Billings, MT

Park # 153

What I Remember

The Pioneer League had an interesting mix of stadiums in 1991. There were beautiful fields like Derks in Salt Lake City and Kindrick Legion Field in Helena. There were little community-run ballparks like Athletic Field in Medicine Hat and Alumni Coliseum in Butte. There were not many classic stadiums, though, of the type we saw many times in other parts of the country. Cobb Field in Billings, though, was a classic.

The park, which was torn down and replaced by a brand new stadium a decade ago, had a big front facade and a covered grandstand. The concession area was underneath the grandstand, just as it was in most major league parks of the era and the press box rose high above the field. The view out was of a fascinating bit of geology at work. There is a long flat mountain (technically an Esker perhaps) called Rimrock just north of downtown Billings. The city airport runs the length of it and during games planes were frequently taking off and landing. It was not as naturally beautiful as the Rocky Mountain foothills we saw at other Pioneer League parks but it was pretty in a rugged way that seemed to fit the city.

The Games

Medicine Hat Blue Jays 3 Billings Mustangs 2

The Box

A Note about this Site

This site is intended to be a companion to the upcoming book In League with America. Although some games were particularly notable and will appear in the book, most of the results of the 199 games we saw over the course of the 1991 season will not. Our journey was never really intended to be at the games themselves, it was about the places we saw and the people we met along the way.

However, there is now an historic nature to the results from this season. All of the players we saw then, even in the minors, have long since retired. Some of the players we saw at Class A are now members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. These pages, then, will function as kind of a digital appendix with a brief recollection of each day, the result of the game(s) we saw that day and a map of our daily drive.