Wilson: The rise and fall of Calgary's Foothills Stadium
Historic Foothills Stadium in Calgary, Alberta is finally being torn down, but some baseball historians feel it didn’t get its proper goodbye. Photo: Joe McFarland
*This article was originally published on Alberta Dugout Stories on February 25, 2025. You can read it here.
February 27, 2025
By Ian Wilson
Alberta Dugout Stories
It’s been home to so many.
And for so long baseball was safe at this home.
Alas, the long-awaited eviction notice has been executed and the bleacher-bashing machinery is dismantling the memory-infused wood, steel and concrete that surrounds the diamond, which was once a playground for some of baseball’s best players.
Cardinals, Expos, Cannons, Dawgs, Vipers, Outlaws and Dinos have all stepped between the lines at Foothills Stadium since it first welcomed professional baseball in 1977.
The Calgary faithful had plenty of big bats to cheer on, night after night, including Pioneer League slugger Andres Galarraga with the Expos, and so many explosive Pacific Coast League (PCL) hitters that you just had to call them the Cannons. Representing those Cannons were such vaunted stars as Bret Boone, Jay Buhner, Harold Reynolds, John Moses, Mickey Brantley, Tino Martinez, Edgar Martinez, Cliff Floyd, Danny Tartabull, Omar Vizquel, Tony Womack, Derrek Lee, Dale Sveum and Alex Rodriguez. Homegrown talent followed in the form of Greg Morrison and Drew Miller, who played indy ball for the Vipers.
Those lucky enough to drive along Crowchild Trail and park just north of McMahon Stadium – home to the Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL) – for an evening of ball were also treated to magnificent moundsmen over the decades.
Right-handed pitcher Jim Gott started his career and the tenure of pro ball in Calgary when he took the bump for the Cardinals on June 25, 1977. Gott went onto a 14-year career in Major League Baseball (MLB) and ushered in an era of fresh-faced pitchers calling the Stampede City home before they reached baseball’s highest level. The Expos graduated Randy St. Claire, Cliff Young and Sergio Valdez to the majors, before the Cannons welcomed world-class pitching talent to Cowtown. The strong-armed alumni of the Cannons include Jim Abbott, Ryan Dempster, Erik Hanson, Ken Forsch, Jason Grilli, Andy Hawkins, Bill Swift, Mike Campbell, A.J. Burnett, Jeff Nelson, Lee Guetterman and Steve Trout.
The Calgary Dawgs – who played at Foothills Stadium from 2003 through 2005 before setting up a new “Dawg House” in Okotoks – would eventually send relief pitcher Jim Henderson to the big leagues, where he still works as a coach.
And those were just the players on the home team that fans got to cheer on.
Several other stars – either fading or in the making – made their way to Calgary, and when they did, they stepped in the batter’s box or atop the mound at Foothills Stadium, which also went by the name of Burns Stadium for a while.
Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Eddie Murray, Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz, Tim Salmon, Paul Konerko, Sandy Alomar Jr., Devon White, Jose Canseco, Bert Blyleven and Fernando Valenzuela all saw game action in northwest Calgary.
There were the championship titles. The Dawgs won a Western Major Baseball League (WMBL) title in 2004. The Vipers captured Calgary’s first professional title in 2009.
And there were the near misses. The Cannons made the PCL postseason five times and advanced to the triple-A championship series in three of those seasons, coming up short in 1987, 1991 and 1998.
Foothills Stadium during its prime years as the home of the Calgary Cannons … Image from 1993-1994 Cannons calendar.
The list of baseball achievements at Foothills Stadium extends from home plate well beyond the 400-foot mark in centre field.
There were baseball memories of all kinds: wins, losses, brawls, grand slams, stolen bases, complete games, no hitters, doubles in the gap, diving catches, professional debuts, etc.
And there were other kinds of baseball memories that aren’t captured in boxscores: lining up to get in on opening day, scanning the program for an autograph, biting into a hot dog as the ball slaps into a first baseman’s glove, chasing down foul balls, keeping score with a pencil and a scorecard, laughing at the mascot hamming it up, and catching a whiff of that freshly cut grass.
We’re now left to rub an old ticket stub in an attempt to release that genie.
FIRST DAYS AT FOOTHILLS
The stadium, which originally opened in 1966, saw many facelifts over the years, but it’s training wheels came courtesy of Russ Parker.
Parker spent years trying to get professional baseball to Calgary. After watching Lethbridge entice the Pioneer League to the city in 1975, he convinced the St. Louis Cardinals to place their rookie-level affiliate under his care.
In order to get the ballpark prepared for this brand of baseball, significant renovations were required, including new turf to cover the shale infield; the construction of bigger dugouts; the installation of a new lighting system; improvements to the backstop; and box seats replaced sections of bleacher benches.
Image in the Calgary Herald newspaper monitoring dugout construction at Foothills Stadium in 1977
The moves paid off and Pioneer League baseball took root in Calgary, first with the Cardinals in 1977-78 and then with the Expos until 1984.
Parker aimed higher from there and was able to lure triple-A ball to Cowtown. It was a major step up from the rookie-level, which gave players an introduction to professional baseball but struggled to send them all the way to the majors. The Cannons and the PCL, meanwhile, was constantly sending pitchers and batters up to MLB rosters and getting major leaguers back in return on rehab assignments or to tweak their skills.
The move up the minor-league ladder required further work to be done at Foothills Stadium. Seating capacity needed to be boosted to 5,000 and further improvements to the dugouts and the lighting were necessary.
There were hurdles along the way, involving the purchase and relocation of the Salt Lake City Gulls, and the leasing agreement with the City of Calgary, but Parker prevailed.
