The Tucson Baseball Team that plays in the Arco Mexican Pacific League will start its inaugural season Oct. 16, at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium, a ballpark that has had a tough time keeping teams.

The Tucson Baseball Team, the name its owner Victor Cuevas gave the team in late spring, faces the Naranjeros de Hermosillo in its first official game.

Cuevas and team officials could not be reached to comment, but appeared on local radio show Eye On The Ball.

 “This team is for Tucson, for the people of Tucson,” he said on the show… “We’re not moving.”

“Three other organizations … were looking at Southern Arizona as a potential home,” Blake Eager, the director of Southern Arizona Sports and Film Authority said. “A lot of it was time frame what was going to be first… So it could’ve been any one of the three, it wasn’t just choosing one or the other.”

While the Tucson Baseball Team is the latest to take up residency at Kino, there’s been a tough time keeping teams.

Since opening in 1998 as Tucson Electric Park, Kino has been home to the Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago White Sox for spring training, the Diamondbacks affiliate the Tucson Sidewinders, and the Tucson Padres. The Tucson Saguaros currently use the stadium too.

“The Sidewinders drew over 300,000 the first year,” said the team’s former GM Mike Fader.  “Never again in the history of the Sidewinders did they draw over 300,000, because people had to get used to a new ballpark.”

Fader, a former general manager for the Sidewinders and another Triple-A team that played at Kino Stadium, said one of the hurdles was that the stadium at the time had no nearby restaurants or amenities.

The Tucson Baseball Team is not new to the city; it played at Kino Stadium as Mayos de Navajoa in the Mexican Baseball Fiesta before relocating to Tucson.

Sarah Horvath, who was named director of Kino Sports Complex in 2024, has brought with her a new sense of unity that has made some things easier, as well as helping the Tucson Baseball Team call the park home.

“She just makes everything such a smooth transition. Obviously she played a big piece into having the new baseball team call Kino their home,” said Luis Gamez, the event operations manager for the Mexican Baseball Fiesta that came to Kino Oct. 2-5. “She kind of studies us, integrates to our team, and has staff work with us in a manner of collaboration rather than we’re A and you’re B.”

Tucson Baseball Team was among the Mexican teams and University of Arizona that will play in the four-day Fiesta, which had been at Kino 13 years.

“The location was perfect here because we were closer to the hispanic community and that was a big plus, and it was a perfect stadium for the fiesta” Fader said. “It really lends itself perfectly for the Fiesta and it should hopefully do the same for the new team.”

Gamez said the Tucson Baseball Team “already knew the ins and outs of the stadium and obviously saw the potential of what could be with the Mexican Baseball Fiesta.”

Now Tucson will have to do some work of its own to keep the Baseball Team in town by showing up and filling the stadium.

Arizona Sonoran News is news service of the University of Arizona School of Journalism.