Arizona Diamondbacks Tickets Information

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a Major League Baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They have the honor of playing in the West Division of the National League. In the local press, they are popularly referred as the D-Backs or as the Snakes.

The desire for baseball in the desert
The Phoenix Suns was the area's wildly popular and successful NBA franchise in the early 1990's. In the fall of 1993, Jerry Colangelo, General Manager and a minority owner of the Phoenix Suns announced that he was assembling an ownership group to apply for a Major League Baseball expansion team. A local group was formed after a great deal of lobbying by the Maricopa County Sports Authority to preserve Cactus League spring training in Arizona. Eventually it was successful in securing a Major League franchise for the state.

For sharing a proposed 70,000 seat domed stadium in Phoenix, Martin Stone, owner of the Phoenix Firebirds approached St. Louis (football) Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill in the late 1980s.Bidwill, with plans already in the works to leave St. Louis, opted instead to sign a long term lease with Arizona State University to use its Sun Devil Stadium as the home of his soon-to-be Arizona based NFL franchise, thus ending Stone's bid.

Colangelo was also strongly encouraged in the baseball bid by one of his friends, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball and Milwaukee Brewers founder was a strong supporter of Colangelo's bid.

A regional team:
Colangelo was more interested in marketing the Diamondbacks to a statewide fan base right from the beginning. He did not want to limit fan appeal to Phoenix and its suburbs.

Tucson, was selected as the home for Diamondbacks spring training as well as the team's top minor league affiliate. Tucson was Arizona's second largest city and it was located about a 90-minute drive southeast of Phoenix. Radio and television broadcast deals were finalized with affiliates in Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott, and Las Vegas, Nevada, among others.

Early success and a World Series championship
The Diamondbacks played their first major league game against the Colorado Rockies on March 31, 1998, at Chase Field. The Rockies came out to be victorious in this game. They won, 9-2, with Andy Benes on the mound for the Diamondbacks, and Travis Lee being the first player to hit, score, homer and drive in a run. Over 50,000 fans attended this game.

The Diamondbacks has the honor of winning three division titles (1999, 2001, & 2002) and one World Series in their first five seasons of existence. Arizona won 100 games in only its second season to win the National League West division in 1999. However, they lost to the New York Mets in the first round of playoffs. After a relatively disappointing 2000 season, Colangelo fired Showalter and replaced him with Bob Brenly, the former Giants catcher and coach.

Two of the most dominant pitchers in all of baseball: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling led the team in 2001. Arizona advanced to the World Series with the postseason victories over the St. Louis Cardinals (3-2 in the NLDS) and the Atlanta Braves (4-1 in the NLCS). In the World Series, they were successful in beating the reigning champions, the New York Yankees, 4 to 3, to become the youngest expansion franchise to win the championship (in just their fourth season of play). It is also considered to be one of the most exciting series ever. This historic series also marked the beginning of the end of the Yankees' stranglehold on baseball glory.

In 2001, the team was led by two of the most dominant pitchers in all of baseball: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Arizona had postseason victories over the St. Louis Cardinals (3-2 in the NLDS) and the Atlanta Braves (4-1 in the NLCS) to advance to the World Series where, in one of the most exciting series ever, they beat the reigning champions, the New York Yankees, 4 to 3, to become the youngest expansion franchise to win the championship (in just their fourth season of play). That classic World Series is chronicled in Charles Euchner's book The Last Nine Innings (Sourcebooks, 2006). The series was also seen as the beginning of the end of the Yankees' stranglehold on baseball glory, as profiled in Buster Olney's book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. The Diamondbacks victory parade was held at Bank One Ballpark and the surrounding Phoenix streets on November 7, 2001 and an estimated orderly crowd of over 300,000 celebrated this victory parade.

This was the first major professional sports championship for the state of Arizona and the first for a team owned or controlled by Colangelo.

The 2006 Arizona Diamondbacks looked to improve on their 77-85 record from 2005. They looked to contend in what was once again a weak National League West Division.