and 1998, the Pittsfield Mets crossed the Berkshires to play one game each season at MacKenzie Stadium, evoking the 1977 franchise shift. (In each of those seasons, they also traveled to Shea Stadium to play the first half of a doubleheader, with the New York Mets providing the nightcap.)

In 2004, MacKenzie Stadium became the home of the Holyoke Giants, a team in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a summer wood-bat league. The most recent occupant, in the same college summer league, is known as the Valley Blue Sox.