Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

There is a 37-foot green wall in left field, a Citgo sign, a giant Coke bottle - and a lighthouse that rises from centre field every time the home team homers. Hadlock Field, at 271 Park Avenue in Portland, Maine, is the home of the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, and quite deliberately the most Fenway-like ballpark in the minor leagues. The park opened on 18 April 1994, built for about 3 million dollars on the site of a high-school field named for beloved Portland coach Edson Hadlock Jr., ending a 45-year absence of professional baseball from Maine's largest city. Demand outran the 6,000 original seats immediately: expansions in 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2006 lifted capacity to 7,368, and the park has run among Double-A's attendance leaders for three decades. The Fenway styling arrived with the Red Sox affiliation in 2003. Nine days after the partnership was announced, construction began on the Maine Monster - a 37-foot wooden replica of the Green Monster, complete with scoreboard - so that future Boston left fielders could learn the caroms in Portland first. A quarter-scale Citgo sign and the rooftop pavilion above the right-field fence completed the miniature-Fenway effect. The alumni list doubles as a modern Red Sox roll call: Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Hanley Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis all passed through Hadlock on the way to Boston, and rehab appearances have brought big-league stars to Park Avenue throughout the affiliation. Sea Dogs games remain a defining Maine summer ritual, with the biscuit-shaped Slugger mascot and sellout fireworks nights part of the liturgy. Now branded Delta Dental Park at Hadlock Field, the city-owned yard sits a mile from the Old Port with lots and street parking nearby, natural grass underfoot and 17 skyboxes above. April nights demand a jacket - this is the northernmost park in Double-A - but a summer evening here ranks with minor-league baseball's best.