The Sports Fan Project

With respect to Johnny Horton‘s 1960 hit song “North to Alaska,” my trip to the Last Frontier as part of the Around the World in 80 Sporting Events project was in search of friends, Midnight Sun Baseball, and – as it turned out – a statue of Dave Winfield, which was harder to find than that gold Horton sang of.

In some respect, this trip to Fairbanks for Event No. 21 of the project – watching the 120th Midnight Sun Game – was a return home for me.

As a young sports writer, I spent 13 months working at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner from 1993-94. My primary beat was the University of Alaska Nanook hockey team, but with a staff of just four, we pretty much did it all.

Some nights I’d be out covering high school sports others I’d be on the desk editing copy and building pages for the next morning’s paper and on those odd nights off you’d likely find me in my 1049 Blair Road garden level unit working on my NBA Jam video game skills in anticipation of future late-night showdowns with my fellow sports staffers, Dan or Josh.

It was a glorious year spent amid some of the most beautiful wilderness (outside the city limits, of course) one could ever imagine and I thank Carol, my wife of 30 years now, for telling me then there would be no “what ifs” and that if our relationship was meant to be well, then, several thousand miles between us wouldn’t matter.

So I had a great deal of anticipation leading up to this event, especially since the aforementioned Josh was planning on traveling up from Anchorage to take in the game with Tim, a Fairbanksan and another News-Miner alum, and I.

My Flight’s What!?!

^{The view out my seatmate’s window of the snowcapped mountains and glaciers Wrangell-Elias National Park and Preserve (AK) and Kluane National Park and Preserve (Yukon Territory). Fairbanks certainly embraces its athletes as evidenced by this greeting at its airport.}

Thanks to some rain of Biblical proportions all the way from Chicago to Ann Arbor, my dad and I didn’t walk through my door in Macomb, MI, until shortly before 9 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, having completed Events No. 19 and 20 in Omaha, NE, and Dyersville, IA, respectively. My flight to Fairbanks was scheduled to leave the next afternoon around 5 o’clock so this was already going to be a tight turnaround.

With that you can no doubt appreciate the way I felt when Delta Airlines texted early Thursday afternoon with a flight delay notification. We’d be an hour tardy pulling out of Detroit. A quick check of my connection in Salt Lake City informed me that I’d not be able to make boarding for the continuing flight to Fairbanks. No other Salt Lake to Fairbanks flights existed that night.

Ugh:-(

Less-than-eager to spend a night in the Salt Lake airport, I began frantically punching keys on my phone in a chat with a Delta agent. Was I able to get rebooked on the Friday, 6 a.m. flight to Seattle and then on to Fairbanks. After more back-and-forth than it probably should have taken, I was rebooked and scheduled to touchdown in Fairbanks in the noon hour local time.

The Midnight Sun Game’s first pitch would be but a mere 10 hours later.

Fortunately, it was smooth sailing between Detroit and Seattle and again from Seattle to Fairbanks. I even managed to score a 15-minute catnap in Tim’s spare room before we loaded up and headed out for the game. Those 15 minutes were, beyond another 10-15 minute eye close during my flights, the only sleep I’d enjoy for 26-plus hours.

You can read a more detailed and real-time report of this experience here.

What Exactly is the Midnight Sun Game?

It’s a fair question and one I’ll try to provide the shortest summary possible.

While Fairbanks is not far enough north to never see sunset during the summer months, it is far enough north where it never gets fully dark.

Near the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere) sunset in Fairbanks is at 12:47 a.m. Sunrise is at 2:57 a.m. Factoring in dusk and dawn there is enough daylight to do just about anything including – it turns out – play a baseball game.

What began as a bar bet (but of course it did!) near the turn of the 20th Century when the Gold Rush was a very real thing has became an annual event.

Since 1960, the Alaska Goldpanners (Fairbanks’ collegiate summer team) have hosted the game on or around the Summer Solstice. The game begins at 10 p.m. local time, there is a pause around midnight for a ceremony that features the singing of “Alaska Flag” – the state song – and, most importantly, no artificial lights are used.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Artificial lighting is strictly prohibited for the Midnight Sun Game. The other 25 or more home games each season – no matter the start time – turning on the light towers isn’t even a second thought. For this annual event – that was begun under the premise of no extra lighting – it sounds as though anyone going near the power switch risks losing an appendage.

Bucket List Item for Many

I wasn’t the only crazy person to travel thousands of miles to see the Panners host the Anchorage Glacier Pilots.

As I waited in the merchandise line, I chatted up a fella who’d just gotten in that morning from the Tampa area and was heading back the next day! Staff from the New York Times was in attendance, ESPN was in the house as well and planned a feature on the game, and I saw more than a few Baseball Bucket List t-shirts walking about the stadium.

I recall it being a big to-do when I lived there during the summer of 1994, but I’m not sure I recall it being nearly as popular as it seems to be these days. Companies who organize baseball stadium tours frequently include this game on their annual schedules.

