Joe Martin Stadium is a baseball park in the northwest

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, located in

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (loc ...

. It was a minor league ballpark in the

Class A-Short Season Class A Short Season (officially Short-Season A) was a level of play in Minor League Baseball in the United States from 1965 through 2020. In the hierarchy of minor league classifications, it was below Triple-A, Double-A, Class A-Advanced (cre ...

Northwest League The Northwest League is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in the Northwestern United States and Western Canada. A Class A Short Season league for most of its history, the league was promoted to High-A as part of Major League Basebal ...

for 24 seasons, from 1973 through 1996. The ballpark hosted three different NWL teams. The Bellingham Dodgers arrived in 1973 and stayed for four seasons. They were replaced in 1977 by the most well-known tenant, the

Bellingham Mariners The Bellingham Mariners were a Minor League Baseball team in the Class A-Short Season Northwest League, based in Bellingham, Washington. The club served as the Seattle Mariners' short-season affiliate from 1977 to 1994. History Major League B ...

(or "Baby M's"), who played from 1977 through 1994 and gave big-league Mariners fans a glimpse of the future with players like Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martínez, Dave Henderson, and Dave Valle. After 18 seasons and four league championships, the Mariners moved their NWL ballclub closer to Seattle at Everett. The

San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New Y ...

brought their affiliate to town where they played for two years (1995–96), then moved south to

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

and became the

Salem-Keizer Volcanoes The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes are a baseball team located in Keizer, Oregon, who are charter members of the Mavericks Independent Baseball League, a four-team league entirely based in the Salem Metropolitan Statistical Area and playing all their hom ...

in 1997. In 1999, it became the home of the

Bellingham Bells The Bellingham Bells are a collegiate summer baseball team in the West Coast League. The team is composed of college baseball players from teams around the U.S. In recent years, the Bells have produced a number of Major League players including ...

of the Pacific International League (PIL). The Bells played in the PIL for six years. In 2005, the team chose to become one of the founding franchises of the West Coast Collegiate Baseball League. Today, the league was later renamed the

West Coast League The West Coast League (WCL) is a collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league founded in 2005, comprising teams from Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alberta. The WCL was previously named the West Coast Collegiate Baseball League (WCCB ...

and features some of the finest collegiate players in the country. Each summer the Bells play around 30 home games at Joe Martin Field as part of their WCL schedule which features teams from

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

and

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. In 2014, the natural grass playing surface was replaced with synthetic FieldTurf; the renovation cost about $1.44 million and was completed in March 2015. The field has an unorthodox southwest alignment (home plate to center field); the recommended alignment is east-northeast, nearly opposite. Its

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Ver ...

is approximately above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

Notable People that played at Joe Martin Stadium

References

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External links

Bellingham Bells
Buildings and structures in Bellingham, Washington 1964 establishments in Washington (state) Baseball venues in Washington (state)