For the first time since 2019, I attended a live baseball game. Me and a few others went to the Winston-Salem Dash game vs. the Hickory Crawdads last night in the Triad city of Winston-Salem. The Dash are a high-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox and play at Truist Stadium, previously known as BB&T Field before the bank merger between BB&T and Sun Trust banks.

Before getting into my review, I would just like to state how nice it was being at a live baseball game again. After the 2020 craziness that shut everything down, it felt good spending a summer night at a baseball stadium.

The stadium itself was super nice. This was the second time I’ve visited it, so it was no surprise to me. But for a minor league baseball stadium, especially for a single-A team, it is very nice. Built just over ten years ago and opened for play in 2010, everything is modern-looking and fresh. The brick exterior on the outside of the stadium give first-time visitors high expectations of what’s on the inside, to which they won’t be disappointed.

Like all modern ballparks and stadiums, there’s really no bad seat in the entire place. And like a minor-league ballpark should be, it provides the intimate atmosphere fans seek so they can feel like they are part of the game itself.

One thing that may stand out to visitors, and like Yacs from The Sports Chief stated, the field is reminiscent of one created on a video game. The dimensions of the outfield wall are wild, with the wall jutting in and out, and going from really short in some areas to very tall in others. Whoever designed it definitely wanted to make it unique, and I very much favor that instead of the usual cookie-cutter ballparks that are all designed the same. The field itself was beautiful with real grass and dirt, the way baseball fields should be, instead of turf. Off in the distance downtown Winston-Salem could be spotted, though it wasn’t a big part of the stadium scenery at all.

The food was pretty standard for ballparks, with chicken tenders, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, fries, nachos, soda, beer, and water being the highlights of what was offered. Unlike a lot of ballparks, though, I didn’t notice anything unique to the area offered, besides four selections of Foothills Brewing beer. There wasn’t any local flavor as far as food went, or at least I didn’t come across anything. Prices were standard for ballpark food, with your best bet being the chicken tender basket that came with fries for $8.50. And of course, the overpriced drinks of $4 waters, $6 sodas, and $7 beers were offered as well. I would like to note, however, beer sales were cut off after the 3rd inning last night (it was a double-header with two 7-inning games), which was pretty disappointing. Even though the game was just seven innings long, cutting it off four innings prior to the end seems ridiculous compared to the usual “after 7-innings” of a nine inning game.

As nice and new as the stadium was, the parking situation was awful. Because the stadium is tucked in between Business I-40 interstate and a major highway, it really limits the surrounding area for things such as parking. If you’re not parking in the reserved lot next to the stadium, your next best bet is across the major four-lane highway, and a few hundred feet down another road in a gravel lot. And the gravel lot isn’t very big or kept up. You would think they would have a few nice paved lots around, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

The games themselves were fun, though. With the previous night’s game being rained out, we were able to see a double-header, which featured two 7-inning games. We arrived in the third inning of the first game and stayed until the after the planned 7 innings of the second game, though we decided not to stay for the extra innings. One thing that is always fun to see at baseball games is home runs. While we were there we got to see two of them. One of them went about 350 feet and the other was probably around 440 feet, but they were equally as cool to see. That is because major league star Eloy Jimenez, who was down on a rehab assignment, hit the shorter one. It looked like he hit it off the handle of the bat, but the guy is so big and strong it was still a line-drive over the left field wall, which sent the fans into a frenzy. And man, was he a big guy. It was crazy to see how much bigger he was than everyone else on either team. The longer home-run was awesome too, because it was a moonshot that cleared the outfield seats and bounced over the team store in right-center field. I cannot remember who hit that one, but it was a player for Hickory.

Overall the game was a lot of fun and I would highly recommend any baseball fan to catch a game there. Really the only thing the team needs to fix is the parking situation and everything would be great. If you have been to Truist Stadium in Winston, let me know what you think of the place in the comments, or how your experience was when you were there.

Garett

Winston-Salem Dash Game Review