 Al Lang Stadium in 2015 | |
  Al Lang Stadium Location in Florida  Al Lang Stadium Location in the United States | |
| Former names |
|
|---|---|
| Location | 180 2nd Avenue SE St. Petersburg, Florida |
| Coordinates | 27°46′05″N 82°37′59″W / 27.7681°N 82.6331°W |
| Owner | City of St. Petersburg |
| Operator | Big 3 Entertainment |
| Capacity | 7,227[1] |
| Field size | 110 x 75yd |
| Surface | Grass |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1947 |
| Renovated | 1976, 1996, 2015 |
| Construction cost | $300,000[2] (original) |
| Tenants | |
| |
Al Lang Stadium[4] is a 7,500-seat sports stadium along the waterfront of downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, United States which was used almost exclusively as a baseball park for over 60 years. Since 2011, it has been the home pitch of the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the USL Championship soccer league.
Al Lang Stadium was built in 1947 at the site of an older facility known as St. Petersburg Athletic Park. It is named in honor of Al Lang, a former mayor of St. Petersburg who was instrumental in bringing minor league and spring training baseball to the city in the early 20th century.[5] Al Lang Stadium was the spring training home of the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball from 1948 until 1997, with other teams occasionally sharing use of the facility for a few seasons at a time. During the summer, the ballpark was the home field for the Cardinal's minor league franchise in the Florida State League. The Cardinals moved out in 1998, when St. Petersburg gained their own MLB team and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays used Al Lang Stadium as their first spring training venue and minor league ballpark. The Rays constructed a new training facility in Charlotte County a few years later, and Al Lang Stadium hosted its last spring training game in March 2008.
The stadium was the site of exhibition and amateur baseball for the next few years until the Tampa Bay Rowdies moved to St. Petersburg from Tampa in 2011. It was incrementally modified into a soccer venue over each of the following off-seasons until October 2014, when the club and the city signed an agreement giving the team more control of the facility, and more extensive renovations were undertaken to expand seating on both sides of the pitch and improve the fan experience. Though former Rowdies' majority owner Bill Edwards proposed expanding the stadium's capacity to 18,000 seats as part of a bid to move the club into Major League Soccer (MLS), the plans were not realized. In 2018, Edwards sold the club to the Tampa Bay Rays ownership group in a deal which also transferred control of Al Lang Stadium.[6][7]
- ^ "Tampa Bay Rowdies – Al Lang Stadium". SoccerWay. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
- ^ Hayes, Stephanie (March 28, 2008). "St. Petersburg bids farewell to lovely lady by bay". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on 2012-03-15. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
- ^ "Major Leaguers to Start Spring Training Feb. 20". The Evening Independent. January 19, 1951. p. 14. Archived from the original on July 13, 2012. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
- ^ "Al Lang Stadium". rowdiessoccer.com. Tampa Bay Rowdies. Archived from the original on October 14, 2012. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
- ^ Ave, Melanie; Krueger, Curtis (March 22, 2008). "Remembering Al Lang, St. Petersburg's Mr. Baseball". Tampa Bay Times. St. Petersburg, Florida. Archived from the original on 2016-08-18. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
- ^ Muellner, Alexis (2 October 2018). "Rowdies owner Bill Edwards talks about how the Rays deal came together". Tampa Bay Business Journal. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
- ^ Pransky, Noah; Zimmer, Beau (October 1, 2018). "The Tampa Bay Rays are buying the Tampa Bay Rowdies, control of Al Lang Stadium". WTSP. Retrieved November 12, 2018.