Benjamin Hill travels the nation collecting stories about what makes Minor League Baseball unique. This excerpt from the Baseball Traveler newsletter, presented by Circle K, is a mere taste of the smorgasbord of delights he offers every week. Read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to his newsletter here.
If you like the Midwest, baseball and bellwethers of consistency amid an ever-changing world, then I have just the place for you: Veterans Memorial Stadium, home of the Cedar Rapids Kernels.
Cedar Rapids has hosted professional baseball dating back to 1890 and in every season since 1949. The city -- Iowa’s second largest -- has fielded a Midwest League team since 1962, the longest-running squad in the circuit. The Kernels’ name, a reference to one of the state’s top exports, was adopted in 1993. The Kernels have been an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins since 2013, following a 20-season partnership with the Angels.
Veterans Memorial Stadium opened in 2001 as a replacement for a ballpark built in 1949 that had the same name and location. It is situated southwest of downtown within a larger network of athletic fields and facilities that also includes the ImOn Ice Arena, home of the USHL’s Cedar Rapids RoughRiders.
There is also a literal Veterans Memorial -- All Veterans Memorial Park -- located along the right-field section of the ballpark.
The ballpark has a simple layout, with a seating bowl that extends from third base to first. Bleacher seats are located down the first-base line, while a berm seating area on the third-base side gives way to a group area in left field. Before or after the game, visit the Stadium Bar and Grill across the street for some local flavor.
The covered concourse behind home plate is colorful and pleasingly chaotic, ringed with concessions, carts and ads for local businesses. The Kernels still accept cash, so give your kids a buck or two so they can spin the prize wheel.
From the reception desk to the concourse to the clubhouse level to the press box to the suites, Veterans Memorial Stadium is a shrine to Cedar Rapids baseball history. It’s a labor of love, compiled over the years by team employees, historians and fans.
The Cedar Rapids Baseball Timeline, located in the hallway outside the suites, is filled with memorabilia.
The displays include game-used gear and unis from Kernels all-time greats.
It was my honor to sign a ball for the team’s Hall of Fame collection.
This file cabinet, located in a storage area, hints at treasures yet to be unearthed.
The Kernels Hall of Fame includes a wide range of individuals, including 2022 inductee Ron “Roady” Plein. Roady served as the home clubhouse manager for decades, living in a ballpark apartment adjacent to the laundry room. I wrote about him when I last visited Cedar Rapids, in 2015.
Roady retired in 2016, but team icons can still be found wandering those corridors. Jon Teig, often called Jon Jon, grew up around the ballpark and has now served as batboy for 25 years.
Jon, who is autistic, is not shy about telling the players how they are performing. As Kernels GM Scott Wilson told me, he "dispenses hard truths." He’s also known for rallying the fans with his "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dance routine, which involves a stuffed banana. Stay tuned for the Kernels’ Jon Jon Figurine giveaway on Aug. 17.
I was in town on a chilly Saturday night in early May, with the Kernels set to take on the South Bend Cubs. On the concourse, Mr. Shucks was mingling with the fans.
It's best for Mr. Shucks to stay within the confines of the ballpark. If he wandered over to the corn milling plant that looms over the first-base side, he’d surely meet his doom.
There's a lot of grain-related industry around Cedar Rapids, which is home to General Mills and Quaker production plants (I had a view of the latter from my hotel room window). Wilson told me that the city often smells like cereal -- "Tuesday is Crunchberry day; it smells delicious. Cinnamon Life is another good one."
Crunchberries could make for a good hot dog topping, but on this evening the specialty dogs were a bit more conventional. On hand to try them were my Designated Eaters, Sarah Maas and her dad, Mike.
Sarah lives in Minneapolis and Mike in a nearby suburb, but in recent years they and other members of the family have embarked on a series of ballpark road trips. In the above photo Sarah and Mike are holding up the Twins Banh Mi Brat, a footlong topped with pickled vegetables (carrots, radishes, onions, cucumbers), cilantro and spicy aioli.
This Vietnamese-inspired brat was paired with the Kernels Street Corn Dog, a footlong on a Coney bun topped with street corn dip, cilantro sauce and more cilantro.
These culinary creations were well received by the father-daughter duo. Mike said the Kernels Street Corn Dog "gives a hot dog a whole new taste," with Sarah adding that it was like "Iowa on a hot dog." She was also a big fan of the Banh Mi Dog, praising the unique taste of pickled vegetables on a brat (which in her estimation, is better than a standard hot dog).
I enjoyed spending a couple innings sitting at a picnic table with Sarah and Mike, watching the game and talking about baseball, travel and the intersection thereof. My ballpark travel then continued, all the way to the broadcast booth …
… for an inning on the air with Calvin Christoforo.
The evening was filled with conversations. As I wandered about, I kept running into people I knew or people who knew me. To wit: Marty Buffington, a regular reader of this newsletter who has kept score at every game he’s been to since he was 5 years old, is the owner of over 300 game-worn jerseys. On this evening, he was wearing a Cedar Rapids Reds throwback.
And hey, here’s me in-between Lynn Smith and Scott Wilson. The former is a longtime reader and former Designated Eater (2018 Florida Fire Frogs). The latter is the aforementioned GM of the Kernels, a seasoned, always-on-the-move Minor League operator with deep ties to the community.
The Kernels rolled to an 8-3 win amid the chatter, and then conversation ceased because you can’t talk over fireworks. Good night from Cedar Rapids.
For more on the home of the Kernels, check out the Veterans Memorial Stadium Ballpark Guide, presented by Wyndham.