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Simmons Field

Simmons Field, in Kenosha, Wis., opened in 1920 as a facility for the Simmons Bedding Company's baseball team. The stadium's original capacity was 7,000. The concrete grandstand was re-built in 1930.

In 1947, the Simmons Company sold the field to the City of Kenosha, which made it available the following year for use by the city's women's professional baseball team team, the Kenosha Comets. The Comets, of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, had played in Kenosha at Lakefront Stadium since the league was founded in 1943. The team played at Simmons Field from 1948 until its final season in 1951. The league folded three seasons later.

Throughout the ensuing decades, Simmons Field was used by little leagues, amateur leagues and for exhibition games that featured Warren Spahn, Bob Feller and Satchel Paige. The Kenosha Pirates, a local semi-pro team, also played at Simmons Field during this era. But the stadium fell into disrepair without a major tenant.

In 1984, Kenosha native and former minor league pitcher Bob Lee transformed the old venue when he purchased the Minnesota Twins Class A Midwest League affiliate and moved the team into Simmons Field. The move provided for approximately $350,000 worth of improvements to the field, including a new clubhouse, new in-ground dugouts, a new wood outfield fence, a new electronic scoreboard, concession facilities and aluminum bleachers along the third base line.

The Kenosha Twins played at Simmons Field for nine years, winning two Midwest League championships and producing more than a dozen major league players, including four players on the Minnesota Twins' 1991 World Series championship team. That World Series team included American League "Rookie of the Year" Chuck Knoblauch and long-time Kenosha resident and former University of Wisconsin-Parkside head baseball coach Jarvis Brown, who played for the Kenosha Twins in 1987 and 1988. Current Carthage College head baseball coach Augie Schmidt IV also played at Simmons for the Twins in 1986, before retiring from professional baseball.

In July 1991, Chicago Cubs legend Rick Sutcliffe pitched nine innings in an injury rehab start for the Peoria Chiefs against the Twins at Simmons Field. A crowd of 4,387 attended that game, producing the largest crowd of the Bob Lee-era at Simmons. However, a decline in overall attendance and higher standards for minor league baseball facilities forced Lee to sell the team after the 1991 season. New ownership moved the team to Fort Wayne, Ind., following the 1992 season.

During the 1990s, Simmons Field was home to amateur teams of high school and college talents, as well as the semi-professional Kenosha Kings. The locally-run Kenosha Chiefs semi-pro team also was the stadium's primary tenant in 1993, and the Kenosha Kroakers of the summer collegiate Northwoods League called Simmons home from 1994 to 1999. Carthage played host to the both the 1995 and 1996 NCAA Division III Central Region Baseball Championships at Simmons.

Simmons Field was home to professional baseball once more in 2003 when the Dubois County Dragons of the independent Frontier League moved and became the Kenosha Mammoths. However, the Mammoths failed to attract large crowds and the team moved again after one season in Kenosha.

In 2007 the Kenosha Parks Department leased Simmons Field to the Kenosha Unified School District. Kenosha Unified has since leased the field to the Kenosha Simmons Baseball Organization, a non-profit group working to upgrade and restore the stadium. Initial improvements included a rebuilt infield, which was completed in the fall of 2007, and a new electronic scoreboard behind left field.

Since 2014, Simmons Field has been the home of the Kenosha Kingfish from the Northwoods League, a minor-league style collegiate, summer league of college baseball players from across the nation. The Kingfish administration renovated Simmons Field in 2013. The newly-renovated stadium has over 2,100 seats, obtained from Baltimore's Camden Yards, contains two home-plate suites, a party deck, and a general admission lawn seating area.

Starting with the 2019 season, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside baseball team moved their home games from Red Oberbrunner Field on the UW-Parkside campus to Simmons Field.