The best major league baseball games ever played outside of MLB parks

Fort Bragg! Hawaii! Williamsport! Iowa!

The Oakland A’s announced Thursday that they will play in a minor league ballpark in Sacramento (light the beam!) for the next three seasons as they wait for their new Las Vegas home to be built.

The park, which is the home field of the Sacramento River Cats (a AAA team), seats less than 11,000 people. Which shouldn’t be a problem for the A’s given that they are currently drawing somewhere around 7,000 people per game. (The A’s are a putrid 1-6.)

But, the move to a minor league park got me thinking: How many Major League teams have played in non-MLB parks — and for how long.

Answer: More than you think!

In fact, the A’s themselves started the 1996 season playing at Cashman Field in Las Vegas (irony!) because the Oakland Coliseum was under construction to accommodate the Oakland Raiders who were moving back into it. (The Raiders have since decamped for, wait for it, Las Vegas!) It remains the only Opening Day game ever played in a minor league park.

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The stadium sat less than 10,000 people. But, just more than 7,000 showed up on Opening Day to watch the Toronto Blue Jays beat the A’s 9-6. The start of the game was delayed due to an opening act by an Elvis impersonator. (Perfect!)

The team went 2-4 in their six-game Vegas experiment. The A’s pitchers were getting hit so hard (they gave up 13 home runs and 43 total runs in those 6 games) that the team bosses decided they needed to get back to the bigger dimensions of the Coliseum — even though construction work was ongoing. (They handed out hard hats to attendees of the first game back at the Coliseum!)

Despite that disaster, the following year Major League Baseball put on what they called the “Paradise Series” — a three-game matchup between the San Diego Padres and the St. Louis Cardinals in Hawaii.

The games were played in mid-April 1997 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. (The stadium was best known as the site of the NFL Pro Bowl — back when that actually existed.)

This, from the MLB website, is amazing about the logistics of getting to the games:

The Padres had played their last game in Pittsburgh that Wednesday and had to stop in San Diego on what ended up being more than a 12-hour trip.

“It seemed like we picked up half of San Diego on our plane and another plane,” said Bruce Bochy, the manager of the Padres at the time and now the skipper of the San Francisco Giants.

But once they got to the islands, they had two days off. That was a great thing for most of the players. Maybe it wasn't the best thing for pitcher Joey Hamilton, who got so sunburned that Bochy said he would have scratched him if it were his turn to pitch.

And when Bochy saw his former player, the late slugger Ken Caminiti, show up for batting practice in nothing but shorts, he told him, “You've got to put some clothes on.”

The games were very well attended — 37,000+ showed up for the Saturday doubleheader and more than 40,000 came through the turnstiles on Sunday. The Cardinals swept the doubleheader but the Padres won the following day 8-2.

The highlight of the weekend was an inside-the-park homerun hit by the Cardinals Ron Gant. “It's the only inside-the-park homer hit in Hawaii in Major League history,” Gant said. “I read that somewhere.”

That was an one-off for MLB — until 2016 when they decided to play a game on an active military base. Fort Bragg (in North Carolina) was the chosen location — and specifically Fort Bragg Field, a brand-new 12,500 seat ballpark on the base. (MLB built the field itself — specifically for the game — in just four months!)

The game was played July 3 between the Miami Marlins and the Atlanta Braves. The Marlins won 5-2.

“We're very interested in the concept of taking baseball to parts of the country that don't ordinarily see professional baseball,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said at the time. “I do think military bases provide a great venue.”

While MLB has not gone back to play at a military base in the intervening eight years, the league has made good on Manfred’s pledge to play more regular season games outside of MLB stadiums.

The best known of these is the so-called “Little League Classic,” which has been played six times since 2017 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the site of the Little League World Series.

The first game in 2017 was played at BB&T Ballpark (now Journey Bank Ballpark), which was the home of the amazingly-named Williamsburg Crosscutters. (It’s a summer-league team.)

It featured the Pittsburgh Pirates against the St. Louis Cardinals — in front of an announced crowd of 2,596(!). The Pirates won 6-3 in a game nationally televised on ESPN.

“It was almost just like fireworks,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said of the game. “Things kept happening -- things that made you smile, things that made you happy you were here, appreciative you had the opportunity to be a part of something that was happening for the first time ever.”

The game was such a hit that the MLB has kept doing it. In 2023, the Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies squared off, with the Nats winning 4-3 (Yes!).

As The Athletic wrote of the game:

Fans without tickets watched from the side of a nearby road and some even erected a makeshift, wooden grandstand beyond the center-field wall. The quieter environment allowed the fans to hear players calling for fly balls. Some of the Little Leaguers were so close to the action that they interacted with the big leaguers during the game.

This year’s game will be played on August 28 between the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers.

For my money, the best major league game not played in a major league park is the “Field of Dreams” game in Iowa.

The first game was played on August 12, 2021 at an 8,000 seat field built by MLB in Dyersville, Iowa — the site of the original “Field of Dreams.” (If I have to explain to you what the original “Field of Dreams” is, well, you probably haven’t gotten this far into this post.) It was the first major league game ever played in the state of Iowa.

(Sidebar: The “Field of Dreams” game was initially supposed to be played in 2020 but MLB canceled it due to the Covid-19 pandemic.)

As the MLB noted of the field:

The right field wall included windows to show the cornfields beyond the ballpark. Aspects of the ballpark's design paid homage to Chicago's Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox from 1910-1990, including the shape of the outfield and bullpens beyond the center field fence.

Kevin Costner, the star of “Field of Dreams,” led the teams onto the field — from the cornfields!!! — and spoke before the game started.

“Thirty years ago, on the other side of that corn, we filmed a movie that stood the test of time,” Costner said. “Tonight, thanks to that enduring impact that that little movie had, it's allowed us to come here again. But now, we're on a field that Major League Baseball made.”

The game was won by the Chicago White Sox 9-8 — on a walk-off homerun by Tim Anderson.

The following year, the Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs 4-2 in the “Field of Dreams” game.

Before the game, Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. — both former major leaguers — walked onto the field. “Hey, Dad, do you wanna have a catch?” Junior said. “I’d like that,” Senior said.

It’s getting dusty in here!

And then, that was it. There was no “Field of Dreams” game in 2023 and there won’t be one this year — as work on a permanent field continues. (The site where the 2021 and 2022 games were played was a temporary structure.). The field will be ready in 2025 but there’s been no announcement as to whether it will host a MLB game.

This summer, however, the MLB will travel to Alabama in June — to play a game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals in celebration of Juneteenth.

The June 20 game will be played at Rickwood Field, the former home of the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues and the oldest professional ballpark in America. (Willie Mays played briefly for the Black Barons in the late 1940s.)

“This opportunity to pay tribute to the Negro Leagues as the Giants and Cardinals play a regular season game at this iconic location is a great honor,” said Manfred, the MLB commissioner. “The legacy of the Negro Leagues and its greatest living player, Willie Mays, is one of excellence and perseverance. We look forward to sharing the stories of the Negro Leagues throughout this event next year.”