Hello Friends!
Today I want to revisit a series I was doing a while back about stadiums. I've been reading the book From Bytown to the Big Leagues. 150 Years of Baseball in Ottawa
It struck me as odd how baseball never really took off in Ottawa like it did elsewhere in Ontario and Quebec.
The site I want to talk about today is Ottawa Stadium, built in 1993 for the Ottawa Lynx.
There were a few sites suggested for the park, but the spot above was chosen.
Almost as soon as the Lynx left in 2007, suggestions to replace the stadium were floated. They included a concert venue, a casino, A Convention Centre, or retail and office space.
Ultimately they decided to keep the stadium and renovate it.
The Ottawa Rapidz moved in for one season before declaring bankruptcy. Another team was set to replace them in the CanAm League but the team never got off the ground.
In 2009 talks were again floated to either dismantle the stadium or renovate it to be able to use it year round, including Winterlude, the Ottawa winter festival.
In 2010, the Intercounty Baseball League voted to have a team in Ottawa. That team, the Fat Cats, had to pay for other teams' accomodations due to the distance from the rest of the league (For example, Ottawa is about a four hour drive from Toronto) The team tried to get that reduced or changed but the league wouldn't change their terms. The lease of the stadium also jumped to an unreasonable amount.
Around the end of the Fat Cats, the city of Ottawa was trying to make the city and stadium attractive to a Double A Team.
Instead of getting a Double A team, they got a Can Am League team, the Ottawa Champions.
In 2020, the Can Am League merged with the Frontier League. That, plus the covid issues, meant Ottawa had no team in 2020.
The Frontier League ended up having a team in Ottawa, called the Titans. The Titans still play in the Frontier League today
So.. Who all played here??
Ottawa Lynx (IL) 1993-2007
Ottawa Rapidz (CAL) 2008
Ottawa Fat Cats (IBL) 2010-2012
Ottawa Champions (CAL) 2015-2019
Ottawa Titans (FL) 2022-present
The stadium had a number of names:
JetForm Park 1993-2002
Lynx Stadium 2002-2007
Ottawa Baseball Stadium 2008-2015
Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Park 2015-2021
Ottawa Stadium 2022-present
Obviously, this was not the first park used in Ottawa.. I think next time I do one of these, I might just look at the first park used for professional baseball in the Nation's Capital, Lansdowne Park.
Outside of Kingston, this is the Canadian city that I'm the most familiar with. I remember the Lynx well and our area has a few connections to them. It's too bad what MLB has done with the Milb franchises.
ReplyDeleteFrom the chapter on the Lynx in the book I'm reading, the chaos in the front office of the Expos permeated to Ottawa as well..
DeleteI'm still not quite over the fact Pawtucket lost the PawSox..
I was there long ago... 1994?... dont remember much about the stadium so thanks for doing this!
ReplyDeleteNo problem.. I eventually want to show all the stadia in Canada that held some sort of professional baseball.. Some of them will be tough to find..
DeleteI'm from Ottawa and was in high school in 1993 when the stadium opened. I remember applying for a job there (they had an open call for stadium cleaners, people to sell food, etc) and being discouraged when I showed up and hundreds of other people were lining up to submit their applications (I didn't get the job). My buddy ended up being a batboy for the Lynx (he got that job through a teacher in our high school who had some connection and I just missed the chance myself, which kind of haunted me for years.....)
ReplyDeleteI went to a few Lynx games there during the 90s. Its a nice stadium, but the location kind of sucks which might be why its never been succesful after the first couple of years (I later lived in Winnipeg, a smaller city but with a stadium in the perfect downtown location that did way better and I always draw comparisons between the two). The Expos leaving Montreal also had an impact on baseball popularity in Ottawa which might also explain the revolving door of teams that never catch on since the Lynx left.