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Created by:
Jeff LeCrone

Harry Grove
Stadium

Frederick, Maryland
Team: Frederick Keys
Affiliation: Baltimore Orioles
Capacity: 5,400
Completed: 1990
Video

After only having pictures and no review of the place for over a year, I finally got to go to a game at Harry Grove Stadium in April of 2002.  It's a fairly common design, with the entrance and concourse at the top of the stands so that you walk down to your seat.  Still, this park was one of the first to do it that way, so it deserves a nod for that, at least.  

Overall, this is a pretty decent park.  It's fairly standard, but nice.  It is very much a small-scale version of Bowie's Prince George's Stadium, right down to the carousel in right field.  The similarities make a lot of sense, considering the fact that the Keys and the Baysox have the same ownership.

Harry Grove, after whom the stadium is named, was a part of the group who originally brought professional baseball to Frederick in the form of the Frederick Hustlers of the Class D Blue Ridge League back in 1915.  Ironically, he died in 1930, the same year the Hustlers saw their last game in  Frederick.  Frederick was without baseball until 1989, when the Keys came to town.  But, before the deal was done, there was a need for additional funding to build the stadium.  The mayor put out a public plea, and who should step forward but M.J. Grove, Harry Grove's son.  M.J. put up a quarter of a million dollars, under the condition that the stadium be named after his father.   

Incidentally, the name "Keys" also has some history behind it.  You see, Frederick is the home town of one Francis Scott Key, who of course wrote our national anthem.  I wonder what Mr. Key would think if he were able to watch his fellow Fredericans shout out the "O" in the last refrain of the anthem, as is the custom of Orioles fans.  

One of the other unique things they do at Harry Grove is during the seventh inning stretch.  Instead of standing to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", they stand to the refrains of a Keys fight song and wave their car keys around (clever, eh?).  Personally, I would prefer it if the did that AFTER singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," rather than in lieu of it, but that's just me.  

 

 


Frederick's mascot, Keyote 

 

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