Pro Baseball Returns To Las Vegas Tuesday With Aviators’ Opening Night Win Before 8,475
Story by Alan Snel Photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell
They get to eat a mountain of nachos out of plastic baseball batting helmet, wear an Oakland Athletics yellow number 24 Rickey Henderson baseball jersey and treasure a free magnetic 2022 Las Vegas Aviators season schedule for their refrigerators.
Yes, professional baseball in Las Vegas returned for its opening day in a suburban ball park on a balmy and breezy early April day.
Back in the good ol’, pre-pandemic days, Las Vegas Ballpark as it’s called under an $80 million naming rights deal with the public LVCVA tourism agency was leading the minor leagues in attendance. The Howard Hughes Corp.-owned ballpark in Downtown Summerlin is a comfortable to take in a ballgame.
The 10,000-seat ballpark was originally scheduled to host not one but two Big League Weekends in March when big league teams come to Summerlin to play preseason exhibition games. But it wasn’t COVID-19 that wiped out both weekends. It was another virus called labor squabbles between the team owners and the players that scrubbed the spring training games.
By the looks of Tuesday evening’s crowd at the ballpark of more than 8,000, people were eager to catch the Athletics’ Triple-A affiliate host the Reno Aces and drink beer, munch hot dogs and wipe out helmets’ worth of nachos.
It’s the 40th calendar year of pro ball in Las Vegas, where the team’s former field, downtown Cashman Field, now is the home pitch for the Las Vegas Lights of the United Soccer League.
The Reno team, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ affiliate, and the Aviators play the historic Pacific Coast League.
For the record. the Aviators defeated Reno, 3-2, with the announced attendance at 8,475
PSA
