Before Las Vegas Sports Explosion, There Was Baseball In Downtown, Then Downtown Summerlin
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
In Las Vegas, they came to the pleasant baseball stadium in Summerlin wearing varied team jerseys and for different reasons.
It’s Opening Day at Las Vegas Ballpark, the $150 million venue with the $80 million naming rights deal paid for by the local Las Vegas tourism agency, the public LVCVA. It’s the 41st season of pro baseball in Sin City.
On Friday, the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletes announced attendance was 9,742 and naturally a healthy number of fans wore Aviators logo caps and shirts. But fans in this transient market were seen with the marks of the Mariners, Marlins, Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Padres and even the NFL Chiefs.
In a dynamic sports market with so major league teams and new ones, the granddaddy of Las Vegas teams is the ballclub that played in downtown Cashman Field before its current owner, Summerlin master developer Howard Hughes Corporation, built this stadium next-door to the Vegas Golden Knights headquarters in the Downtown Summerlin shopping district.
Howard Hughes rebranded the 51s into the Aviators because their company name traces back to a guy who was an aviator.
That’s Las Vegas for you — team names don’t necessarily have anything to do with Las Vegas or Nevada. Take the Golden Knights — that name is a derivative of owner Bill Foley’s roots as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where the sports teams were the Black Knights. The VGK’s minor league affiliate in Henderson are the Silver Knights and the indoor football league team are the Knight Hawks.
The NFL Las Vegas Raiders are a team that came to Nevada with their name intact and the same is planned for the MLB Athletics, which plans to build a $1.5 billion domed stadium on the Strip by 2028.
The Aviators’ ballpark is comfortable. It might not have that romantic baseball character that some ballparks have, but it’s a Howard Hughes Corp. property and that means the venue will be comfortable, corporate and inoffensive.
Baseball games are a safe haven for so many.
It’s a place where parents can take their kids and get their faces’ painted by Marion on the main concourse on the first base side of the stadium.
There are dudes and their girlfriends. Some dudes are drinking beers with other dudes. And then there are dudes at the ballpark just by themselves holding baseball gloves and a wish to catch a foul ball.
It’s a place where you can buy nachos in a plastic batting helmet and then wash out the logo head covering so that you can wear it.
It’s a weird situation for the Aviators players, who are trying to make The Show — the big leagues that are the Oakland Athletics.
The A’s say they are leaving Oakland to build a stadium at Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, which means there will be an unofficial sports district in the Strip corridor that includes an NHL arena (T-Mobile Arena, built 2016), NFL stadium (Allegiant Stadium, built 2020) and Athletics stadium, planned for 2028). Arena builder Tim Leiweke also wants to start building an NBA arena at Las Vegas Boulevard and Blue Diamond Road during the next year.
The Aviators players, if promoted to the A’s, would be playing in a cavernous Coliseum that is expected to draw the fewest fans in the majors in 2024. A’s execs are already thinking about resettling in Las Vegas with $200,000 spent on youth baseball in Nevada and stadium models displayed at the Aviators’ ballpark two weeks ago.
For the record, the Aviators Friday evening lost to the Reno Aces by a score of 4-2 as the Las Vegas Nine could manage only three hits in a game that lasted 2 hours and 22 minutes after the first pitch was tossed at 7:11PM.
On Saturday, the weather turned downright nasty, with cold air and rain making Summerlin feel like Seattle and Portland. The tarp was still on the field at 2 PM. If the game is rained out, there’s always a game scheduled for 12 noon.
