Chronological Tour: Stop 317

Home of the Osprey



Entrance portal to Ogren Park Allegiance Field, Aug-2013.

Fans watch the game as smoke from a nearby forest fire encroaches.

A large net protects spectators behind the plate so they can enjoy the mountain view.

Quick Facts: Rating: 2 baseballs
After five seasons at an American Legion park on the outskirts of town, an outfit called Play Ball Missoula was founded for the purpose of building a new home for the Missoula Osprey.

The original planning board drawings showed the park as Missoula Civic Stadium, but the proprietors decided to call it Play Ball Park, to me a quite fitting name. However, by 2006 the park had acquired not one but two naming sponsors, resulting in the rather unwieldy moniker Ogren Park Allegiance Field.

While the sponsorship was complete, the ballpark still was not as of my 2006 visit. The entrance portal was barren, the parking lot was unpaved, the press box was unfinished, and several sections down the line that would feature either stadium seats or a grass berm were still filled with rocks and barricaded with Cyclone fencing.

I got back to the park in August 2013. While I wasn’t overwhelmed by the facility, I did find it suitable for the level of ball being played. I noticed that the right field porch is short because of a train track that couldn’t be moved. The home-run line rises to compensate.

One nice feature is an actual osprey nest (right), although I didn’t see any ospreys coming in and out during the game I attended. That said, the Osprey name is out the window one year after the team was purchased by new owners. For 2020, the team became the PaddleHeads, a reference to both moose antlers (often called paddles) and the ability to paddle down nearby rivers like the Clark Fork.


Game Date League Level Result
845 Thu 24-Aug-2006 Pioneer R Casper 5, MISSOULA 4
1277 Mon 19-Aug-2013 Pioneer R Orem 9, MISSOULA 8
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This page updated 4-Nov-2019