History
Prior to Jerry Uht Park's construction, the Erie SeaWolves (then known as the Welland Pirates) played at Welland Stadium in Welland, Ontario. They moved to Erie after Marvin Goldklang moved the Erie Sailors to Wappingers Falls, New York (where they became the Hudson Valley Renegades) because he did not want to upgrade Ainsworth Field to Major League Baseball specifications. Once the civic government secured an $8 million grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to build Jerry Uht Park, the Welland Pirates moved to Erie. The remaining $1 million for architectural expenses were covered by the City of Erie, Erie County, and the 300-member Team Erie, each of whom contributed $300,000. Additionally, nearby Millcreek Township also contributed $25,000. The site now occupied by the ballpark was originally home to a Sears building turned Exhibit Hall. Groundbreaking ceremonies took place on July 27, 1994 and Jerry Uht Park was completed in May 1995.
Jerry Uht Park was recognized by sports broadcast network ESPN for its "delightful bank of nicely elevated seats overlooking the infield along the first-base side" in a 2008 list of U.S. ballparks noted for the best seating. It ranked number five out of the ten venues that were honored
Read more about this topic: Jerry Uht Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)