A Ballyard in Sin City

Home plate entrance to Cashman Field, Jul-2008.

The seating bowl, which nowadays features a splash of color.

The view from the seats early in the game, with a few mountains barely visible.

Chronological Tour: Stop 71

• Location: Las Vegas Boulevard at Washington Avenue, Las Vegas, Nev. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1983
• Home team: Las Vegas Stars (1983-2000), 51s (2001-18), Pacific Coast League
• Capacity: 9,334

Rating: 2 baseballs

“Surely,” I had written in the late 1990s, “the choice was based on the many activities that can be experienced in the city (let’s see: you can lose your shirt at a casino or a sports book ...)” I also acknowledged the near impossibility of a rainout.

At least on my return trip to the park, I got a better feeling from it. Oh, it has quirks. It has the deepest center field in the minors, at 433 feet, as center field comes to a near point rather than being tapered. This helps counteract the prevailing winds, which do blow straight out from home plate. It also has less foul territory in left field than in right field, as a picnic area has been added down the third-base line.

As someone at my 2008 game commented, “This is one of the few things in Las Vegas that doesn’t feel like, well, Las Vegas.” If you were looking for a good time and were tired of the casinos, this wasn’t a bad place to visit. Just be prepared to sit outside in the heat for three hours. Fortunately, the sun goes down quickly, and (repeat after me) it’s a dry heat.

Someone told me at my 2008 game that the club was abandoning the 51s nickname at season’s end. The name was designed to evoke the legendary “Area 51” northwest of Las Vegas, and the club logos featured alien images and a typeface straight out of Star Trek. The team thought of reverting to being the Stars, the name they adopted on their 1983 arrival from Spokane, or that they might become the Aces, depending on the result of an online poll. As it happens, the Aces name was adopted by the team in Reno for 2009, and the Las Vegas club remained the 51s through the end of this park’s tenure in 2018.

For 2019, the team relocated to Downtown Summerlin, a fast-growing area on the west side of town (just outside city limits), and adopted a new nickname as well, becoming the Aviators. There was speculation that they could become the Silver Kings; Nevada is the Silver State, and as part of Minor League Baseball’s Copa de la Diversión initiative to reach out to Spanish speakers, the 51s became los Reyes de Plata (Silver Kings) for Tuesday games in 2018. But the club chose a different direction as it moved ten miles west.