Sioux Falls Canaries
Dad and I make a trip to The Birdcage to see the independent Sioux Falls Canaries and a celebration of the greatest home run hitter in American Association history.
Dad and I were among the first to arrive at Sioux Falls Stadium, aka The Birdcage, for our next matchup between the Sioux Falls Canaries and the Kane County Cougars of the independent American Association of Professional Baseball.
The Birdcage was built in 1941 for another Sioux Falls Canaries team, and, in fact, the Canaries name goes back to the beginning of professional baseball in Sioux Falls in 1902, when a squad in the Iowa-South Dakota League played for two seasons before folding.
The Canaries re-emerged for a few years in the 1920s, occasionally playing as the Soos. Another Canaries franchise was founded in 1933 as a member of the Nebraska State League. They switched to the Western League in 1939 and joined the Northern League from 1942 to 1953, excluding seasons canceled for World War II.
The Sioux Falls Packers played in the collegiate Basin League in 1964 and 1965, with future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Don Sutton leading the team to a league title in 1964. Sioux Falls revived the Packers name for a Northern League minor league squad that played from 1966 through 1971, when the league folded.
The current Canaries franchise began in 1993 as a charter member of a new, independent Northern League, along with the St. Paul Saints, Sioux City Explorers, and three others. In 2005, the Canaries joined a breakaway group of Northern League teams to form the American Association, where they have played ever since. There was a three-year period from 2010 to 2012 when the club changed its name to the Sioux Falls Fighting Pheasants, but it was an unpopular move that tossed away more than 100 years of brand identity, and the Canaries soon returned to their beloved Birdcage.
Dozens of players with Major League service have played for the Canaries over the years. The names that stand out most to me are 1980 Rookie of the Year Steve Howe, five-time All-Star Pedro Guerrero, and Pat Mahomes — father of the three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback — who finished a 22-year professional baseball career in Sioux Falls.
Sioux Falls Stadium has received several renovations in recent decades, adding luxury boxes, grass-berm seating, and an expanded picnic area in the late 1990s; a new turf field in 2022; and updated seating in 2024. The ballpark can now accommodate 4,462 fans; the Canaries tallied 1,541 per game in 2025, 11th-best in the 12-team American Association.
We made short work of our visit to the team store, located just inside the front gate. I had long-ago fallen in love with the home hat — all blue, with the Canaries logo, looking fierce and menacing, as only a canary can.
The Birdcage has a concourse between the upper and lower seating sections, as well as a walkway beneath the upper bowl with concessions, a kids’ play area, a Canaries history board, and other bits of yellow-bird branding.
The Canaries wore their sharp blue home jerseys on this Friday night. The club entered the game with a record of 13–9, good for second place in the West division, just behind the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks. Sioux Falls would finish with a quality 58-42 season, yet it was only good for third place in the overpowered West. They nevertheless made the playoffs, beating the Sioux City Explorers and the RedHawks to reach the Wolff Cup finals against these very same Kane County Cougars.
We had seen the Cougars — an affiliated Minor League team before the 2021 season— during our 2024 Eastern Midwest Baseball Road Trip. They sat at 12-11 in the East division, also in second place.
Kane County remained mediocre for the remainder of the regular season, finishing 49-51. But the American Association had expanded its playoff system to eight teams (of 12 total) in 2025, and in the East, two games below .500 was good enough for third place and a playoff birth. The Cougars took two of three from the Milwaukee Milkmen, three of five from the Chicago Dogs, then beat the Canaries in a deciding Game 5 to claim the American Association title.
Before the game, the Canaries honored player-coach Jabari Henry, who had set the American Association’s career home run record with his 147th bomb the previous week. Originally drafted in the 39th round out of high school by the Texas Rangers in 2009, Henry instead went to Florida International University and re-entered the draft in 2012, when he was picked by the Seattle Mariners in the 18th round. Henry topped out in 2016 with the Double-A Arkansas Naturals and joined the Canaries the next year. In 2019, he spent time with the St. Paul Saints (then in the American Association) and the Sugarland Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League. Henry returned to the Birdcage as a player-coach in 2021 and has remained ever since.