Shoot, I secured my four reserved seats behind Growden Memorial Park‘s homeplate on December 2, 2024 (the day tickets went on sale), when the daytime high temperature in Fairbanks was 1-degree above zero. And, yes, you need to distinguish above or below zero, because the overnight low was 28-degrees below zero. That’s not a windchill or a feels like, that’s just your standard 28-below.

And, judging by the walk up crowd who hoped to score tickets the evening of (see photo above), the popularity of this event among the locals and those omnipresent summer vacationers has not waned in the least.

About Growden Memorial Park

^{Clockwise from upper left, a view of the field from behind firstbase; the view from my seat as the game concludes at 12:40 a.m.; action from the top of the eighth inning; the view from the temporary bleachers down the rightfield line postgame; the Goldpanners’ bullpen; the plaque honoring the Growden Family for whom the facility is named.}

I remembered Growden being rather downtrodden when I was there a few times in 1994. The years – as they say – have not been kind. To be fair, the current management of the Goldpanners – led by John Lohrke have invested quite a bit in improving the playing surface and the clubhouse. The venue also was placed on the National Register of Historic Places earlier this year.

That said, when a facility gets used only about two months a year, sits dormant for much of the rest of the time, including months on end in sub-freezing – and even plenty of sub-zero – weather, it’s going to show some wear.

The infield is an artificial surface while the outfield is natural grass and the dugouts are snug, to say the least.

There’s seating for 3,500 for most games, but for the annual Midnight Sun shindig additional bleachers are set up to bring capacity to closer to 5,200.

Where’s Dave Winfield!?!

Then a Minnesota Golden Gophers’ pitcher, future Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield played a couple of seasons in Fairbanks in 1971 and 1972. While up north and out of the watchful eyes of his college coaches, the story goes, Winfield worked on his hitting that second season and was more of a 2-way player than he’d been in the Twin Cities or even as a Goldpanner in 1971.

The story goes that in his first at bat against visiting Grand Junction, CO, Winfield belted a mammoth grand slam home run that either (depending upon the storyteller and how many adult beverages they’ve consumed) landed on the Fairbanks Curling Club’s roof across Second Avenue, hit the Curling Club’s outer wall on the fly and bounced back into Second Avenue, or landed in the Curling Club parking lot and bounced onto the roof. No matter the storyteller or where fact and fiction intersect it was one of the mightiest blasts in the history of Growden.

In 2024, the Panners commemorated the moment by inviting Winfield back for a ceremony that unveiled a statue of the slugger to be known as the “Midnight Sun Moonshot.”

But where is this statue?

It became our quest – well, actually, Josh’s – to locate the “Midnight Sun Moonshot.”

We’d heard it was outside the Curling Club? No.

We’d heard it was outside Growden? No.

There was even some rumor circulating that it was inside the Curling Club? No.

Finally, we had Tim check with a friend of his in local government and we learned there was – allegedly – a dispute between the sculptor, the city, and Fairbanks Northstar Borough and the statue of Dave was in a garage somewhere.

Anyhow, we searched high and low for Dave Winfield – real or bronzed – and he did not exist at this year’s Midnight Sun Game.

Then, a few weeks later, Tim texted our group. The statue was out of storage and receiving a more permanent home where fans could see it and birds could do what, well, birds do … do;-)

^{The “Midnight Sun Moonshot” statue of Dave Winfield is moved into place in early July.}

This only further perturbed Josh when he saw that the permanent home was not on the Growden Memorial Park grounds but across the street at the Fairbanks Curling Club.

And then Josh passed along this nugget a week later from Winfield himself’s Facebook feed. The man returned to Fairbanks for a second consecutive year … this time for the dedication of the statue. To both Tim and Josh’s frustration, neither was in town when it occurred.

The Midnight Sun Game

After our big-game hunting ended without bagging any form of Dave Winfield, there was in fact a game to watch.

It wound up not being the Goldpanners’ night, losing to the Glacier Pilots, 7-2, in a game that was, meh.

Perhaps it was because the air was thick with wildfire smoke or that it was the first baseball game I’ve ever attended where ash was actually falling from the sky or maybe because the previous game I’d witnessed in its entirety was Gage Wood’s 19-strikeout, no-hitter for the Arkansas Razorbacks in the Men’s College World Series.

Whatever the reason, there was just never that leap out of your seat moment you hope to experience when over 5,000 fans gather to celebrate the Summer Solstice at 10 o’clock at night at the most unique baseball game played annually.

One thing’s for sure. It was a memorable experience, in oh so many ways, and an event that’s worthy of being on any sports fans list of must-attends.

And, good news, you shouldn’t have any issues finding Dave Winfield:-)

^{A few final sights, clockwise from upper left, two of the three generations of Boones to play in MLB donned a Goldpanners’ uniform; Tom Seaver is another Hall of Famer who played here; the view from our seats shortly after midnight (note no artificial lights); the three of us in the stands; the view of Growden Memorial Park from the Fairbanks Curling Club where Winfield’s homer allegedly landed; the Curling Club and a very hazy late-night sun.}