121 Financial Ballpark (originally the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville) is a baseball park in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

. It is the home stadium of the

Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp The Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp are a Minor League Baseball team of the International League (IL) and the Triple-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins. They are located in Jacksonville, Florida, and are named for shrimp caught in the area. The team pla ...

Minor League Baseball team, who play in the International League. The facility opened in 2003.

History

The Baseball Grounds were proposed as part of the city planning program known as the

Better Jacksonville Plan The Better Jacksonville Plan is a growth management plan implemented by the city of Jacksonville, Florida. It was the signature project of Mayor John Delaney. It was approved by Jacksonville voters on September 5, 2000. Lex Hester was a key advis ...

. It was designed to replace the aging

Wolfson Park Samuel W. Wolfson Baseball Park (originally Jacksonville Baseball Park) was a baseball park in Jacksonville, Florida. It stood from 1954 until 2002, when it was demolished and replaced by the new Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville. During that tim ...

, the previous home of the Double-A Southern League's

. The facility cost $34 million and broke ground in 2002, with construction being completed the following year. It became the first completed project of the Better Jacksonville Plan. The Atlantic Coast Conference baseball championship was held at the venue from 2005 to 2008. The

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets is the name used for all of the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), located in Atlanta, Georgia. The teams have also been nicknamed the Ramblin' Wrec ...

won the first ACC Tournament at the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville, followed by the

Clemson Tigers The Clemson Tigers are the athletic teams that represent Clemson University, located in Clemson, South Carolina. They compete as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level (Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) s ...

in 2006, the North Carolina Tar Heels in 2007, and the

Miami Hurricanes The Miami Hurricanes (known informally as The U, UM, or The 'Canes) are the intercollegiate sports teams that represent the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. The Hurricanes compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic A ...

in 2008. The Baseball Grounds hosts an annual game between the Florida Gators and the Florida State Seminoles. The most recent game was on March 29, 2022, when Florida defeated Florida State 6–3 in front of 8,122 fans. The ballpark has twice hosted the

Southern League All-Star Game The Southern League All-Star Game was an annual baseball game sanctioned by Minor League Baseball between professional players from the teams of the Double-A Southern League. Each division, North and South, fielded a team composed of players in ...

. On July 8, 2003, the league's West Division All-Stars defeated the East Division All-Stars, 7–5, before 7,552 spectators. On July 17, 2013, the South Division defeated the North Division, 6–0, in front of a crowd of 9,373. The Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp became the Triple-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins in 2021 and shifted from the Southern League to the

Triple-A East The International League (IL) is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in the United States. Along with the Pacific Coast League, it is one of two leagues playing at the Triple-A level, which is one grade below Major League Baseball ...

Features

Baseball grounds of jacksonville national map

The facility has nearly 6,000 stadium-style chairs and can accommodate more than 11,000 fans, with an old-fashioned design, brick facade and a grass seating berm and bleacher seating. It also features 12 luxury skyboxes, four skydecks, a large scoreboard and videoboard, a playground, and the "knuckle," a unique mound for seating at the left field corner. Other ballpark features include a souvenir shop, first aid facility, various seating levels and perspectives, an ample number of restrooms and concession areas, in-seat concession services behind home plate, wide concourse and seating aisles and a high-definition video scoreboard in left center field. The park has an in-house video broadcast of games provided by The Schelldorf Television Network. The ballpark is located in downtown Jacksonville, situated between VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena and

TIAA Bank Field TIAA Bank Field is an American football stadium located in Jacksonville, Florida, that primarily serves as the home facility of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL) and the headquarters of the professional wrestling prom ...

Attendance records

The largest crowd for a baseball game at the ballpark was 12,943, which occurred on April 11, 2003 during the grand opening of the park in a game between the Jacksonville Suns and the Huntsville Stars. FloridaVsFSUBaseballGroundsJacksonville

References

External links

Official website

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