Monsters return
- Updated: April 11, 2024
After one season in Columbus, Ga., the Sunbelt League wood-bat team will return to Oxford’s Choccolocco Park for the 2024 season.
By Joe Medley
East Alabama Sports Today
OXFORD — Oxford will be calling all the Monsters again.
The Choccolocco Monsters will return to Choccolocco Park for the Sunbelt League team’s 2024 season after spending the 2023 season in Columbus, Ga., the team announced today.
The home opener will be June 7 at 7:05 pm at Choccolocco Park against the Brookhaven Bucks. The Monsters open the regular season on the road, against the Bucks, on June 3 and 5.
“The City of Oxford is excited to welcome the Monsters baseball team back to Choccolocco Park,” Oxford mayor Alton Craft said in a prepared statement. “Oxford is pleased our growing recreational park has been selected to host this sporting entertainment experience.
“We look forward to welcoming families from throughout the region to enjoy our facilities and hospitality as they come to support the team.”
The Monsters return after the Atlanta Braves moved their Double-A minor-league team from Mississippi to Columbus’ Golden Park.
Major League Baseball funds the Sunbelt League. By concept, players from within a 30-mile radius of home plate use the summer league as a chance to up their stock in the college game or up their professional draft stock by showing what they can do with, or against, wood bats.
Players on the Monsters’ 2022 roster included area high school graduates Sean Smith (Piedmont), Brennan McCullough (Oxford), Dawson Winningham (Oxford), Jake Spivey (Oxford), Austin Goode (Alexandria) and Brant Deerman (Piedmont).
The team finished 11-17.
In Columbus, the Monsters shared Golden Park with another Sunbelt League team, the Columbus Chatt-A-Hoots. The revamped park has 10 sky boxes.
The Monsters had hoped to at least have a lease agreement reflecting sky boxes they could sell.
“We can’t keep the same financial commitment on our end without the ability to make the money,” then-Monsters president and general manager Scott Brand said when the team announced its move to Columbus in 2023. “It’s not that we have to have them. We at least have to have a lease that reflects having them. “If I don’t have the ability to sell a sky box, $4,000 or $5,000 a box, I can’t make the money. I feel that should be part of a lease.”
Brand said he considered the city of Oxford to be “great to work with” and said the team and city shared a “great partnership.”
The team lost money in 2022, he said, a result management knew was possible. That the Monsters finished 11-17 impacted the team’s attendance.
“We had a game plan, provided we had a lease that would be more equitable,” Brand said. “We ran the numbers, and we had a better shot in Columbus to at least break even.”
He didn’t rule out a return to Oxford, and the Braves moving their Double-A team to Golden Park.
The Monsters changed their logo back to “Choccolocco Monsters” and posted it to their Facebook page on March 30. The team also changed its background picture back to a view of Choccolocco Park.
The Monsters confirmed their return to Oxford in a Tuesday news release.
“The Sunbelt Baseball League is excited to welcome the Monsters back to Oxford and beautiful Choccolocco Park,” SBL Commissioner Todd Pratt said in a statement. “I look forward to traveling to Oxford and enjoying the tremendous atmosphere at the park.”
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