Constellation Field

• Name: Constellation Field
• GPS-able Address: 1 Stadium Drive, Sugar Land, TX 77498
• Ballpark Owner: City of Sugar Land
• Architects: Barton Malow
• Groundbreaking: 4/5/2011
• Minor League Baseball Teams: Sugar Land Space Cowboys (AAA) 2022-present; Sugar Land Skeeters (AAA) 2021; Sugar Land Skeeters (ind) 2012-2020
• Class/League History: AAA/Pacific Coast League 2022-present; AAA/Triple-A West 2021; ind/Atlantic League 2012-2020
• First Professional Baseball Game: 4/26/2012; stadium debut of indy Skeeters
• Others Playing or Operating Here: None
• Previous Ballpark Names: None
• LF: 325 CF: 405 RF: 323
• Seats: 7,500
• Stated Capacity: 8,606
• House Baseball/Softball Record Attendance (as currently configured): 8,606, 7/4/2016

Constellation Field in Sugar Land, TX, is the home of the Sugar Land Space Cowboys, the Houston Astros' Triple-A Pacific Coast League farm team. In late 2020, the Astros bought a majority interest in the then-independent Sugar Land Skeeters to make that happen as part of MLB's 2021 Minor League Reorganization.

After parenting their new farm team's first season in Triple-A under the Skeeters moniker, the Astros rebranded them as the "Space Cowboys" before the 2022 campaign.

The new partners intended to introduce the new brand in a spring-training Astros-Space Cowboys home-and-home exhibition series March 28-29, 2022, but the labor lock-out canceled both games. The idea was successfully staged the next spring, when the Astros beat the Cowboys 3-1 March 27th at Sugar Land and again 5-1 March 28th at Houston. Constellation reported attendance of 7,768 for the first game - perhaps surprisingly, not a house record - but no attendance is listed in the box score for the second game at Minute Maid Park.

For their first eight seasons, the Skeeters had been part of the independent Atlantic League - where the easternmost ballpark now in the PCL was by far the westernmost. They were one of three indy teams pulled into Affiliated Baseball in the reorganization.

Astros owner Jim Crane's first work toward a nearby Triple-A farm club centered not on the independent team with a still-new stadium in Sugar Land but on another Houston suburb, The Woodlands, building a new ballpark. The intent was to buy and move the Oklahoma City RedHawks - who ultimately were instead purchased by a group of Los Angeles Dodgers minority owners that changed their nickname to Dodgers but left the team in OKC.

The stadium's name was sold, then changed, before it even opened: Houston-based StarTex Power bought naming rights in 2010, dubbed it StarTex Power Field, then merged with Constellation Energy before its 2012 debut. The city-owned stadium has one of eight manual scoreboards in the minors. It can seat 7,500 for baseball and 9,500 for other events.

The Houston suburb started as a company town for the Imperial Sugar Company, which in turn traces its roots to a sugar mill that was built in 1843. Sugar plantation acquisitions in the early 20th century created the company that was finally incorporated as "Imperial Sugar Company" in 1924. Similarly, the company town became known as "Sugar Land" in the early 1900s but did not incorporate as such until 1959.