I recently visited the hallways of McCoy Stadium, which is packed with sports memorabilia and community service awards. I stopped at almost every section of the hallway to read up on player profiles, team awards, individual awards, public citations, and so much more. One set of photos really caught my attention. The views of McCoy Stadium over the years captured by photographers on the ground, in the air, the press boxes, and in the stands. Over the years as a visitor to McCoy, I have taken hundreds of photos from all sorts of cool angles. Here are a few of the photos I took in the hallways at McCoy which caught my eye.
I was really intrigued by the layout of the stadium then as opposed to now. You can see in the older photos that the stadium was surrounded by mostly grass, a baseball diamond with grass infield, a skimmed field, and the oval track (which still exists today surrounding the football field.) The outfield area is bordered by a wall with sponsorship signage. There are no seats in any section of the outfield areas in the old stadium layout. I can make out one scoreboard in left field, lights for night games, and I think the Marlboro Man was in right field. The parking lot in the old photo stopped at the baseball diamond. In this old photo, you can even make out a school bus in the parking lot, perhaps dropping kids off from local schools to catch a game??? I imagine that local kids would play at this park, possibly during Pawtucket Red Sox games. There weren’t any time stamps on the photo that I could see.
This photo looks to be an architect’s view of the future of McCoy Stadium. There is a name and time stamp of 1998. This view of McCoy features expanded parking lot, access road out of the stadium, two scoreboards, grass areas for seating in left field and center field areas. There is a new right field section altogether with concession stands, seating options, and more. You can see the outline of the oval track to the upper right of the drawing. In fact, renovations for McCoy Stadium began in 1998 and included more fan friendly seating areas and an expanded parking area.
This last photo was taken in the spring of 2019 by yours truly. From walking around the entire stadium over the years, taking photos, and now seeing these older photos of McCoy Stadium, you can see the progression McCoy Stadium went through to modernize its park and its experience. The main seating section behind home plate which stretches the first and third base lines, creating a semi-circle, appears to be the same in all of the photos. However, renovations to the parking lot, right field seating area, bleacher seating area, and left field grass seating area really improve the fan experience over the decades at McCoy Stadium. Truly, there is no bad seat in the stadium.
Here is a field view of McCoy Stadium, taken this past Spring, 2019.
The Rhiter 
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