What it is
Hohokam Stadium is the Athletics’ spring-training ballpark, on Center Street about a mile north of downtown Mesa. The current building dates to 1997, when the city replaced the 1976 original on an adjacent site with a 10,500-seat park, and was renovated again in 2014 and 2015 when the Chicago Cubs, who had played here since 1979, moved across town to Sloan Park and the A’s moved in from Phoenix Municipal Stadium. The field is named Dwight W. Patterson Field for the rancher who brought the Cubs to Mesa in 1952 and more or less invented the East Valley’s share of the Cactus League.
The stadium’s name is the Spanish-era spelling of the people who farmed this valley a thousand years ago and dug the canals Mesa still uses; the lexicon has the longer version. The ballpark itself is low and shaded, with a grandstand that wraps from first to third, a lawn in left, and a video board of 12 by 16 feet that is still the biggest in the Cactus League, which is the one place where Hohokam outdoes its glossier neighbor.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
For the baseball, honestly, and for the price. Scottsdale’s own parks are better-looking and closer, and our spring training guide says so. Hohokam is the ballpark you go to when you want to see a game on a Tuesday without planning it: tickets at the window, a seat behind the plate for the price of a lawn ticket elsewhere, a crowd of a few thousand, and the A’s farm system, which has usually been one of the more interesting in the league to watch in March. It is also where the Cubs’ best years in Arizona happened, and it still feels like it.
The practical version
Twenty-eight minutes from Old Town via the 101 and 202 to Country Club Drive, or east on McDowell and south on Center. Parking is in the stadium lots and cheap. The first-base side is the shade side. The A’s are confirmed here for 2026 (16 home games from February 22) and 2027 (15 home games from February 19), so there is no question about who you will see.
When to go
Late February through late March, like the rest of the Cactus League. The A’s typically open their Hohokam schedule the last weekend of February and close it the last week of March, with the usual mix of 1:05 PM starts and a handful of evening games. Weekday games are nearly empty by Cactus League standards; even the weekend games with the Cubs or the Giants, which are the two that draw, rarely sell out ahead.
Mornings at the Lew Wolff Training Complex, a mile south on Center at the old Fitch Park, are the other reason to come. Workouts in the second half of February and on game-day mornings are free, the fields are close to the fences, and this is the easiest autograph in Arizona.
What to do at the game
Sit behind the plate. There is no reason not to; the upper rows on the first-base side are shaded by the press box and cost less than a Scottsdale lawn ticket. Concessions are standard ballpark fare with a few Oakland and Bay Area nods, and the beer lines are short. The grandstand concourse runs the full width of the park, and the lawn in left is the quiet place for a family with a blanket.
Downtown Mesa before or after
Hohokam is a mile from downtown Mesa, which makes it the one Cactus League park where the pregame and postgame are a real main street rather than a parking lot. Worth Takeaway on Main Street does the pregame sandwich; Pete’s Fish & Chips at Main and Mesa Drive has been doing the postgame since 1947; Cider Corps on Robson pours the beer alternative. If you have the afternoon after an early game, the Arizona Museum of Natural History is two blocks from the light rail.
The story
The first Hohokam Stadium went up in 1976, east of the current site, and the Oakland A’s were its first tenants, for the springs of 1977 and 1978. Then the two franchises swapped cities: the A’s went to Scottsdale Stadium in 1979, and the Cubs, who had trained in Scottsdale since 1967, came home to Mesa, where Dwight Patterson and the HoHoKams boosters had first installed them in 1952. The Cubs stayed 35 years. Beer sales began in 1989, the field was named for Patterson in 1991, and in 1996 the old stadium was knocked down and replaced by the present 10,500-seat park on the lot next door, which opened as Hohokam Park in 1997.
The Cubs years here were the Cactus League’s attendance boom in one building: 171,681 fans over fifteen home games in 1999, a single-game league record of 12,906 in 2007, a season record of 203,105 in 2009. Arizona State played a season here in 2002 while its own stadium was rebuilt, and the park hosted the Western Athletic Conference tournament several times. When Mesa voters built the Cubs a new 15,000-seat park in 2014, the city renovated Hohokam and the former Fitch Park, with Populous as the designer, and the A’s left Phoenix Municipal Stadium after decades for a spring home that was, for once, newer than their regular-season one.
The Athletics’ move out of Oakland changed none of this. The club plays its regular seasons in West Sacramento until its Las Vegas ballpark is finished, and Mesa remains the spring base; the team published its 2027 Hohokam schedule in September 2026.
The Scottsdale connection
The A’s and the Cubs have each been Scottsdale’s team and Mesa’s team, and the swap in 1979 is the hinge. The Scottsdale Stadium guide tells the Osborn Road side of the story, from the Orioles in 1956 through the Cubs and the A’s to the Giants in 1984; this is the Center Street side. A Scottsdale visitor who catches the Giants at home and the A’s here has seen the two oldest active tenancies in the East Valley’s share of the league.
Getting there
The 101 south to the 202 east, exit Country Club Drive, south to Brown Road, east to Center Street; the stadium is on the left. Twenty-eight minutes from Old Town, thirty-five from the Camelback corridor, forty-five from North Scottsdale. The light rail’s Center/Main station in downtown Mesa is about a mile south of the park, a flat walk up Center Street if you come by rail from Tempe; our getting around note has the caveat that the rail does not reach Scottsdale itself.