Scranton – Wilkes Barre, PA

Park # 114

What I Remember

I remember the line, “It didn’t start in Moosic,” although in the case of the line itself, that is exactly what it did. It was the beginning of a feature story about our trip that took up the upper third of a page in the Sunday New York Times. The article didn’t appear until almost a month later but the reporter, Peder Zane, came to meet us and do an interview in person at Lackawanna County Stadium in Moosic, the home of the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons.

The Barons are now called the Rail Riders and the ballpark is called PNC Field but there is still Triple-A baseball being played at this park. When we saw it it was almost brand new and looked like a miniature version of many of the major league stadiums of the era. It had a triple deck towering grandstand that looked down on an artificial turf field, just like the one the team’s major league affiliate played on in Philadelphia. Both the lower and upper decks had individual seats rather than benches, a relative rarity at the time and between the decks was a very nice club level and press area. It didn’t take too much imagination to pretend you were at the Vet or Three Rivers, whether that was a selling point is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder.

The Game

G1: Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons 3 Richmond Braves 1

G2: Richmond Braves 6 Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons 5

The Box: (Click on the arrows below to see more images)