Old Scottsdale ballpark hosted 5 big league teams over 35 years

A new Scottsdale Stadium opened in 1992 for the San Francisco Giants and it’s a beautiful, modern ballpark with more amenities and nearly four times as many seats for fans. It’s hard to believe the new stadium has been around 30 years, creating lasting memories of spring baseball for generations of fans. 

Still, there are tens of thousands of fans like me with cherished memories of the old Scottsdale Stadium, which played host to five different teams over 35 years, starting in 1956. It was built of concrete and steel with wood siding to make it fit with Scottsdale’s boast of being “The West’s Most Western Town.”

Ron Fimrite of Sports Illustrated described Scottsdale Stadium in a 1988 story for the magazine:

“The (Cactus League) ballparks are, for the most part, miniature masterworks of baseball architecture, relics from the classical period of the game. Scottsdale Stadium is no more of a “stadium,” in the current sense of the term, than the Old North Church is a cathedral. It seats just 4,721, and its green wooden stands are so close to the field you can hear the players chew their sunflower seeds.”

A scoreboard operator on a catwalk hung numbers each inning at old Scottsdale Stadium. He tried to keep track of balls and strikes by watching the plate umpire’s signals. Results were mixed. 

I remember when the stadium PA system failed and the plate umpire led the crowd in singing the national anthem a cappella. 

I recall the Ladies in Lavender smocks and Gentlemen in Blue from the Scottsdale Memorial Hospital Auxiliary ushering fans to their seats, and the host Scottsdale Charros hawking $1 programs? 

Bob Williams, a longtime PA announcer at both Scottsdale stadiums, remembers the old stadium’s tiny press box with broadcasters and sportswriters jammed together. It was so tight that Williams said he inadvertently knocked over Cubs announcer Harry Caray’s beer.

“Holy Cow, Bob! What are you doing?” Williams said, doing his imitation of Caray’s signature exclamation. 

Williams, the son of Milton Berle, said he made it right by taking Caray over to the Pink Pony steakhouse to buy him a beer and for a visit with owner Charlie Briley. That was the late 80s. 

In 1989, fans waved dollar bills at Oakland A’s outfielder Rickey Henderson after he signed a 4-year, $12 million contract, one of the richest to date. They chanted “Ric-key, Ric-key!” Henderson, one of the fastest baserunners in baseball history, took it in stride. 

I’ll never forget the bleacher bums in left field who gathered so close to a beer stand under the bleachers that they didn’t have to leave their seats to get another beer handed to them. 

Some of those “bro” types slept in a 1970s Plymouth convertible in the left-field parking lot, with “Ballpark Express” and a “No. 7” painted on the battered side of the car. 

Mostly I remember players at their friendliest, signing balls for kids. Giants first baseman Will Clark sent a bat to a young fan in the bleachers after Clark’s foul ball hit the kid.

The intimacy of the smaller ballpark will always stick with me. Plus, tickets were only $5 so you could have a hot dog for lunch, watch a few innings and go back to work. Or not. 

Peter Corbett is a former Scottsdale Progress city editor and Arizona Republic reporter who covered the business side of the Cactus League for more