Globe Life Park

The ground in Arlington is not built for the old game anymore. Choctaw Stadium has been stripped of its diamond and rewritten as a rectangle, a conversion that turned the former Texas Rangers’ home into a home for North Texas SC. The change was not cosmetic; the original natural grass was ripped up and replaced with Shaw SportsTurf B1K artificial turf, a surface that looks flat and uniform from the perimeter.

From the outside, the stadium sits in an open expanse of grass, separated from the surrounding roads. The brick façade of the stands remains, but the structure has been hollowed out inside. The capacity for this new setup is roughly 25,000, a fraction of the crowd that once filled the seats for baseball.

The stadium has since been used for other purposes as well, including hosting the Dallas Renegades and serving as a neutral site for the 2020 World Series. Commercial spaces have moved into the lower levels, including the headquarters of Six Flags Entertainment Corporation.

The artificial surface feels different underfoot than the natural grass that was here for decades. There is no sub-surface heating system to keep the pitch playable in winter. The stands are quieter now, the atmosphere less defined by the crack of a bat and the roar of a baseball crowd. North Texas SC plays here, but the ground is not the same ground it was.