The Edinburgh News
2029-01-19
Lost in the excitement over the Claymores’ splashy free agent signings this month was a short announcement on Saturday that the club is adding 5,000 new seats to its stadium, The Castle.
“With fan interest at an all-time high and season tickets selling briskly, we feel the time is right to create more seating for our fans,” said Assistant General Manager Harry Kevern.
The additional seating will expand capacity at The Castle - an aging, converted soccer stadium locals have nicknamed the "Heap on the Heath" - from 35,000 to 40,000.
Plans call for the new seating to be concentrated in grandstand additions down the right- and left-field lines.
“We looked carefully at the possibility of adding a new luxury skybox level, but that is not feasible in the timeframe we have available before our new season starts,” Kevern said. “So, our next best option was additional grandstand seating, which we can complete comfortably before opening day.”
Projections for season ticket sales look robust, so far, Kevern said. The team estimates that revenues from that source will increase by nearly a third over last season, fueled by interest in the team’s first playoff berth since leaving the League of the Rising Sun to join the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance in 2021.
The Claymores finished at 96-66, winning a wild card slot and advancing to the Imperial League championship series before losing to West Virginia in the seventh and deciding game.
Kevern added that the team had decided to hold the line on ticket prices for the coming season as a gesture of good will to its fans.
“We asked people to come out and support us and pay their hard-earned money for tickets in years when our on-field product was, admittedly, not very good,” he said. “Our owner, Brad Kern, felt strongly that we should hold the line on prices so more of our great Claymores supporters can come see us in a year where we should at least be competitive for the post-season.”
Although the team did lose slugging outfielder Don Mercer to free agency at the end of the season when he opted out of his $34 million a year contract, the Claymores have bolstered the roster with two new established stars: four-time All Star outfielder Pat Barry and starting pitcher Clark Snow.
“We want to show our fans that we are committed to improving the team and building on last season’s success,” said Kern in a prepared statement.
Asked if there had been any thought given to building a new facility at some point, given complaints from some fans that the venerable stadium - built in 1934 - is showing its age, Kevern said not at this point.
“The Castle is an older facility, we realize, but we reject the characterization that it’s the ‘Heap on the Heath,’” he said. “With the additional seating and continuing renovations, we think it will come to be thought of as one of the premier settings for baseball in Europe, if not all of PEBA."
Indeed, fans did seem willing to overlook any shortcomings in the facility last season, as attendance topped 2,714,000. That was the best attendance figure the team has achieved since moving to Edinburgh from Dayton, Ohio, in 2024, but still short of its all-time high of 2,826,760 in 2022.
Work on the new grandstand additions is expected to begin this week, and be completed in early March, well before the season begins in April.
"By the time opening day arrives," Kevern said, "we're confident our fans will think of The Castle as the pinnacle, not the pits, of baseball venues."
