Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium

Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium in Tucson, AZ, was the home of Tucson affiliated baseball from 1998 through 2013. After that, the Tucson Padres of the Pacific Coast League moved into a new ballpark in El Paso, TX, as the El Paso Chihuahuas. The Kino Sports Complex still has professional sports, in the form of USL League One's FC Tucson.

The T-Padres' departure was the facility's second such loss, although this one was not unexpected. In 2009, the Tucson Sidewinders had left Kino for a new ballpark in Reno, NV, to become the Reno Aces.

The HOK Sport (now Populous) ballpark had recovered affiliated baseball two years after losing it - but that was known from the start to be temporary. When the Portland Beavers lost their ballpark and a planned replacement in Portland, OR, flopped, their parent San Diego Padres bought them to move them to nearby Escondido. While the suburb built a stadium, the Beavers went to Tucson in 2011 - but got stuck there when that playpen also fell through. The Padres soon sold the club to the group that moved it to El Paso. The west Texas city had lost its Double-A El Paso Diablos to Springfield, MO, in 2005. Kino did get one last hurrah for professional baseball, though: with the new El Paso stadium not ready for its 2014 opener, Kino hosted the Chihuahuas' season-opening four-game homestand.

Kino's early life was as unusual as its baseball demise. Opened as Tucson Electric Park, it was not built to attract a team or replace a previous facility. Hi Corbett Field had been the home of Tucson minor-league ball since its 1937 opening as Randolph Municipal Baseball Park - and, after landing a PCL franchise, every season until TEP opened. During those decades, Corbett also hosted spring training for several different big-league clubs. The Arizona Diamondbacks expansion ended that that, as the D-backs affiliated with existing Tucson Toros and then, logically, got them to move them to the D-backs' new spring home, TEP. In conjunction with the move, the Toros also re-branded to Tucson Sidewinders.

After the original naming contract with Tucson Electric Power expired, the ballpark was renamed Kino Stadium for the Jesuit missionary who explored southern Arizona. Less than a year later, Pima County approved expanding the name to Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium. That name remains in county literature about the overall complex.