Teams
Hi Corbett served as the spring training home of the Cleveland Indians from 1947 through 1992. Cleveland announced in 1990 that they would depart Tucson and the city tried to attract the Baltimore Orioles to move to Arizona. Parts of the 1989 movie Major League were filmed at Hi Corbett Field. This production used members of the University of Arizona baseball team as extras.
From 1993 to 2010, Hi Corbett was the pre-season home of the expansion Colorado Rockies, who moved into Hi Corbett with their inaugural spring training.
Hi Corbett is also closely associated with minor league baseball. Aside from the Lizards, the Tucson Cowboys (Class C; Arizona-Texas League) played at Hi Corbett intermittently from the late 1930s until 1958. The original Tucson Toros (Class AAA; Pacific Coast League) played there from their inception in 1969 until 1997 (see below for new Toros team). The largest Tucson Toros crowd at Hi Corbett was 12,863 on May 17, 1981 against Salt Lake City. In 1997, the Toros essentially exchanged ownership and franchises with the nearby Phoenix Firebirds, so that the ex-Toros played in Scottsdale Stadium as the Firebirds, and the ex-Firebirds played at Hi Corbett as the Toros. In 1998 the Phoenix team relocated to Fresno, California and was renamed the Fresno Grizzlies, and the Tucson Toros became the Tucson Sidewinders, and played in the new Tucson Electric Park, which was renamed in January 2011 to Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium.
The Arizona Fall League, a short season league for major league prospects, fielded a team at Hi Corbett in 1993 and 1994, known as the Tucson Javelinas. The team relocated to Peoria, Arizona in 1995 (becoming the Peoria Javelinas) to limit travel distances to the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area.
USA Baseball was headquartered at Hi Corbett from 1997 to 2003.
From 2004 to 2007 Hi Corbett was home to the Arizona Heat women's professional softball team.
In addition to the large number of visiting teams that have appeared there as part of regular league play, Hi Corbett has hosted exhibition games featuring the Colorado Silver Bullets, Houston Astros and University of Arizona, among others. Baseball Hall of Fame members who played at Hi Corbett include Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ted Williams and many others.
On May 21, 2009, the Tucson Toros returned to Hi Corbett Field after an eleven-year absence, playing as an Independent Professional Baseball League team of the Golden Baseball League. Hi Corbett Field was the home stadium of the Toros until they were evicted by the city of Tucson in 2011 before they could join the North American League.
In 2012, the ballpark became the new home of the University of Arizona Wildcats baseball team. Through the first three-game series of the season against North Dakota State, the attendance at the stadium was a total of 8,870, which was nearly 1/4th of the total home attendance for the Wildcats' previous season at Sancet Stadium. The park hosted both an NCAA Regional and Super Regional, as Arizona won both to advance to the 2012 College World Series. The relocation of the Wildcat baseball program to Hi Corbett has been noted as a major factor in the team's successful 2012 season.
Read more about this topic: Hi Corbett Field
Famous quotes containing the word teams:
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)