One of the nicest settings for a ball park, whether it's a minor league or major league park is John O'Donnell Stadium next to (and sometimes in) the Mississippi River in downtown Davenport. Built in 1931, and formerly known as Municipal Stadium, the stadium was renamed John O'Donnell Stadium in 1971 after the death of a longtime sports editor for the Davenport Times-Democrat (now known as the Quad City Times).
The stadium went through a major overhaul before the 2004 season and is now a pretty nice facility. We hadn't gone to a game down there in a long time, but Cindy's financial planner, Steve DeBacker, invited a number of his clients to a night of food, drink and baseball at the stadium.
When they rebuilt the stadium after the 2003 season, they added a number of corporate "luxury" suites. They have about 75% of them sold and they use the rest of them for single game rentals. Steve rented one of the suites for the evening. A number of his clients (including our friends, Scott and Marcia Schroeder) showed up for the evening.
One of the other things they did with the rebuild is construct an earthen berm around the outfield area. As I said, the stadium is next to, and subsequently in, the Mississippi River when it floods, effectively wiping out dozens of games during a given season. The new flood wall is designed to keep the river out of the stadium, but since the flood berm has been built, the river hasn't come close to coming out of its banks.
Here's a famous picture of John O'Donnell Stadium during the Great Flood of 1993.
John O'Donnell Stadium houses the Swing of the Quad Cities, a single A minor league team in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. This particular night, they were playing the Beloit Snappers, who are part of the Minnesota Twins minor league organization.
The owner of the Swing (which has the stupidest name and have the worst uniforms in organized baseball) is Kevin Krause, who is the son of Bill Krause, who is the majority owner of the Kum and Go convenience stores located all through the Midwest. The director of marketing for the Swing is Mike Weindruch, an old friend from my days in Iowa City. It was good to see Mike and to talk with him at length the night we were there.
Mike took me around to show me some of the other luxury boxes. Most of them were in use, but he took me to a couple that weren't. Actually, for a Class A minor league franchise, the luxury suites were pretty nice.
Before the game, Steve threw out the opening pitch. I missed getting a picture of the actual pitch, but here's a picture of our host just after the pitch.
All in all, the experience was very nice. I've added a number of pictures of the stadium in the Photo Album section, so be sure to click on the link to see some of those pictures.
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