What is Scottsdale Stadium?
It’s the ballpark at Osborn Road and Drinkwater Boulevard, at the south end of Old Town. From the outside it’s a low wall of red brick and green steel. For five weeks a year it’s the busiest place in Scottsdale.
The San Francisco Giants have held spring training here every year since 1984. The current stadium opened on March 12, 1992. It was designed by HOK Sport of Kansas City, the firm that designed Baltimore’s Camden Yards, and built for about $7 million with room for about 12,000. That’s why it looks like a small, old-fashioned ballpark and not a 1990s concrete bowl. Before it there was a wooden park on the same ground, which volunteers built in 1955 and where the Baltimore Orioles started big-league spring training in Scottsdale in 1956.
The city owns the stadium and has rebuilt it in stages. A $23.1 million renovation in 2006 added a clubhouse, a team store, the Charro Pavilion and practice fields. A rebuild of about $50 million, finished for spring 2020, added a new clubhouse and event center, wider concourses and a new entrance. The Giants’ commitment runs through 2044. The spring training guide covers the season, and our lexicon entry on the Giants covers why a San Francisco team is Scottsdale’s team every March.
How to do a game here
Walk or bike in. This is the only Cactus League park in a real downtown, so use that. The bars and restaurants of Old Town are two blocks away, the Arizona Canal path is close, and the free downtown garages a few blocks north are an easy walk. The lots right by the stadium fill first and empty last.
Go midweek. Giants weekends, and anything against the Dodgers, sell out and cost like regular-season baseball. A Tuesday afternoon game in early March is cheaper, less crowded and the same sunshine. Get there when the gates open and watch batting practice from the baselines, which is the best time for autographs. Then move to the lawn. Bring a hat and sunscreen, because most of the lawn is in full sun.
Know the corners. The Charro Lodge in right field, expanded in the 2020 rebuild, is what one spring training guide calls “one of the hottest tickets in all of spring training.” The left field berm, rebuilt for $9.2 million in 2024, added grass seating, a shaded patio and trees. Look at the brick arcade for Homeplates (1997), a public art piece by Craig Smith and Dan Collins that puts nine baseball symbols in the frieze, one for each inning. Our Left Field Day Park guide has more on the art.
Come back in the fall. The Arizona Fall League sends top minor-league prospects to the Valley every October and November, and the Scottsdale Scorpions have played here since 1992. Tickets are cheap, crowds are small, and the league holds its championship game here at the end of November. See the Fall League guide.
Eat in Old Town. Stadium food is fine. The Pink Pony on Scottsdale Road has been the players’ bar since the 1950s, and the rest of the district is within a few minutes’ walk. For a full day plan, read our spring training field manual.
A ballpark built by volunteers
Scottsdale was a town of a few thousand people in 1955 when the volunteer Scottsdale Baseball Club built a 3,000-seat wooden stadium at Osborn and Drinkwater, between June and October. It hosted its first exhibition game on November 20, 1955, and in March 1956 the Baltimore Orioles opened spring camp there. The Boston Red Sox followed from 1959 to 1965, which put Ted Williams in Scottsdale for the last springs of his career. After a year with no big-league tenant in 1966, the Scottsdale Charros landed the Chicago Cubs (1967–78), and the Oakland A’s trained here from 1979 to 1983. In the same years the Jaycees’ rodeo grounds, home of the Parada del Sol Rodeo from 1959 to 1984, sat nearby.
The Giants came in 1984, trading parks with the A’s. The Charros’ own history and the San Francisco Chronicle say 1982, and this site uses 1984, the date most accounts give. The old park then held about 4,700. Within a few years the city decided it needed a new one. Voters approved an $8.4 million bond on November 7, 1989, ground broke in April 1991, and the HOK stadium opened on March 12, 1992. That spring a pitcher, Matt Keough, was critically hurt by a foul ball in the dugout, and Wikipedia’s account notes that his life was saved in part because the hospital now called HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn is across the street.
Thirty years of renovations
The 1992 park also hosted the Phoenix Firebirds of the Pacific Coast League until 1997, when they left to make room for the Diamondbacks. The 2006 renovation, $23.1 million, added a new team store, a bigger clubhouse, a training room, a batting tunnel, a centerfield entrance, the Charro Pavilion and practice fields. In return the Giants extended their lease. That March the stadium hosted three World Baseball Classic games.
The biggest rebuild came in 2019–20. The city approved a design-build renovation in July 2019, reported at about $50 million. The city financed up to $35 million through hotel taxes and the Giants agreed to pay $15.1 million over 20 years. The work added a new clubhouse, an event center of more than 10,000 square feet on the Osborn Road side, wider concourses, new bleachers and standing room in right field, an expanded Charro Lodge and a new main entry. The Giants committed to the stadium through 2044, with two five-year options. Then in 2024 the city rebuilt the left field berm, and since 2025 that lawn has been a public park on non-event days.
Why it matters
Most spring training parks sit in a parking lot next to a freeway. Scottsdale’s sits where the town put it in 1955, a few blocks from the Civic Center and the bars, and the city has spent more than eighty million dollars on renovations since 2006 keeping it there. That’s why Scottsdale’s spring training feels like a neighborhood event: you can walk from coffee to batting practice to dinner without moving your car.