Muncy Bank Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field

Use 1700 W 4th St, Williamsport, PA 17701 for GPS Devices

One of baseball's oldest and most distinguished ballparks is Williamsport's own Muncy Bank Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field. It has served as an iconic piece of Williamsport's professional and amateur baseball experience, providing area fans many thrills and exciting moments.

In 2017, Major League Baseball announced that a regular-season MLB game would be played at Historic Bowman Field. The MLB Little League Classic, televised nationally on ESPN, would become an annual game played during the Little League World Series in an effort to get more children interested in and involved with baseball at a young age.

Prior to the inaugural game, funding from MLB, the Crosscutters and grants from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania given to the City of Williamsport provided more than $4 million to improve Historic Bowman Field. These improvements included new seats throughout the stadium, a new playing surface including new irrigation and drainage, moving the bullpens out beyond the outfield fences, new dugouts closer to home plate, and a new fan deck called Logger’s Landing.

In 2021, the Crosscutters embarked on a new era of Williamsport baseball, as a founding member of the new MLB Draft League. Established and run by Major League Baseball, the league features the top draft-eligible players from across the country available for the mid-July MLB Draft. The league plays an 80-game schedule running from early June until Labor Day weekend.

The fall of 2021 saw the long-anticipated installation of Historic Bowman Field’s first video board with funding from the Commonwealth of PA, the City of Williamsport and the Williamsport Crosscutters.

The origins of Bowman Field occurred at a meeting of Williamsport baseball officials and city officials at downtown Williamsport’s venerable Ross Club, late in the summer of 1924. The meeting concerned the building of a new ballpark, on land located in Memorial Park and owned by the Williamsport Water Co. Previously, Williamsport's professional baseball teams were playing at the Williamsport High School athletic field located at the corner of West Third and Susquehanna Streets, now the site of the Pennsylvania College of Technology.

Negotiations on this matter continued into the summer of 1925. In July of that year, both parties were able to reach an agreement to construct a new ballpark. Prominent businessman and baseball booster, J. Walton Bowman was put in charge of fundraising efforts to finance the $75,000 needed to build the facility. Ground was broken for the ballpark in the fall of 1925.

During its first three years the uptown ballpark was known as Memorial Field because of its location in Memorial Park. In 1929, Grays club officials deemed it appropriate to
rename the ballpark Bowman Field in honor of Gray's club president, J. Walton Bowman, who had done so much for baseball in Williamsport and was the main catalyst in raising the funds to build the facility.

Bowman Field has seen several structural and cosmetic changes over the years. The first occurred when lights were erected in 1932. The Major Leagues did not begin playing night games until 1935, three years after Williamsport.Over half a million dollars in repairs and renovations were made prior to the 1987 season when baseball returned to Bowman Field. The grandstands and bleachers were replaced with new aluminum seating which would remain in place until 2017. In the fall of 1993, it was announced that a new franchise would be coming to town with the Geneva Cubs of the New York-Penn League moving to Billtown from Geneva, NY to begin play in 1994.

Tickets
All regular-season events at Historic Bowman Field are free of charge. Postseason and special events have admission prices set by the governing bodies of the event.

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