The annual Junior College World Series in Grand Junction, Colo., is played at Suplizio Field at Stocker Stadium. The facility sits within Lincoln Park, next to a city swimming pool and golf course. Stocker Stadium also includes a football field, which is attached to the baseball field by a shared press box.
Sam Suplizio, for whom the field was named in the early 1990s, is remembered in Grand Junction as Mr. Baseball. Baseball historians might know him as the guy who played in the Yankees’ organization in the 1950s and was slated to take over Mickey Mantle’s spot in center field, with Mantle moving to right, before an injury in the minors sliding into second ended his playing career.
He moved to Grand Junction in 1958 and worked for a property company while staying involved in baseball as a coach, scout, state baseball commission co-chairman and the first JUCO World Series tournament director. He died in 2006.
Suplizio Field was constructed in 1949 to hold 11,000 fans. Since the JUCO World Series moved to Grand Junction in 1959, the field has seen significant upgrades each decade. Wooden bleachers were replaced in the 1960s. The 1970s brought new ticket booths, new lights and press box improvements. The Casey at the Bat statue at the entrance was erected in the 1980s. Chicken wire backstops were removed in the 1990s.
Most recently, the stadium has added electronic scoreboards and outfield bleachers. The press box that now towers over both fields, an $8.3 million renovation project, was finished in 2012. The changes over the last 60 years now have the field’s seating capacity at 12,000.
Besides the JUCO World Series, the field is home to the Grand Junction High School baseball team, Colorado Mesa University baseball team and Rookie-level Grand Junction Rockies.