North Adams SteepleCats @ Joe Wolfe Field (North Adams, MA)
...with New England Baseball's most scenic stadium
SUMMER OF BASEBALL 2023: STOP 23
North Adams is, in some ways, a "quintessential New England town" given its location in the Berkshires, but it is SO FREAKIN' FAR from Boston that I had never heard about it until I was much older (despite it having a rather famous art museum)1. However, to my surprise, the SteepleCats are quite old (and pretty "unsuccessful") by NECBL standards: founded in 2002, they have yet to even make the NECBL's championship series, but what they do have: one of the best views in all of New England Summer Ball.
Outside of this view2...Joe Wolfe Field (where the team plays) is pretty "standard" IMO. One thing I do find somewhat interesting, however, is that the grandstand here (for some reason); yes, it's all metal seats (and seemingly hasn't been changed since the day it opened in 1986 - for better or worse), but for some reason, it feels different from other NECBL fields with grandstands behind home plate (maybe due to its size and the fact that there's nets around the entire thing).
Unfortunately, this is also probably the most remote field in all of the New England summer leagues. Getting here from Boston is quite the hike: the main route here is a local road (Route 2) which is notorious for a few rather poor "layout decisions" (see: the Concord Rotary), after which it becomes country road for 50 or so miles before getting to North Adams, though it is quite scenic (and you go through one of the best town names in Massachusetts: Florida). I also had to go BACK the way I came to meet up with friends the night I went, so that ended up being a TON of driving in one day (about five hours worth overall)...and this was the SECOND trip (in 2023).
For the first trip (2022), I came here from Westfield (schedule timings worked out well for me in 2022), and part of that drive featured roads with ZERO cell service (which I found out when Spotify suddenly cut off). That date also featured a visit to a stadium the SteepleCats played a few games at in either 2024 or 2025 (I honestly don't remember) - and I will get to the "where" and "why" of that soon enough...
MERCH
There’s a building on the third base line which houses concessions and merch. The Steeplecats had two or so hat logos when I visited (in multiple styles), and I also got a hoodie here that I like as it features an "extra" pocket. I also recall seeing what looked like practice jerseys here one time, but they weren't the best looking things I'd seen...
I must say that it was rather unfortunate that management had apparently decided to not order 2023 player caps for fans...or at least that’s what I heard from the woman at the merchandise stand the day I went. She did say that multiple people had asked about it, but I wasn’t able to find if they ever sold them. However, images I've seen of the SteepleCats since 2023 indicate that they've had some pretty major color changes (they had blue, black, and yellow when I visited, but have seemingly dropped the blue), so I'm hoping I can return sometime in the future to see what's new (but not holding out hope for that as, again, it's a bit remote).
Footnotes
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Also, in case you were wondering: Samuel. Yep, the same one from the beer. There's another town just south of North Adams called, well, Adams from which NA split a LONG time ago. ↩
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In case anyone was wondering: I do have more photos from back in the day, but since I was shooting most of them as Instagram stories, there are VERY few that are NOT portrait, and a bunch of them have text that's hard to remove due to how Instagram stories get saved. ↩