TSU to build baseball, softball stadiums on Yates campus (2025)

Texas Southern baseball coach Michael Robertson has known for quite some time that new state-of-the-art baseball and softball stadiums were in the works.

But knowing and feeling dirt are two completely different things. So the emotions came rushing during Thursday afternoon’s official ground-breaking ceremony for the Tigers’ new baseball and softball stadiums. The facilities will sit on the Yates High School campus, but most importantly will be right across the street from the TSU campus.

“It was surreal,” Robertson said of the ground-breaking ceremony. “It was surreal for the whole Third Ward community, the alumni, the president of Texas Southern, the student-athletes.

“It really was phenomenal, just to know now all of a sudden that our student population and administrators who are on campus can now just walk over to see a baseball game.”

Instead of making the trek to MacGregor Park and Memorial Park, where the baseball and softball teams, respectively, practice and play their home games at the city-owned parks, the players will simply cross the street beginning next fall when practice starts and the spring of 2026 when they start playing games.

TSU, in partnership with the Houston Astros Foundation, has agreed to build the facility which is expected to cost between $7 and $9 million. The baseball stadium will seat 1,080, and the softball stadium will hold 480.

Both venues will feature lights and will share concession stands and locker rooms.

“That is huge for us,” said TSU athletic director Kevin Granger. “When we started this revision, we wanted to make sure we started to address our facility concerns. We didn’t have a lot of facilities for our student-athletes so this will give us an opportunity to check the box in that regard.

“Anytime you can add a baseball and softball facility for our student-athletes it’s huge.”

“It’s more special because all of the students whoare living on campus and in the dorms can just walk down and then be a part of the game. So we think it’s a win-win all across the board.”

– Kevin Granger, TSU athletic director

The new venue will be shared with Yates’ baseball and softball teams, as well. The new stadiums will also present an opportunity for the Astros to have a presence in the Third Ward community.

“It will also help Yates High School and it will help the community because we have the Astros plan to have camps and things of that nature in the stadiums,” Granger said. “So this is a huge day for Texas Southern athletics without a doubt.”

It’s also a huge change for TSU in general. Students and administrators will soon be able to walk across the street to the corner of Cleburne and Sampson streets to support the baseball and softball teams. It’s currently not that simple to support the Tigers.

“It’s humongous because it gives us access, opportunity and engagement with what we are trying to do,” Robertson said. “And that’s participating and trying to be a championship program.”

Robertson envisions the new baseball facility as a chance to even the playing field when it comes to recruiting. Playing at the public parks has been a huge help, but it has come with some challenges like no locker rooms, long distance from campus and sometimes having to find other facilities like the Urban Youth Academy field or fields around HISD campuses when there was a conflict at MacGregor.

“We were able to make it more than work with the card we were dealt, not being able to have a place that we can call home, not having access to a locker room, restrooms and things like that,” Robertson said. “This project here gives us an opportunity to win the arms race, not only in the city but regionally and locally with recruitment.

“We are planning to be able to play programs like University of Houston, University of Texas and LSU. We want to be able to bring them to Houston and play against those opponents. That’s the vision.”

Robertson also hopes that TSU will be able to host the SWAC Championships at the new facility.

“I can also visualize having the SWAC Tournament right here in Houston,” he said. “I think Houston will be a great showcase city for an event like that.”

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