Oneok Field

Oneok Field (/ˈwʌnoʊk/ WUN-ohk)^[8] is a baseball park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Located in the historic Greenwood district adjacent to downtown Tulsa, it is the home of the Tulsa Drillers of the Texas League. The stadium is named for Oneok.

Oneok Field

Location	201 North Elgin Avenue Tulsa, Oklahoma 74120
Coordinates	36°9′35″N 95°59′17″W
Owner	Tulsa Stadium Trust
Operator	Tulsa Drillers, Inc.
Capacity	7,833 [1]
Field size	Left field – 330 feet (101 m) Left-center – 381 feet (116 m) Center field – 400 feet (122 m) Right-center – 371 feet (113 m) Right field – 307 feet (94 m)[2]
Surface	TifSport Bermuda grass
Construction
Broke ground	December 19, 2008
Opened	April 8, 2010
Construction cost	$39.2 million ($56.5 million in 2024 dollars[3])
Architect	Populous
Project manager	Stonebridge Group, LLC.[4]
Structural engineer	Thornton Tomasetti[5]
Services engineer	Faith Technologies, Inc.[6]
General contractor	Manhattan Construction Company[7]
Tenants
Tulsa Drillers (TL/Double-A Central) (2010–present) FC Tulsa (USLC) (2015–present)

Oneok Field has also been the home of FC Tulsa of the USL Championship since 2015.

Construction

A view of Oneok Field from the outfield

View of the Tulsa skyline from behind the Oneok Field home plate

The Drillers, who then played at Drillers Stadium on the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, began looking for a replacement ballpark in about 1998; at one point they signed a non-binding letter of intent to move to the Tulsa suburb of Jenks, before efforts by then-Tulsa mayor Kathy Taylor and others led to the Drillers deciding to proceed with a downtown stadium.^[9] The Drillers announced the move on June 26, 2008. The future of the stadium was for a time threatened by the financial collapse of its largest donor, SemGroup.^[10] However, groundbreaking for the new ballpark went forward on December 19, 2008.^[11] On January 12, 2009, Oneok, Inc. and the Oneok Foundation announced that they would pay $5 million USD to obtain the 20-year naming rights for the new baseball park.^[12]

The Drillers played their first game in the new ballpark on Thursday, April 8, 2010, losing 7-0 to the Corpus Christi Hooks before a crowd of 8,665 (more than 800 over official capacity).^[13] The first pitch at the stadium was thrown by country music star, Tim McGraw.

Features

Oneok Field was designed by architect firm Populous of Kansas City, Missouri and constructed by Manhattan Construction Company. The stadium has an official capacity of 7,833, but is capable of holding up to 9,000 for special events.^[14] (On May 7, 2010, the stadium had a reported record attendance of 9,417 for a Bedlam Series game between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the Oklahoma State University Cowboys.^[15]) It has 23 suites^[16] and a playing field recessed about 13 feet below street level. With a construction cost of $39.2 million, the project also included the purchase of adjacent land for complementary development, for a total project budget of $60 million.

The new ballpark was intended to be more directly connected to its urban surroundings than was the old stadium at the fairgrounds, and also to have many of the same kinds of luxury amenities available in a major-league ballpark, both for fans and for the players and coaches.^[17][18]