Things to do / Travel Guide
Address:1 Blue Jays Way
Toronto, Ontario
Our Sports Superfan Says:
The only Major League baseball stadium in Canada, the Rogers Centre is a unique venue that has held an incredibly diverse array of sports and entertainment events in its nearly two decades of use. The home of Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays and Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts, continues to be a model stadium as it constantly reinvents itself over the years.
SkyDome, as the Rogers Centre was called until 2005, was built primarily for the Blue Jays, who played in the very weather-unfriendly Exhibition Stadium when they first entered the American League in 1977. The dome was completed in 1989, and was the first stadium in the world to have a motorized retractable roof, the success of which has spurred on tens of other retractable domes across the world.
Rogers Centre's main two tenants are the Blue Jays (81 regular season, and up to 11 postseason, games each year) and the Argos (with nine regular season and up to two postseason games per annum). However, the stadium has also hosted soccer, a recently created American college football bowl game (the International Bowl, starting in January 2007), and local collegiate and high school matches in various sports. It hosted the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 1991, as well as three Grey Cups (the CFL championship game), the most recent of which took place in 2007. Furthermore, it was the home of the Toronto Raptors of the NBA for their first four seasons in the league (1995-1999).
The start of Raptors history and Grey Cups notwithstanding, the most memorable moment at the Rogers Centre occurred in the ninth inning of Game 6 of the World Series in 1993. Trailing the Philadelphia Phillies 6-5, Blue Jays outfielder Joe Carter launched a three-run home run down the left field line, giving Toronto its second consecutive championship. This was the first ever World series to be won by a come-from-behind bottom-of-the-ninth home run. It was also the first Series ever to be captured outside of US soil.
With their back-to-back titles, and two other playoff appearances, in the first three years of the park, the Jays attracted a huge following. They routinely draw sellout crowds to the Rogers Centre, which seats just over 50,000. They became the first team ever to draw four million in attendance, setting an American League attendance record that would stand for 15 years.
In addition to sports, the Rogers Centre also holds numerous big-name concerts, with some of them being acoustically aided by the SkyTent, a large curtain that keeps the sound waves headed in the right directions. This venue also hosts auto shows, circuses, pro wrestling events, and has even hosted the Dalai Lama. The stadium is also home to the Toronto Renaissance Hotel, which provides many rooms looking out onto the field, as well as a Hard Rock Café and Windows Restaurant that also are perched beyond the outfield.
Rogers Centre has tried to keep up with the changing face of entertainment and sports in the last few years, adding restaurants, changing the field's surface from original Astro turf to a more natural looking alternative, and adding what was, at the time, the largest video board in the world.
The stadium is located in downtown Toronto, right on Lake Erie. It is adjacent to the CN Tower, which for 32 years was the tallest free-standing land structure in the world. One-hour tours of the facility are available, with scheduling based on the events at the Rogers Centre. Group tours are also offered. Rogers Centre is accessible via mass transit, at the Union or St. Andrews Stations subway stops, King Street, Spadina Avenue, and LRT streetcar routes, as well as via the Toronto Go Train/Bus.