Home Base: 75 Years On, the Iconic Nat Bailey Stadium Still Has Game

These days, he’s the director of position player development for the entire Toronto Blue Jays organization, working with its players at all levels of Minor and Major League Baseball to perfect and progress their skills. But back when he was an eight-year-old kid living in North Delta, going to watch the Vancouver Canadians play at Nat Bailey Stadium gave him his first taste of the allure of professional baseball.

He remembers it all: the gravel parking lot on the backside of left field signalling the commencement of a great day in the sun. The curved indoor concourse with the vintage-style concession in the centre, hawking popcorn and peanuts and hot dogs. The wooden bleachers where he sat shoulder to shoulder with his grandfather. The rocky concrete underneath his feet. The way that sound echoed beneath the barn-like bleacher roof: the satisfying snap of ball hitting glove, the undeniable clack of a home run hit.

“What’s cool is that none of that’s changed,” Lavallee says. “As much as the stadium and the field have evolved—the fences are now shinier and scoreboards are bigger and brighter—those old benches and that cobblestone floor and those stairs are still the exact same. I really love the nostalgic part of it.”

Nostalgia plays heavily into the charms of the park, which nowadays is officially called Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium, but which locals know lovingly and simply as The Nat. In a 2023 article dedicated to the magic of The Nat, the New York Times called it “heaven.”

The whole experience certainly feels doused in whimsy. Its location in a quiet residential neighbourhood, bordered on one side by the evergreens of Queen Elizabeth Park, makes it feel like a secret. Sun-drenched bleachers, while perhaps not the most comfortable for one’s bottom, create just enough intimacy to spark conversation with whoever’s next to you. People wander by with Yard Dogs—The Nat’s iconic if slightly obscene three-foot-long hot dogs—hoisted high above their heads like trophies. (Fun fact: the hardest part of creating the Yard Dog was finding a bun that was strong enough to hold it.) Little kids spoon ice cream out of tiny bowls made to look like batter’s helmets. Employees, dressed up in giant sushi costumes, race around the bases (and, yes, they’re really racing). A slightly grumpy older man with a mustache slings cocktails at the Keg Caesar Bar. A 14-year-old boy sits behind the scoreboard in the outfield and watches the game through a crack in the fence, manually updating the stats every time someone makes it home. A seat usher who’s been at The Nat for close to 40 years waves hello and asks you what a glorious day it is, isn’t it? The entire crowd stands for a hearty rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. A cohort of young-adult fans dubbed the Bleacher Bums bakes in the sunlight of Section 10, jovially chatting up everyone around them; they might not know the score, but that’s not really why they’re there anyway.

An experience at The Nat is ritualistic about its silliness, and religious about its reliability. It’s good, predictable, all-ages fun. Where else in Vancouver can you get that these days?

“You still have the old-school, traditional vibes and feel of ‘This is a ballpark that’s been around for decades,’” says Lavallee, who managed the Canadians from 2022 to 2024 before moving up the Blue Jays ranks (the Canadians have been a Blue Jays affiliate team since 2011). “It’s a really special place that I shared with my grandparents on the one side, and now share with my children on the other—and, man, hopefully one day their children after that.”

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Originally opened in 1951, The Nat is turning 75 this year, marking three-quarters-of-a-century’s worth of Minor League Baseball in Canada. Over the years, the park has lived many lives: it opened as Capilano Stadium, home to the Vancouver Capilanos and later the Vancouver Mounties; it wasn’t until 1978 that the stadium was renamed for beloved White Spot founder Nat Bailey, who actually got his start selling peanuts at local ballparks. That same year, the Vancouver Canadians debuted in the Triple-A league—the highest level of Minor League Baseball before heading to the Majors—but that team was shipped off to Sacramento after the 1999 season. The Canadians (also called the Cs by regular spectators) as we know them today launched in 2000 after the Southern Oregon Timberjacks were relocated here, joining what is now the High-A Northwest League.

“In terms of affiliated Minor League Baseball, we’re the only team in Canada—and the Blue Jays are the only Major League team,” says Allan Bailey, the current manager for the Canadians. “To be able to hold that connection across the whole country is pretty special.” Bailey has been with the team for two decades, starting as an intern back in 2007. For the Deep Cove native, part of what makes The Nat such an incredible place to watch baseball is the very real possibility that you’ll witness a young player on the cusp of greatness.

“It’s been great to see the guys who played here being in the big leagues,” he says, pointing to current Blue Jays players who once dressed up in Canadians red. “You look at some of the guys that were there this past fall in the World Series, like [pitcher] Trey Yesavage, [manager] John Schneider, and [left-fielder] Davis Schneider—all those guys were part of our team not that long ago.” Breakout star Yesavage played a few games for the Canadians just last year, before his meteoric ascent took him all the way to baseball’s biggest stage.

“For the most part, anyone who ends up playing for the Toronto Blue Jays that was drafted or signed by us will stop in Vancouver,” says Lavallee. “Fans can now connect it: ‘I saw that young man when he was an 18- or a 20-year-old in A-ball and now he’s in the big leagues.’”

Blue Jay third baseman Addison Barger sealed his icon status when, during the team’s 2025 World Series run, he hit the first pinch-hit grand slam in the history of the championship. But years before that, he spent two seasons as a Vancouver Canadian. “You can’t really beat it as far as Minor League parks go,” he said of The Nat when interviewed by a Cs staffer last year. “By far my favourite place to play in the Minor Leagues; nothing is even comparable.”

Present-day Canadians players are given team housing through their league, but back when things were a little less formal, local families hosted out-of-town players in their homes for the duration of the season. Carol Irving and her husband boarded players for 18 years, and in that time she estimates that they missed only two home games. “The atmosphere is just great,” she says. “I don’t know how to explain it. It just feels like home.”

It also feels like home for Rob Fai, the Canadians’ director of sales, marketing and merchandise, who has been with the club for nearly three decades—including 15 seasons as the team’s play-by-play broadcaster on TSN. Throughout it all, he observes, The Nat has remained true to itself.

“In an industry that’s constantly looking to be faster, bigger, stronger, it’s amazing to me that the same meat-and-potatoes recipe that a grandfather saw when he came out to the ballpark still works for the grandson,” he says. “That, to me, is the magic of the ballpark.”

The intergenerational appeal of The Nat is one of its biggest assets. With single-game tickets typically ranging from $24 to $39, it’s a lot cheaper than other professional sporting events in the city, meaning it’s actually possible for whole families to attend together.

“They’ll actually bring in less money here at the stadium to make sure that the fans still get that experience and can have a couple of bucks to buy a beer or a hot dog later on,” Fai says. “Part of the reason that I think our fans trust us is they know when they come to the ballpark that we’re not out for their wallet. We’re out to help them create a memory.”

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As Vancouver’s unaffordability crisis continues to worsen, we risk losing more and more third places: gathering spaces for people to socialize outside of their homes and offices. A 2025 survey conducted by YMCA Canada found that only 38 percent of Canadians feel a sense of belonging within their communities. And so, The Nat stands out not just for its milestone 75-year history, but also for its continued commitment to helping Lower Mainlanders build connections in the notoriously lonely city they call home.

“It feels like a gathering place,” says Fai. “It’s a reflection of our community that now spans generations.” The Nat, taken from that perspective, isn’t really a ballpark at all: rather, it’s a community centre that just so happens to have baseball going on in the background. Regardless of any game’s outcome, that’s a pretty big win.

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