It was “Bring Ya Booty Night” at the ballpark. Months earlier, when I asked an AI chatbot what this meant, it confidently reported that it was a promotion related to dancing, and wrote about it (as AIs will do) as if it were a beloved community institution.
It was not about dancing. It was about pirates.
Seth Miller
Sioux Falls sent right-hander Seth Miller to the mound to start the game. Miller played college ball at Augustana University in Sioux Falls and was in his third year with the Canaries. He gave up three singles to Kane County in the first but managed to keep the Cougars off the board.
Konnor Ash
Cougars starter Konnor Ash also recorded a scoreless first inning, setting the Canaries down in order. Ash had pitched at the University of Missouri before signing with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2021. He had made it as far as the Double-A Reading Fightin’ Phils before leaving Minor League Baseball for the American Association in 2025.
I left our seats to see what was on offer for dinner. Below the stands, I found Canaries mascots Cagey and Peep trying to convince two skeptical little girls that they were friendly feathered creatures and not giant, horrible mutations.
There wasn’t much variety available at the concessions stands, so we went back to the basics with a simple hot dog for Dad and a brat for me, paired with a Birds Brew Pale Lager
As we watched the game, we heard a strange sound behind us from time to time — a long, whooshing noise followed by a loud “clack.” We soon learned it was the official scorer adding a metal “K” sign for each strikeout, which he sent gliding on a rail from the press box before it smacked against the other Ks.
Sioux Falls center fielder Calvin Estrada led off the bottom of the second with a triple. He scored on a sacrifice fly, and shortstop Jordan Barth hit a solo shot to make it 2-0 Canaries. Barth had also played at Augustana University and would end his third season with the Canaries hitting .303 with 19 homers and 66 RBIs in 98 games.
Meanwhile, Miller settled in on the mound for Sioux Falls, holding the Cougars scoreless through six.
There was some decent fun between innings — a t-shirt toss, a condiment race across the outfield grass won by mustard, a pushup-and-beer-chugging competition between a man and a woman (his wife?), and a bocce battle between Jabari Henry and his dad, Joe — won convincingly by Joe and punctuated by a casually tossed, perfect final shot. (Watch the episode!)
We also looked on as a family was upgraded in a sponsored promotion from their upper-bowl seats to… the seats we were sitting in! We had moved one row back into what seemed like empty seats to get a better view over taller fans in front of us. Suddenly, all eyes were on us — the two vagabonds being asked to collect their things and move as a young couple with a baby waited patiently to receive their prize seats.
There isn’t a 360-concourse at Sioux Falls Stadium, but there are picnic areas with drink rails in both corners of the outfield. I took a stroll to left field as the action began to pick up on the diamond. Kane County chased Miller from the game with a leadoff double and a walk in the top of the seventh, then scored three runs on two hits and a wild pitch to take a 3-2 lead.
As I reached the outfield fence down the right-field line, a Cougars hitter laced a long foul ball over my head, and it bounced right to me for a nice souvenir.
Cagey and Peep rallied the crowd during the seventh-inning stretch, and the home team responded. Ash left the game after two Canaries reached base, but his relief was nonexistent: 6-foot-5 right-hander Logan Nissan walked the only two batters he faced, tying the score; and lefty Jordan Martinson hit the first batter he faced, giving the Canaries a 4-3 lead. Cougars manager George Tsamis was tossed in the process to cap an ugly half-inning for the visitors.
The Sioux Falls bullpen fared much better, shutting down Kane County for the final two frames and giving the Canaries the win.
An outstanding fireworks show put a colorful bow on a big night for Canaries fans.
We returned to our hotel to find the Arc of Dreams — which we had learned about earlier in the day — lit up dramatically in red, with the lights of downtown Sioux Falls twinkling in the distance. It was one final good memory amongst many to end the day, and still another eight days of baseball to go.