Another obstacle came from Mother Nature, who delivered a blast of snow that delayed the home opener of the Cannons for several days in April of 1985.
Weather challenges aside, the Cannons and Calgary were a great fit. The marriage lasted until 2002 when Canada’s slumping dollar and the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001 made cross-border travel more difficult. The Cannons were sold and relocated to Albuquerque, where they became the Isotopes, but Foothills Stadium remained.
SNAKE BIT
The void left by the Cannons – who averaged per game crowds of 4,334 during their 18-year existence – was significant, but there were teams ready and waiting to fill it.
The Dawgs brought a feisty calibre of summer collegiate baseball to the city, the Outlaws were part of the upstart Canadian Baseball League, and the Vipers delivered independent ball to the Foothills faithful.
The Dawgs remained at Foothills Stadium for three seasons and picked up a WMBL championship until sharing the facility with the Vipers became an unsustainable situation. They moved to Okotoks and built Seaman Stadium, which remains one of North America’s best ballparks. The Dawgs went on to win another seven titles and last year had an average attendance of 4,774 fans.
The good news for the Outlaws was they had the top record in the Canadian Baseball League in 2003. The bad news was the league folded midway into its inaugural campaign.
The Vipers began play in 2005 and their final season took place in 2011. They won the Golden Baseball League crown in 2009, but they struggled to draw fans to the ballpark. Over seven seasons, their average crowd size was just 1,408. Financial woes put an end to the franchise.
The University of Calgary Dinos eventually took up residence at Foothills Stadium, where they play Canadian College Baseball Conference (CCBC) games against squads from Alberta and British Columbia each spring.
Baseball academies and programs in Alberta also make use of the facility on occasion.
DEAD BALL ERA
For the most part, the storied ballpark has been left to wither away and decay.
The baseball fans who once crowded in to see future Hall of Famers are long gone. Any programs or pocket schedules they might have let slip from their fingers on the way to the parking lot have blown away. The seats and steel benches, which were covered by more bird droppings than butts in recent summers, have been ripped away. The crack of the bat and the bark of the beer vendor have been replaced by the beeping and whirring of heavy machinery.
The dismantling of Foothills Stadium takes place in February of 2025.
From hallowed grounds to a weed-infested concourse and a cob-webbed press box, to piles of rubble and exposed beams, Foothills Stadium and the magical baseball it gave a stage to seems like a very distant memory.
The fall of Foothills has been a long-time coming.
Plans to redevelop the area and build a multi-sport fieldhouse in Calgary have been discussed for over a decade and those ideas translated into more formal talks at city hall in 2019.
The City of Calgary’s Foothills Athletic Park Master Plan is now underway with the removal of non-operational structures. When this phase is complete, the seating, concessions stands, ticket booths, washrooms, outfield walls and lighting will be gone. The ghosts of Foothills Stadium will likely be dispatched to a cornfield in Taber to await their own field of dreams.
The Dinos are still scheduled to make use of the diamond there this spring, with their first home games set for April 6th. Just what kind of post-baseballyptic scenes will play out there remains to be seen.
“I can’t imagine being in Russ’s mind right now,” Alberta Dugout Stories co-founder Joe McFarland said in a LiveWire Calgary interview in December.
“Seeing this thing that you poured your blood, sweat and tears into over and over and over again, not just to build it, but also to renovate it in the mid-90s, and try, with all of his might in the late 90s, early 2000s to keep the Cannons alive. That’s got to be a tough one.”
Another photo of the teardown of Foothills Stadium. Photo: Joe McFarland
Added McFarland: “It’s sad because we didn’t really get a chance to give it the proper goodbye. We didn’t get a chance to document some of the memories, miracles and accidents that happened along the way at Foothills Stadium.”
There is no current timeline for the new facilities that will be erected at the site. The funding for the fieldhouse is not yet in place.
NEXT STEPS
As Barney Gumble famously lamented in The Simpsons: “Don’t cry for me, I’m already dead.”
The death of Foothills Stadium will most certainly leave a mark on Calgary’s baseball scene, but what happens next?
Calgarians have watched the Dawgs build a baseball empire, complete with state-of-the-art facilities at the constantly evolving and improving Seaman Stadium Complex in Okotoks. It’s a short drive from Alberta’s largest city, but not something that Calgarians can call their own. The city blew it’s shot at that.
The failure to plan has resulted in a plan to fail.
Another impressive baseball facility has emerged at Webber Academy Athletic Park in Springbank, just west of Calgary. The site is home to four ball diamonds and a multi-purpose, indoor facility for budding athletes.
Again, this is not something that Calgarians can call their own.
The city has cleared space for plenty of ball diamonds that are well-suited for Little League and high school programs, but a high-end baseball stadium has not been considered for some time.
There are some valid reasons for this, of course. Funding is always an issue. No matter how good an idea is, there are only so many municipal, provincial and federal dollars to go around.
That said, baseball is a popular sport in Calgary and it has been for decades. The growth of high school academies and programs throughout Alberta has provided foundational success for the game.
So, when will Calgary step to the plate? Or do we need to keep sending our top baseball talent to the communities that surround this city of 1.5 million people?
In May of 1977, as Russ Parker was busily preparing Foothills Stadium for the arrival of the Cardinals and the Pioneer League, the other teams that used diamonds in the city assessed the facilities available to them.
“It’s disgusting, for a city of 500,000, to have only one good ballpark,” said Ron McCartney, the manager of the Calgary Spikes of the Southern Alberta Junior Baseball League, in the Calgary Herald newspaper.
With a city three times that size now, we’d gladly take just one good ballpark.
Farewell, Foothills Stadium. You were a home run for Calgary.