Fox 9 Town Ball Tour 2025 Coming To City of Shakopee on Wednesday, June 11th!
By Bill Schleper
KMSP Fox 9 News will feature the City of Shakopee and Joe Schleper Baseball Stadium as one of its host sites during the 2025 Fox 9 Town Ball Tour this summer. The event will be held on Wednesday, June 11 and seeks to highlight and add to the growing popularity of Minnesota Amateur (Town Team) Baseball. In the all-day feature, Fox 9 will highlight city attractions and businesses as part of its featured programming throughout the day during the morning, noon, and evening news broadcasts. The Joe Schleper Stadium Fund (JSSF) Committee has been working closely with representatives from both KMSP/Fox 9 and the city to plan a fun-filled and busy day in Shakopee.
Admission to the Town Ball Tour will be FREE, as the JSSF Committee is looking to pack the stadium with fans to show off to the Fox 9 audience the great community we have to offer in Shakopee. Only seven communities are chosen each summer for the Fox 9 Town Ball Tour. Each town puts together features and events to highlight their ball teams and their city, with most offering free admission to the events. Get out and enjoy an exciting day in town, and pack Joe Schleper Baseball Stadium for the main events, beginning with the evening broadcasts at 5 and 6 p.m., along with the ballgame and the 9 and 10 p.m. newscasts broadcast live on Fox News, Channel 9.
While town team baseball has been around for over 100 years in Minnesota, the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Association has seen a recent uptick in its popularity—partially due to the high cost of attending professional baseball games. It’s no secret that the Fox 9 Town Ball Tour and its all-day showcase of local stadiums and town baseball teams has helped fuel the increase in attendance at ballparks around Minnesota. Minnesota has been a hotbed of talent for amateur baseball, which features a cross-section of players not only from high school and college but also talented “middle-aged” players. There are also future and former Major League Baseball players who play on many of these teams, and it’s not unlikely to see a few talented players in their 50s (or older!) who are still loving the game and playing it at a high level.
The Minnesota Amateur Baseball League has also chosen Joe Schleper Stadium in Shakopee as one of its host sites for the 2026 Minnesota Amateur Baseball State Tournament. Shakopee and New Prague will be the main tournament co-hosts, along with Jordan and Chaska filling in as the third and fourth sites under the newer tournament format, with three classes—Class A, B, and C—all competing throughout the three-weekend tourney. The tournament often draws 25,000–30,000 fans over the three weekends in August and September each year! That’s a sharp increase from tourneys held a decade or two ago, before the word began to spread (through media avenues such as FOX 9) about the high level of play and low cost to attend these highly competitive ballgames with familiar, talented hometown players. No players are paid to play, and each town has to stay within a perimeter of its hometown for signing players—which creates a hometown feel that lures local fans and supports the “town ball” aura in small, medium, and larger communities that feature teams like the Shakopee Indians and Shakopee Coyotes. The community is fortunate enough to have enough talent to support two town teams.
As for the Town Ball Tour in Shakopee, an itinerary of exciting events is currently being finalized. Plans are in the works to visit some area restaurants during the morning and noontime newscasts, with local baseball personnel being interviewed during those segments. Also to be featured will be the newly updated SandVenture Water Park and Tommy’s Malt Shop. Rumor has it that Fox 9 weatherman Ian Leonard might even get talked into going down the waterslide—weather permitting, of course!
The noontime festivities will be held at Shakopee Bowl, featuring wiffleball on both of the entertainment center’s turf fields, along with a raffle drawing scheduled at 12:00 p.m., with cash prizes totaling $15,000! The raffle will benefit a phenomenal new patio viewing area that has just been constructed at Joe Schleper Baseball Stadium as part of a privately funded improvement drive. The Fox 9 News Team will be utilizing the new patio during their newscasts. A limited number of raffle tickets ($100.00 each) still remain and are currently available from local ball clubs through Tuesday, with ticket and drawing information posted on user groups’ social media platforms. All baseball teams utilizing the ballpark are participating in the ticket sales, with 100% going back into the new ballpark improvements. The Shakopee Sabers (high school team), along with the Shakopee Indians and Shakopee Coyotes (Shakopee’s townball teams), and the Shakopee Legion baseball teams all have tickets currently available, as do all members of the stadium committee. A maximum of 350 tickets will be sold.
Later Wednesday afternoon and evening festivities will feature youth baseball contests at all fields at Tahpah Park, a Shakopee Post 2 Legion ballgame beginning at 4:00 p.m., and finishing off with the featured Town Ball Tour game, with the Shakopee Indians taking on the St. Patrick Irish (preceded by Shakopee’s Color Guard/National Anthem). The Fox 9 News crew will be broadcasting numerous segments throughout their 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m. newscasts, with interviews being conducted during those segments.
As an added attraction, Fox 9 will also be providing an ice cream truck and giving away free ice cream to the Shakopee Youth Baseball teams who are participating and attending the event (players must be in uniform!).
Along with all the other features and activities throughout the day, the CAP Agency of Shakopee will have a booth set up just outside the main entrance to the stadium to help highlight their organization. They will be accepting donations of non-perishable items to help support the great work they do within our community. Look for “The Joe Mobile,” which is named after Joe Vaughan, who passed away unexpectedly several years ago, but was a huge part of Shakopee’s CAP Agency and was also a former town team player for the Shakopee Indians.
The Fox 9 Town Ball Tour will then continue on to other host communities, with Avon, Brownton, Anoka, Springfield, and Princeton finishing off the 2025 tour.
