Goodyear Ballpark
Goodyear, AZ
Review by Mike
Goodyear Ballpark is the Spring Training home of the Cleveland Guardians and the Cincinnati Reds. The location is a little farther afield from the rest of the Cactus League, with Goodyear set off aways to the west of Phoenix. The park opened in 2009 and it’s on the small side for Arizona spring training sites with only 8,500 seats and room for 1,500 more on the outfield berm.
The stadium is served well by its intimate design, with all of the seats close to the field and no cross aisle splitting the main seating bowl. The seats wrap tightly around the infield and towards the lines with the bowl curving back towards the infield as it approaches the foul poles, giving the feeling that the crowd is hugging the field.
The press and suite structure behind home plate is also modest, featuring a press box and a handful of suites. This is no Sloan Park, which is an upper deck short of being a major league park. Goodyear Ballpark feels more like a really nice Indy League ballpark. Above the limited suites is a party deck, high above the field. I would have loved to see the view from up there, but no amount of gentle persuasion would convince the polite guardian of the stairwell traffic to allow me upstairs for a peek.
There is a covered bar with terraced seating and picnic tables beyond the right field fence and a 360 degree concourse to walk around during the later innings when young hopefuls with numbers like 78 and 93 are in the lineup. The bullpens featured pennants with the years of all of the notable accomplishments of the Guardians (left field) and the Reds (right field). I wonder if it is a coincidence that both Ohio rivals ended up sharing a training facility.
My favorite bit, though, were the Club Seats on the 3rd base side. These were just normal seats, like every other seat in the stadium, but they enjoyed the shade cast by a single, free-standing roof that offered sun relief to a couple of hundred seats. To use a term favored by my Ballpark Brother, Gary, it was really very quaint, as was Goodyear Ballpark. This is a simple, low-key, extremely agreeable little ballpark. I liked it very much.
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2025
275
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In 2022, while attending a game at Hodgetown in Amarillo, Justin Foscue crushed a home run, which I "caught". Three years later our paths crossed again in Goodyear. Here is Justin, still trying to establish a foothold in The Show, whacking an RBI single to left. Until we meet again...