Two MLB teams to play this season in minor league ballparks

[TheFugitive]

Spring Training 2025 is underway, and this year there will be not one but two major league franchises playing their seasons in minor league ballparks.

First the former Oakland Athletics, who have gotten approval to move to Las Vegas where a new retractable roof baseball stadium is being constructed on the site of the former Tropicana Casino. They are still clearing debris from the Tropicana demolition so the opening of the new ballpark is aways off.

Last year the Athletics played out their lease at the Oakland Coliseum, and they needed a place to play until their new stadium in Vegas is ready for occupancy.

The Athletics have decided to play in Sutter Health Park, a 14,000 stadium in Sacramento, California that is the home of the Sacramento River Cats, AAA farm team for the San Francisco Giants. The River Cats will still be playing there so this field is going to get a lot of use with either the Athletics or the River Cats playing a home game there nearly every day. 

Aside from wear and tear on the field surface one of the main issues they're likely to encounter is that Sacramento gets substantially hotter than the Bay Area 90 miles away.  Obviously this is an outdoor park with no roof, so some of the day games could be sweltering.

Also the new park in Vegas has encountered some construction delays so the Athletics could find themselves playing as many as THREE seasons in Sacramento.

At the other end of the country the Tampa Bay Rays were forced to scramble for a home stadium after Tropicana Field suffered serious damage in a hurricane a few months back.  Among other things the roof was ripped off, and various parts of the interior were flooded.  The Rays are looking to build a new ballpark anyway and there was some debate as to whether they should even bother fixing The Trop.  That work was just approved but for this season the Rays will be playing home games at Steinbrenner Field, an 11,000 seat ballpark in Tampa where the New York Yankees play spring training games and where the Yanks, Class A minor league affiliate calls home.  The Yankees have trained in Tampa for a long time, and it could be argued that there are many more Yankees fans there than Rays fans.

It is now estimated that repairs to Tropicana Field will be completed by the start of next season so the Rays should only have to spend one season as tenants of the Yankees.

[TheFugitive]

I did a little research and found that there have been several past instances of major league baseball teams having to play at least one season in a minor league ballpark.

When the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles in 1954 they moved into Memorial Stadium, which had been the home of the minor league version of the Orioles for over a decade.  Granted the stadium was radically expanded for them and it remained an MLB park for many years.

The Athletics spent the first 54 years of their history in Philadelphia before moving to Kansas City in 1955.  They moved into Kansas City Municipal Stadium which had been the home field for the Double-A Kansas City Blues.  The stadium was expanded in stages from a capacity of 17,000 to 35,000.  The Athletics would move again in 1968 to Oakland, and are on the move again to Las Vegas as soon as a stadium is built there.  So it appears that the Athletics are the only MLB team to play home seasons in TWO different minor league stadiums.  The expansion Kansas City Royals would move into Municipal Stadium in 1969 and play a few seasons there until Kauffman Stadium was built.

When the New York Baseball Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958 they played their first two seasons in the home park of the Triple-A San Francisco Seals while Candlestick Park was under construction.  They moved from New York in tandem with the Brooklyn/LA Dodgers.  The Dodgers considered several minor league parks in Los Angeles as temporary homes before deciding to play their first few seasons in the LA Coliseum.  This allowed seating for up to 90,000 but in a very weird field configuration as it was a football stadium.

When the LA Angels entered the American League as an expansion team in 1961 they played their first season in Los Angeles' Wrigley Field, which had been home to the Triple-A farm team of the Chicago Cubs.  Like the Cubs and the main Wrigley Field in Chicago it was owned by the Wrigley Family, and had the same ivy-covered outfield wall.  After one season the Angels found it to be too small with too many parking issues, so they moved into Dodger Stadium and shared it with the Dodgers for several seasons.  You can see Wrigley Field in several old movies and TV shows, most notably in the episode of The Munsters where Herman gets a tryout with the Dodgers.

When Seattle was granted an American League expansion team with the 1969 Seattle Pilots they played that season in Sicks Stadium, a minor league ballpark seating 16,000.  It was supposed to be expanded to seat 35,000, but a combination of labor problems and bad weather kept that project from ever being completed.  Setting a record for rainouts in rainy Seattle and losing buckets of money the Pilots were sold after their first season and moved to Milwaukee, where they became the Brewers.  A Lowes store now occupies the site of Sicks Stadium.  MLB returned in 1976 when the Mariners moved into the brand new Kingdome.

