First, a bit of housekeeping. For various reasons including my travel along the ballpark-making learning curve over the last year plus (I'm still not at the top!), some of my ballparks don't necessarily load the right files automatically, or are missing .prk files, or don't have the grid set correctly, among other things. I'm happy to fix them, and so I'll point to three updated parks. I'll also update the original posts with these new links:
Parkway Field, Louisville (v. 1.2, c. 1920s)
Almendares Park, Havana (v. 1.2, c. 1910)
Mo'ili'ili Park, Honolulu (v. 1.2, c. 1917)
And for the main event today, here's the final part of the Sacramento Trilogy: Hughes Stadium c. 1974.
Google Drive link to Hughes Stadium
Big thanks to Ty Cobb and KCStengelJr for helping out with this one!
Hughes Stadium was a bit before my time, but apparently quite the infamous park, with the AAA team awarded without a suitable venue and the baseball field constructed inside a football stadium that was actually a bit too small. While officials were assured the left field line was 250+ feet, some investigative reporting during the season found the distance was rather shorter, and even a big screen couldn't cut down on home runs. After a tweak in 1975-1976 to allow the dimensions to be the required minimum distance, the Solons moved out of Sacramento and the city did without minor league baseball until 2000.
There's not as much documentary evidence as one might like, but I'll point to a
movie showing the parent Milwaukee Brewers (including Henry Aaron!) visiting the stadium, a
link to a scorebook used that year, and include a few photos below, which drove a lot of the advertising choices on the outfield walls.
As you might imagine, it's something of a crazy ballpark. Left field is too small for the left fielder to actually start out anywhere sensible (I think he's embedded beneath the stands and emerges when relevant), but it is what it is if you want to play out a game here. Several other very small parks have the same issue, as some of us have discussed elsewhere. Other than that known, unavoidable issue, please let me know if there are problems!