Burlington Bees
Into every road trip, a little rain must fall. Our game is postponed, but we still make a brief visit to Community Field, home of the Prospect League Burlington Bees.
As Dad and I prepared to head out from our hotel to Community Park in Burlington, Iowa — the site of our penultimate ballgame with the Burlington Bees — I checked social media and discovered that the game had been postponed. I couldn’t believe it. There had only been a light rain earlier in the day, with no further drizzles in the forecast. But for whatever reason, the field was not in shape for baseball.
And that was that. A rainout. It happens about once per trip — Augusta in 2021, Norfolk and Philadelphia in 2023, Toledo in 2024. Ironically, the one region that did not give us a rainout was the famously wet Pacific Northwest.
We decided to make the short drive to the ballpark to see what we could before nightfall.
Community Field opened in 1947 for the Burlington Indians of the Class C Central Association, but professional baseball in town goes back to 1889 and the Burlington Babies. They were followed by the Colts, Hawkeyes, River Rats, Flint Hills, and Pathfiners (whose catcher was killed in 1906 when he was beaned by a pitched ball).
The original Burlington Bees played in the Mississippi Valley League from 1924 to 1932, then folded. Burlington was left without professional baseball until Community Field was built 15 years later.
Burlington appeared in the Three-I (Illinois-Indiana-Iowa) League in 1952 as the Burlington Flints, then changed to the Bees in 1954. The club joined the Midwest League in 1962 and remained there until being removed from the rosters of affiliated Minor League Baseball (with 41 others) during the contraction of 2021.
The Bees (often under the parent club’s name) had been a farm team for the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics, the Brewers, Rangers, Expos, Braves, Astros, Giants, Reds, White Sox, Royals, Athletics (again), and Angels. With that rich history, finding elite Burlington alumni is easy: Sal Bando, Vida Blue (who struck out a team-record 231 batters in 1968), George Hendrick, Phil Garner, Chet Lemon, Claudell Washington, Rubén Sierra, Kenny Rogers, José Vidro, Ugueth Urbina, Javy López, Mark Buehrle, Mike Moustakas, and Salvador Pérez.
During their first run with the A’s, the grandstand at Community Field burned down and was rebuilt. It was renovated in 1999 and expanded in 2005, and it now has a capacity of 3,200.
Like the Clinton LumberKings to the north, the Bees found new life after Minor League Baseball in the Prospect League, a collegiate summer league spanning the southern Midwest. But whereas the LumberKings averaged 2,588 fans per game in 2025 (second-best in the 18-team league), the Bees averaged just 761 (13th-best).
We recorded a brief episode of our ballpark show with exaggerated faces of sadness and disappointment. But it was a genuine bummer to miss this historic ballpark and team.
As we were preparing to leave, I noticed the other gate had been left open, and so I tiptoed into the ballpark and snapped a few photos of the empty seats and shuttered concession stands.
La Tavola
We called an audible for dinner and picked up from La Tavola, a downtown Italian eatery that was bustling on this Friday night. I soon found out why — my Cavatelli Bolognese was incredible, with a rich, meaty sauce. I found a screw-top bottle of Merlot at a liquor store on the way home, and we were in business, ready to settle in for a night watching Oregon State and Louisville in the College World Series on our hotel TV.
Just after my first bite of cavatelli, I checked my phone. I had a message from Annie Ochitwa, an associate producer with ABC World News Tonight with David Muir. She had seen our interviews with three ABC affiliates during our road trip and wanted to do a piece on us for a Father’s Day segment two days later. My mind raced — we’re going to be on network news?!
Annie asked if I could send photos and videos from the trip, then record answers to interview questions the next day and send those along as well. I said yes and got to work, sifting through thousands of photos and video clips as Dad watched the ballgame — and as he prepared for bed, and after he turned out the lights. I finished gathering my trove of memories in the darkness, sent them to the ABC server, and let out an exhausted sigh. One more ballpark to go, the biggest of them all.