Desert Sun Stadium
Yuma, AZ
Review by Mike
Desert Sun Stadium was built in 1970 as the Spring Training home of the San Diego Padres. It served the Padres for 24 years before they moved to Peoria for the 1994 pre-season. Just a stone’s throw from Mexico and California, one wonders who the Padres played during their 24 springs in Yuma. It’s a long way to anywhere from here. They either played a lot of intrasquad games or endured a lot of long bus rides.
The Yuma Scorpions of the independent North American League played a few seasons here, but that would be the last hurrah for Desert Sun Stadium as a baseball venue. In 2015 it was converted into a soccer stadium. In fact, it still looks exactly like a baseball stadium, complete with an arcing outfield fence, except that the field is all grass with no infield or mound cut out. No additional stands were added to bisect the outfield and surround the soccer pitch.
The stadium itself is a low-key affair. The original, main grandstand sweeps from 1st base to 3rd base and is as basic as it gets. The seating is mostly all benches, with five rows of red, fixed back seating down near the field. The benches are red behind home plate and natural aluminum color everywhere else. An interesting feature of this stand is that it seems to be built on a concrete mound, with large rocks embedded in the concrete, reminiscent of Valley Strong Ballpark in Visalia, CA.
There is a triangular press box / concession building behind home plate that looks like one half of a Swiss chalet. The vertical face at the peak of the roof is a modest press box just above the last row, while on the other side, at ground level away from the field, is the concession stand. There are a series of steel girders laced around the main stand with fans to try to generate a bit of a breeze for the fans. If ever there was a stadium that could use a bit of a roof, this is it.
The end of the original, main stand is joined seamlessly to long erector set bleachers that extend all the way to each foul pole. The result is a low, sun-bleached stadium with a massive capacity of 7,500. While no longer technically a baseball stadium, it could easily be one again with the addition of an infield. Desert Sun Stadium is a no-frills venue that seems a pretty modest place to have hosted major league spring training for a quarter century. It certainly harkens back to another era, while still serving its community today.
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2026
302
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