page_title: Sahlen Field
section_title: Opening and reception
hierarchical_section_title: Sahlen Field / History / Opening and reception
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Image satellite du Dunn Tire Park de Buffalo provenant du logiciel Nasa World Wind (USGS).
context_page_description: Sahlen Field is a baseball park in Buffalo, New York. Originally known as Pilot Field, the venue has since been named Downtown Ballpark, North AmeriCare Park, Dunn Tire Park, and Coca-Cola Field. The home of the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons of the International League, it opened on April 14, 1988 and can seat up to 16,600 people, making it the highest-capacity Triple-A ballpark in the United States. It replaced the Bisons' former home, War Memorial Stadium, where the team played from 1979 to 1987.
  The stadium was the first retro-classic ballpark built in the world, and was designed with plans for Major League Baseball expansion. Buffalo had not had an MLB team since the Buffalo Blues played for the Federal League in 1915. However, Bisons owner Robert E. Rich Jr. was unsuccessful in his efforts to bring an MLB franchise to the stadium between 1988 and 1994. Due to travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the Toronto Blue Jays are currently playing their 2020 home games at Sahlen Field.
  Sahlen Field was also home to the Buffalo Nighthawks of the Ladies Professional Baseball League in 1998 and the Empire State Yankees in 2012.
context_section_description: The venue opened in April 1988 and was lauded by mainstream media outlets, including feature stories by Newsday, New York Daily News, San Francisco Examiner, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Magazine and Vancouver Sun. Eric Brazil wrote that month in his San Francisco Examiner article that the venue, "just may be baseball's prototype for the 1990s and beyond".
  In their first year at the venue after moving from War Memorial Stadium, the Buffalo Bisons broke the all-time record for Minor League Baseball attendance by drawing 1,186,651 fans during the 1988 season.
  Pete McMartin wrote fondly of the venue in his June 1989 article for the Vancouver Sun, contrasting it with the recently opened SkyDome in Toronto:
  I have seen the future of baseball and it looks a lot like the past. The best new ballpark in North America looks like the best old ballpark in North America. Forget SkyDome. Pilot Field, home to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons baseball club, makes Toronto's newest toy look like a crass gimmick. It dares to offer the revolutionary concept of playing baseball on grass, open to the elements. And it does it in the prettiest playground in the game. Built last year for $42 million, (compared to SkyDome's half-billion), Pilot Field resembles a turn-of-the-century ballpark complete with soaring archways, exposed girders, palladian windows, and a copper-green metal roof above the stands topped with two cupolas. Its concrete facade has been "rusticated" to resemble the limestone walls of the heritage buildings in the downtown neighborhood that surround it. Pilot Field is so wildly popular with the citizens of Buffalo that it has helped rejuvenate Buffalo's once-decaying downtown. It was a matter of philosophy. Toronto built an edifice: Buffalo embraced an idea. Toronto elevated technology over the game: Buffalo honored the past. Buffalo ended up with the better ballpark. It may be the best ballpark built since the construction of the game's holy triumvirate - Wrigley, Fenway and Briggs (since renamed Tiger Stadium).
  The inaugural Build New York Award was given to Cowper Construction Management in April 1990 by the General Building Contractors of New York State for their work on the venue.
caption: An aerial view of the ballpark
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