Baseball

Aloha Stadium was originally built as a multi-purpose stadium, that could be configured for baseball or football. The 2006 season was the final season for baseball at Aloha Stadium, as the mechanism to move the grandstands became too costly to maintain. The Interscholastic League of Honolulu (ILH) used Aloha Stadium for their weekend games, as they usually had a double-header on Fridays, and triple-header on Saturdays. Unfortunately, the crowds were quite sparse, as the outfield seats were closed, and the most I had seen was maybe a couple thousand fans turn out for a game. Since the 2006 season, the stadium was left in football configuration, and the cut outs for the base pallets still remain on the Field Turf.

Major League Baseball had proposed a week-long pre-season series featuring four teams that would have taken place the week prior to the start of the 2007 regular season. MLB had even offered to pay for the cost to move the grandstands into baseball and back, but the stadium felt it was not worth risking the move, nor the integrity of the mechanism.

In 1997, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres played a three-game regular-season weekend series. My friend Nick & I went to the Saturday double-header, with our seats in centerfield near the North Tunnel; the Cardinals swept the double-header 1-0 and 2-1.

Aloha Stadium was also home to the Hawai‘i Islanders, a AAA Pacific Coast League team that played there from 1975 until 1985. The Islanders won back-to-back PCL championships in '75 and '76.

Today's photo was taken from high above centerfield as two high school teams warmed up before their game.