Paterson Field is a baseball stadium in Montgomery, Alabama. The stadium has a maximum capacity of 7,000 people and was opened in 1949. Paterson Field has played host to, among other professional teams, the Montgomery Rebels, a AA-class minor-league team affiliated with the Detroit Tigers, and the Montgomery Wings, an independent minor-league team. The stadium is still in use today, having recently been used as the home field of Alabama State University, a Division I program that competes in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.A majority of seating inside Paterson Field is metallic bleachers with a few rows of box seats. Roof coverings shelter the three sections of the park behind home plate. The concourse is entirely covered, and situated below the seating. The concourse also provides no views of the playing field. Its location is in the downtown Montgomery area on Madison Avenue, near its intersection with Hall Street and in close proximity to Cramton Bowl. The stadium affords no view of downtown Montgomery to the large majority of fans in the seating inside the park.Soon after its construction, Paterson Field was the home of several Montgomery minor-league professional baseball teams. Chief among these was the 1965 - 80 incarnation of the Montgomery Rebels as a Detroit Tigers affiliate. During their 16 years in Montgomery, the Rebels won five Southern League championships as the Tigers developed the nucleus of a club that would win the 1984 World Series, and future MLB notables such as Jack Morris, Lou Whittaker, and Alan Trammell played under Paterson Field's lights before becoming big leaguers. The Rebels moved to Birmingham, Alabama, after the 1980 Southern League season, becoming the Birmingham Barons, while Paterson Field lay relatively dormant.
