Saw part of a game between the Raiders and the Bucaneers last night, and they were playing on a field that was joint-use - a football field and a basebnall diamond, with the yardage lines painted over the gravel for the base-lines.
How come? is that common in the U.S? I would have thought that the NFL teams were rich enough to have their own stadiums, or at least have artificial turf that covered over the baseball diamond entirely?
Some stadiums host both baseball and football.
Up until last year, San Diego’s stadium hosted the Chargers and the Padres. So while there might be a football game on Sunday, there could then be some baseball games over the next few days.
I’m not sure specifically in Tampa Bay or Oakland, but it certainly does happen. Though nowadays it seems every team is lobbying its respective city for their own unique single-use stadiums.
Yes it is fairly common. I don’t have an exact tally but I would guess that more NFL teams share stadiums either with a baseball team or another NFL team than don’t. This time of year until the World Series is over it isn’t uncommon to see football being played on a baseball diamond. My guess is they didn’t have time since the last baseball game to do a complete transition to all grass, or turf, or whatever they use there.
Not uncommon. But you wouldn’t mix artificial turf and natural turf on the same field-- that would be a terrible solution.
Actually, there aren’t that many cities with dual use stadiums nowadays - especially after the great, baseball field renaissance that we’ve just experienced.
The only cities left with dual use stadiums are Oakland (Raiders, A’s), Minnesota (Vikings, Twins) and Miami (Dolphins, Marlins).
There used to many more - Pittsburgh, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Houston, Anaheim, Cleveland, Kansas City and Washington. I’m probably missing a few.
Memorial Stadium in Baltimore was also dual-use, but wasn’t used that way after '83, when the Colts left. That was before my time, but I do vaguely remember seeing Orioles games there as a child, and later (after the O’s got their new ballpark) seeing the CFL No-Names and the NFL Ravens play there. It’s been torn down now. I don’t miss it!
You’re right. I forgot how many new stadiums have been built!
You saw last night (if you could see the Steelers-Dolphins game) why a dual-use stadium can be really, really bad in bad weather. As I said somewhere else, the infield was basically a big mud puddle.
For that matter, I’m not sure any dual-use stadium has ever been a very good stadium for either sport. The Vet was notorious, of course, for being an absolutely awful stadium, especially the playing field. Others, like the Astrodome, would work fine for football (if you don’t mind artifical turf and domes), but was pretty bad for baseball (baseball should not be played on artifical turf and in a dome).
Denver too when the Rockies first came to town. I saw a Rockies game at Mile High. It was a ridiculous looking place for baseball.
Haj
Isn’t the plural of stadium “stadia”?
Atlanta’s Braves and Falcons shared Atlanta Fulton Co. Stadium until the Dome was built (1994?) and the Olympics in 1996 (new baseball field).
(Mentioned before:) I used to see the Reds and the Bengals play in Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati (NOT at the same time).
It made sense at the time. Man, I LOVE Turner Field now! Great baseball park.
Busch Stadium in St. Louis used to be a dual-purpose stadium before the football Cardinals moved to Arizona. It’s now a baseball-only stadium (and scheduled for demolition next winter to make room for New Busch Stadium) following a 1996 remodel. They replaced the turf with real grass, put new scoreboards in and rebuilt portions of the stadium where it converted from baseball to football.
I’m really not a big fan of dual-purpose stadiums, mainly because they have to be built for football first, meaning they’re terrible baseball stadiums.
Both stadiums and stadia are correct in English.
Haj
Intersting - thanks, everyone.
I thought it must have been at Oakland, since most of the fans were wearing Raiders gear.
They had a name! perfectly fine one: the “Baltimore CFL Colts”. Then the old Colts got upset. Hey, they left town, why should they get to dictate the name of the new team?? So then they were the Baltimore Stallions. Stallions, better than Colts, of course - more mature and … well, you get it.
Now we just call them the Als. Or, since they’re playing here this weekend, “the Roughriders’ next victim.” (He said, with fingers crossed…)
In 1960 the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum hosted four football teams: USC, UCLA, the Chargers, and the Rams. And the LA Dodgers played baseball there that year as well.
What the field looked like by the end of the year must have been pretty frightening.
Eventually they were the Stallions, but for a while they were the Horse with No Name. I have a T-shirt from that period—it has the team logo, and the CFL logo, and the words “BALTIMORE FOOTBALL.”
Less appropriate. The horses that run in the Preakness are three-year-olds. But “Stallions” was better than nothing.
During the no-name interval, when the team took the field, the announcer would typically introduce them as “YOUR BALTIMORE CFL . . .” and the crowd would supply the missing monosyllable.
Alouette, gentille alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai . . . 
For out-of-country readers, that’s Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, dynamited last year in favor of 2 single-use stadiums. I thought it was an awesome place to watch football, bad for baseball.
The turf was awful, but that had nothing to do with being dual use; it was a municipally owned venue and the city bought awful turf… but paid millions to replace it just 3 seasons before knocking down the Vet! :smack:
I just glanced in at the Oakland Athletics game at the Coliseum. The field looks to be in horrible shape.
But the A’s always get the short end of the stick at that place. Al Davis could ask for just about anything and he would get it.
“Hey, could you guys put in a moat for me?”
“Sure Mr. Davis, how deep?”
“About 50 feet.”
“Would you like it to be unsightly?”
“Uglier the better!”
Kansas City hasn’t had dual-use since Municipal Stadium was torn down in 1972.
Both Yankee (Giants) and Shea (Jets) Stadiums were used for football as well as baseball until the MEadowlands Sports Complex was built.
The L. A. Coliseum played host to the Dodgers for a few years, and to the Rams and Raiders for many more.
Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was home to both the Braves and Falcons.
The Toronto Blue Jays shared the SkyDome with a pro football team, the Toronto Argonauts. They also shared their previous stadium, Exhibition Stadium.