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Dudy Noble Field at Polk-Dement Stadium is a baseball stadium on the Mississippi State University campus, located outside Starkville’s municipal boundaries. The Mississippi State Bulldogs baseball team calls it home. Southeastern Conference tournaments, NCAA Regional and Super Regional Championships have all been held at DNF-PDS, which also owns the NCAA on-campus single-game attendance record of 15,586. The Left Field Lounge is well-known.
History
Mississippi State has been playing baseball at the same stadium site for 50 years, dating back to a 5–3 triumph over Illinois Wesleyan on April 3, 1967.
Tom D’Armi, the main assistant coach to former Bulldog skipper Paul Gregory, was instrumental in the development of what is now one of collegiate baseball’s premier facilities. When the tin-roofed grandstand and bleachers with a capacity of more than 2,000 people were relocated to the current stadium location in the mid-1960s, it fell to D’Armi to “construct” the new field. D’Armi was in charge of bringing in and leveling topsoil, planting and caring for the grass, constructing the bullpens, installing signage on the outfield fence, and planting the cedar trees beyond the outfield fence. The effort did not go unnoticed. The US Groundskeepers Association later named the field the finest kept sporting field in the country.
W.G. Yates & Sons of Philadelphia, Miss., completed the facility on time. The Bulldog Club, MSU’s sports fund-raising group, financed the building with a $2 million bonding program, with the rest coming from alumni and friends through the sale of $1,000, $500, and $250 chairback seats, honorary deeds to plots of Dudy Noble Field turf, and other miscellaneous gifts.
MSU alumni John Grisham wrote an introduction for the book Inside Dudy Noble, A Celebration of Mississippi State Baseball on his time at MSU and at the Left Field Lounge.
In recent years, the infield and sections of the adjacent outfield areas have been resodded, the infield soil has been redone, and the pitcher’s mound has been restored.
Prior to the 2002 season, the green padding on the stadium wall’s face was changed, and new flooring was laid in both the dugouts and the tunnels connecting to them. One of the numerous initiatives supported by the four-year-old MSU Dugout Club is a complete recarpeting of the Bulldog locker room, as well as enhanced lighting and new lockers.
A speaker system was erected near the concession stand area early in the 2004 season, and a new state-of-the-art scoreboard/message center was installed beyond the previous scoreboard in the middle of the season.
The construction of wrought iron fences and gates beneath the grandstand began during the final week of the 2004 home season.
Additional stadium upgrades are in the works as part of Mississippi State’s commitment to keep Dudy Noble Field, Polk–DeMent Stadium as the ultimate collegiate ballpark for both players and fans.
In a victory over the Clemson Tigers in 2007, Dudy Noble drew the highest crowd in super regional history, 13,715 fans, to send the Bulldogs to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
Following the 2008 season, a new bigger Hi-Def video board and a covering for the rear of the scoreboard, which displays the current year’s baseball schedule, replaced the 4-year-old smaller screen. All of the out-of-date drainage and pump systems beneath the field, as well as all of the grass on the field, are scheduled to be replaced during the summer of 2009.
In March 2013, Dudy Noble introduced dawgsnax.com, new mobile concessions ordering service that offers in-seat food delivery to spectators in the grandstand seating area.
Dudy Noble Field was substantially leveled in 2017 to make room for a brand-new Dudy Noble Field, which should be ready for the 2019 season. Because the upper level will not be completed, the 2018 season will be played at 3/4 capacity. The new administration has stated that they intend to enlarge the exits to accommodate those that arrive early.
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