It’s Duncan Field (Hastings Sodbusters) vs. Turtle Creek Stadium (Traverse City Pit Spitters) in the final of the 2020 Best of the Ballparks fan vote for summer-collegiate facilities. So vote!

The vote in the prior Final Four round was not particularly close. Duncan Field was chosen over Riverfront Stadium, home of the Northwoods League’s Waterloo Bucks, by a 58-42 percent margin. In the other bracket, fans chose Turtle Creek Stadium over Bismarck Municipal Stadium, home of the Traverse City Pit Spitters, by a 66-34 percent margin. This sets up an Exhibition League vs. Northwoods League final. So let the voting begin!

Most summer-collegiate leagues decided to pass on a 2020 season because of COVID-19 concerns, but some did not. For this competition, we’re focusing on the ballparks hosting league play in 2020, including those hosting a “pod” of teams and minimizing travel. Normally we’d have a tough time limiting this competition to voting on 64 ballparks, as was the case in 2019, but this year the lack of play in markets like Madison, WI, dramatically lowered the number of ballparks in this competition. We did not seed the participants in this competition, either, deciding on a random system to generate the brackets.

We know from marketing stats that a third of our readers work in the baseball industry, so we’re tapping into that collective expertise. And we know from our research that a third of our readers sell to the baseball industry, so that expertise will be valuable as well. The remaining third — fans, media, government — will certainly have a different view on things as well. We can’t wait to see what our readers — whom we consider to be the smartest folks in baseball — say about the best of the ballparks.

We began this competition with last year’s winner and runner-up–Travis Field, home of the Brazos Valley Bombers, and Turtle Creek Stadium, home of the Traverse City Pit Spitters–and randomly generated the rest of the bracket rankings.