What it is
Sloan Park is the Chicago Cubs’ spring-training ballpark, built in 2014 on what used to be cotton fields in west Mesa, where the 101 freeway meets the 202. It holds 15,000, which makes it the largest spring-training park in either league, and it is laid out as a small Wrigley Field: the outfield fences run 360 feet down the lines and 410 to center, exactly as they do on the North Side, with a brick-and-green color scheme and a hand-operated feel to the signage. Around it sit the Cubs’ practice fields and their year-round player-development complex, so the whole thing is a working baseball campus rather than a stadium that sleeps eleven months a year.
The Cubs have trained in Mesa since 1952, longer than any other franchise has stayed in one Arizona city, and the city built this park for 99 million dollars after voters approved it, mostly to stop the team from taking an offer in Florida. It opened as Cubs Park on February 12, 2014; the Sloan Valve Company bought the naming rights a year later.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale’s two ballparks, as our spring training guide explains, are a different product. Scottsdale Stadium is intimate and downtown; Salt River Fields is modern and polished. Sloan Park is loud. Cubs fans travel in a way no other fan base does, and on a Saturday in March this is the closest thing to a regular-season atmosphere you will find in the Cactus League: 15,000 people in blue, Chicago accents at every concession line, the seventh-inning stretch sung at volume. If you want the big-league version of spring, this is it.
The practical version
Twenty-two minutes from Old Town: the 101 south, the 202 east one exit, off at Dobson. Game-day parking in the ballpark lots is paid; the Mesa Riverview shopping center across Rio Salado Parkway is free and a five-minute walk over the bridge. Lawn tickets are the right buy and the first-base side is the shade side. Weekday games rarely sell out; Cubs weekends do, weeks ahead.
When to go
Late February through late March is the Cactus League, with most first pitches at 1:05 PM. Weekday games are the move, both for tickets and for the crowd size; a Tuesday here is a pleasant afternoon, a Saturday is an event. Rivalry days (the Giants, the Cardinals, the White Sox) price like real baseball and sell out first. Workouts start in mid-February and are free to watch on the practice fields behind the park.
October and November is the Arizona Fall League, when the Mesa Solar Sox, a team of top prospects from several organizations, play weekday afternoon and evening games here to crowds of a few hundred. It is the best baseball bargain in the Valley: a few dollars, any seat you want, and players who will be in the majors within two years.
What to do at the game
Get the lawn ticket and a blanket. The berm here is enormous, runs the whole outfield and faces the grandstand, so you see the crowd and the mountains. Food is a notch above most spring parks, with a Chicago-leaning concourse (the hot dogs are dragged through the garden, the Italian beef is a real one) and a line of local beer taps along the first-base side. The concourse circles the park, so you can walk a lap without losing the game.
With kids
This is the easiest Cactus League park for a family day. Riverview Park is next door, with a lake stocked for urban fishing, a splash pad and a playground; arrive an hour early, let them run, then walk in. Add it to the kids note list as the ballpark afternoon that comes with a playground. The Mesa Riverview shopping center across the road has the Bass Pro Shops, which is a free attraction in its own right, and the chain lunches.
The story
Mesa’s claim on the Cubs is the oldest in the Cactus League. In 1952 a rancher named Dwight Patterson and a group of local boosters, who called themselves the HoHoKams, convinced the Cubs to train in Mesa, and with the Giants, Indians and Orioles already in Arizona the sportswriters had a league and a name. The Cubs stayed through 1965, left for California and then for Scottsdale Stadium, where they trained from 1967 to 1978, and came back to Mesa in 1979. From then on they were at Hohokam Stadium, rebuilt in 1997, where they set Cactus League attendance records nobody else approached.
By 2010 the Cubs’ owners were being courted by Naples, Florida, and Mesa answered with a ballot measure: 99 million dollars for a new park and complex in the Riverview area, on the freeway, with practice fields and a year-round development center. Voters passed it, ground broke in July 2012, and the park opened on February 12, 2014, to the largest crowd the Cactus League had seen. The Cubs drew over 200,000 in each of the first six springs and set the single-team record of 250,893 in 2019. The Mountain West Conference moved its baseball tournament here in 2025.
The Scottsdale connection
The Cubs were Scottsdale’s team for twelve springs, and the memory lingers in the 1960s and 1970s pages of this site: Ernie Banks and Ferguson Jenkins on Osborn Road, the Pink Pony full of Cubs after the game. When they left for Mesa in 1979 the Oakland A’s took their place in Scottsdale, and when the A’s left in 1984 the Giants arrived and never moved. So the two Mesa ballparks and the one in Old Town are chapters of the same story, and a Scottsdale visitor who does all three in a week has read most of the Cactus League’s history in person.
Getting there
The 101 south from anywhere in Scottsdale to the 202 east, one exit to Dobson Road; the ballpark is on the right as you exit. Twenty-two minutes from Old Town, thirty from the Camelback-corridor resorts, forty from North Scottsdale. Valley Metro’s light rail does not reach the park; it is a car or rideshare trip, and our getting around note covers the surge-pricing math on a game day, which argues for driving and parking at Riverview.