Wesley Barrow Stadium
New Orleans, LA
Review by Mike
Wesley Barrow Stadium in the Pontchartrain area of New Orleans has a long history dating back to 1957. The original stadium on this site played host to high school baseball for decades before being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. With help from major league baseball, the stadium was rebuilt in 2012 in the same classic style as the original. It is the home of the Dillard University Bleu Devils and Southern–New Orleans University Knights of the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference.
The ballpark is named after a legendary Negro League manager for his contributions to the New Orleans baseball community. The rebuild was so nicely done that we didn’t realize that the structure was relatively new until we read the historical plaque on the wall. If you’d told me it dated to 1957, I’d have believed you without question. The main grandstand is a semi-circle of all-bench seating covered by a lovely roof that extends to cover the entire spectator area.
An enclosed press box sits at the top of the stands behind home plate. The field level dugouts are placed at either end of the grandstand and a nice scoreboard with line score peeks out over the right-centerfield fence. The playing surface is low-maintenance FieldTurf. Interestingly, for such a small stadium, there are a lot of staircases to get folks to the seats in the upper half of the seating bowl.
The ballpark is located at the northern edge of Pontchartrain Park, which also has tennis courts, basketball courts and a municipal golf course. The lake, which lies just on the other side of the highway and railroad tracks, delivered wind and rain on the day of our visit, but on a warm, humid summer night, one can imagine that this would be a great setting for a ballgame.
Gary and I spotted this little gem from the highway and did a sudden (but legal) U-turn to see just what that curving roof was covering. What we found was a really nice ballpark and yet another testament to the resilience of the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of tragedy. Wesley Barrow Stadium is a fitting legacy for its namesake, who spent a long career in baseball as a player, manager and talent scout.
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