When the Montreal Expos played their last two seasons in Canada in 2003 and 2004 they were owned by Major League Baseball which was trying to sell them.  MLB decided to experiment by moving 43 home games over two seasons to Hiram Bithorn Stadium, a minor league park in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  While the Expos were well-received there in 2005 they were sold and moved to Washington, DC, becoming the Nationals.

During the COVID pandemic seasons of 2020 and 2021 the Toronto Blue Jays were prevented from playing home games in Canada due to very severe COVID travel and quarantine restrictions that were imposed by the Canadian Government. They began 2020 playing home games in their Spring Training facility in Clearwater, Florida, and later moved games to Sahlen Field, home of their Triple-A minor league affiliate in Buffalo, New York. Logistically this worked out well as Buffalo is right on the border.  Midway through the 2021 season the Canadian government eased COVID restrictions and the Blue Jays moved back into Toronto's Rogers Centre.  (Interestingly the Pittsburgh Pirates had agreed to allow the Jays to share PNC Park in Pittsburgh with them, but this arrangement was vetoed by Pennsylvania's then-health secretary who somehow felt this would present some sort of public health threat, even though the Pirates continued to play there without a crowd).  While the Jays were playing in Buffalo their AAA farm team moved their home games to Trenton, New Jersey.

And a few with an asterisk.

Milwaukee County Stadium was under construction and due to open in 1953.  It was intended to be the home of the Triple-A Milwaukee Brewers, at least until MLB could be convinced to expand there.  However, the Boston Braves were given permission to move into County Stadium as soon as it opened, so it never actually saw service as a minor league park.  The Braves stayed until 1966 before moving to Atlanta.  In 1970 the Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee after one disastrous season in Seattle and became the Brewers.  They played at County Stadium until 2000 (one season longer than expected due to a tragic and fatal crane accident that delayed the construction of Miller Park).

The Braves were actually supposed to play the 1965 season in Atlanta in the newly constructed Fulton County Stadium, but a court injunction forced them to remain in Milwaukee and play one more season there.  Atlanta had long had a minor league team named the Atlanta Crackers, and they moved into the big major league stadium and played their final season there before the Braves finally arrived in 1966.  So in this instance a minor league team had to play one season in a major league stadium.  And the Braves were the only team to play in two minor league stadiums with an asterisk.  And County Stadium had it's time as a major league stadium extended by one season, twice, due to unforeseen events.

Parc Jarry in Montreal was constructed in 1960 in a bid to keep the city's Triple-A baseball team, the Montreal Royals, in town. They had threatened to leave due to dissatisfaction with an aging stadium.  Despite that effort the Royals moved to Syracuse, New York anyway.  The expansion Montreal Expos moved into Parc Jarry in 1969 and played several seasons there.  So it was constructed as a minor league park, but never hosted any actual minor league teams.

And here's the weird one.  In 1960 Houston was given an expansion National League franchise, initially named the Colt 45's.  The Astrodome was already greenlit and construction was underway, but being as it was such an innovative stadium it would take several years to build.  So the City of Houston threw up a temporary erector set stadium right next to the site of the Astrodome where the Colt 45's played until 1965 (subsequently changing their name to the Astros).  That stadium then sat vacant as a storage area until the early 70's when it was disassembled, bolt-by-bolt, and shipped off to Mexico where it had been sold to a minor league team there.  The Mexican minor league team reassembled the stadium and played in it until 1981 when it was again sold, again disassembled, and again reassembled in another Mexican city where it was further used to host minor league baseball. In the late 80's a third attempt was made to sell and move the stadium, but this time it was discovered that rust and decay had made another move impossible.  So this was a major league stadium that was disassembled and moved, twice, to host minor league games.

[TheFugitive]

A couple more updates.

I had missed the Texas Rangers, who were previously the Washington Senators. They moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 1972 and played in what was known as Turnpike Stadium, a 10,000 seat minor-league ballpark located along the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike about halfway between those cities. Turnpike Stadium was designed to be quickly expandable in order to attract a major-league franchise, and it was expanded in stages to an ultimate capacity of 43.000.  It was then renamed Arlington Stadium and the Rangers played home games there until 1994.

In 1993 the Bowie Baysox were created as the new AA-Eastern League farm team for the Baltimore Orioles.  Bowie, Maryland is in the vicinity of Annapolis, east of D.C.  The new ballpark in Bowie could not be completed in time so the team played their inaugural season in Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, which the Orioles had vacated one year earlier when they moved to Camden Yards.  For one season both the Orioles and their Double-A farm team played in Baltimore City.  This season the team is being rebranded as the Chesapeake Baysox.