Bowman Field (stadium)

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Bowman Field
Bowman Field
For other uses, see Bowman Field.

Bowman Field is a minor league baseball stadium in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is home to the Williamsport Crosscutters of the New York - Penn League. Official seating capacity is 4,200.

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[edit] History

As the crow flies, Williamsport is about 150 mi (160 km) northwest of Philadelphia and about 215 mi (265 km) east-northeast of Pittsburgh. The logging town of Williamsport has hosted minor league baseball since even before 1923, when Bowman Field was completed (1926 according to the placard posted by the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission near the entrance of the club house gate), to host the city's entry as an original franchise in the New York-Pennsylvania League (now the Eastern League), called the Williamsport Billies. The Eastern League was at Bowman off and on for nearly seventy years, through the 1991 season with the Williamsport Bills. That team moved to Binghamton, New York, the next season and became the Binghamton Mets.

For the 1994 season, baseball returned to Bowman with the New York - Penn League's Williamsport Cubs. The club became the Crosscutters, a Pittsburgh Pirates farm team, in 1999. Significant stadium upgrades took place prior to the 2002 season. The club became a farm team of the Philadelphia Phillies in 2006.

[edit] Championships

In 2001, the Crosscutters and Brooklyn Cyclones were declared the New York - Penn League's co-champions. The Crosscutters lost the first game of the best of three championship series, and the rest of the series was cancelled after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In 2003, the Crosscutters won the New York - Penn League championship outright, defeating the Cyclones in two games to sweep the series.

[edit] The potato incident

The field's most infamous event took place in 1987. Dave Bresnahan was catching for the Bills, who were in seventh place in an eight-team league, playing the last-place Reading Phillies in a meaningless late-August game.

With a runner on third base, Bresnahan switched catcher's mitts and put on a glove in which he had secreted a shaved-down potato. When the pitch came in, Bresnahan fired the potato down the third-base line, enticing the runner to sprint home. Bresnahan then tagged the runner with the baseball, prompting the umpire to award the runner home plate for Bresnahan's deception.

The president of the Eastern League took offense to what it perceived as Bresnahan's affront to the game, banning the grandnephew of Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan from its league. However, the citizens of Williamsport applauded Bresnahan for his ingenuity, eventually prompting the club to retire his number 59.

[edit] External links


Current ballparks in the New York-Penn League
Pinckney Division McNamara Division Stedler Division
Bowman Field • Dwyer Stadium • Eastwood Field
Falcon Park • Medlar Field • Russell Diethrick Park		 Dutchess Stadium • KeySpan Park
Richmond County Bank Ballpark • Ripken Stadium		 Centennial Field • Damaschke Field
Edward A. LeLacheur Park • Joseph L. Bruno Stadium