Impressive Effort Outside Houston

Main entrance to Constellation Field (behind third base), Jul-2012.

A look in from down the third-base line.

From behind the plate, the Texas-sized (and shaped) video board dominates the view.

Chronological Tour: Stop 361

• Location: TX 6 just north of US 90 Alternate, Sugar Land, Texas (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2012
• Home team: Sugar Land Skeeters, Atlantic League (2012-19), Triple-A West (2021); Sugar Land Space Cowboys, Pacific Coast League (2022-present)
• Capacity: 5,200

Rating: 4 baseballs

The field, sponsored by an energy company, features typical accoutrements of new ballparks such as upper-level suites and a kiddie play area, but you can also find a carousel in left-center field as well as a kids-only swimming pool. There are a few pools in baseball, but this is the first one I have noticed that is restricted to children. The park also has a walk-around concourse, making it easy to watch the game from any angle. Fans on the grass berm in right field sit directly behind the bullpens – and, when the park was inaugurated, home-team pitchers got driven onto the field on a golf cart with a ball-shaped roof, a throwback to the bullpen cars that were common in the majors in the 1960s.

A nice touch in 2012 was that parking at Constellation Field was free, helping make the place more affordable. Alas, by my 2019 visit they had started collecting a parking fee of $5, and that was up to $10 by 2022, when they had an Astros affiliation. Ticket prices are also a tad high (in 2012, a reserved seat set you back $13, with $9 general admission; that’s risen considerably in the last ten years). The staff is quite friendly; when I complained that the starting lineups didn’t stay on the concourse video boards long enough for a fan to write them down, a staffer brought me into the press box to hand me a printed lineup sheet.

One drawback is that the field faces southeast rather than the usual northeast. Having left field rather than right field be the sun field is not so much of a big deal, but with the prevailing westerlies, righty pull hitters get a nice bit of help knocking the ball out of the yard. No fewer than five home runs were hit in the game I saw in 2012.

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak and also the rumored assimilation of Sugar Land into Minor League Baseball (probably as a Houston Astros affiliate) for 2021, the Skeeters announced that they were hosting a four-team independent league for 2020, separate from the Atlantic League. Major League Baseball announced in December 2020 that the affiliation with the Astros had, indeed, come to pass. For 2022, the Astros and the club apparently decided jointly that the Skeeters name was not appropriate for Triple-A ball, and the team was rebranded as the Space Cowboys.