Meritus Park

Home plate entrance to Meritus Park, Aug-2024.

The seating bowl, as seen from down the third-base line.

With a downtown park, buildings such as church steeples dominate the view.

Chronological Tour: Stop 434

• Location: Baltimore Street at Summit Avenue, Hagerstown, Md. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2024
• Home team: Hagerstown Flying Boxcars, Atlantic League (2024-present)
• Capacity: 4,000

Rating: 3 baseballs

In order to preserve some sort of baseball in Hagerstown, a new ballpark was needed. For the 2024 season, this new place popped up only a few blocks from the heart of downtown, as part of an effort to rejuvenate a city that now serves mainly as a crossroads rather than a destination.

Meritus Park, named after a local health care system, is said to be able to hold 4,000 fans, but the number of fixed seats is much lower. The main seating bowl is very compact, only about eight rows deep; there are premium seats directly behind the plate as well as an extensive club level that was entirely sold out by season ticket holders during the club’s first season. There are also social gathering areas down the third-base line as well as in left field.

The entire field is artificial turf except for the pitcher’s mound. While that configuration will undoubtedly save a number of games from getting rained out, it is unusual enough that I saw one player, unaccustomed to not having dirt to slide on, overslide second and get called out on a steal attempt.

Otherwise, the club has installed a video board into which the scoreboard is incorporated. There is also a small ribbon board facing the left-field social area that displays basic game information. In-game announcements are generally competent; while there was music between every batter, there was very little distraction during plate appearances.

One thing that seemed a little odd, though I have seen it before, is that the ticket window is in center field; there are no tickets sold behind the plate. In the modern era, when most tickets are sold online, this may not be as much of an issue, but it was still a surprise to not find a box office near the plate. That said, tickets and concessions appear to be reasonably priced.

The team name refers to a World War II transport plane known as the Flying Boxcar that was built near the Hagerstown airfield, about four miles north of the city.