Norfolk Tides Tickets

The Norfolk Tides are a Norfolk, Virginia, minor league baseball team, the AAA farm team for the Baltimore Orioles in the International League. The team was a longtime affiliate of the New York Mets from 1969 to 2006. The team plays their home games at Harbor Park.

The franchise began its history in the South Atlantic League in Norfolk Tides Tickets 1961 as the Tidewater Tides , playing at Lawrence Stadium in Portsmouth. The main newspaper of South Hampton Roads, Norfolk Tides Tickets The Virginian-Pilot, ran a contest to determine the team name. Although the chosen name was "Mariners," the Pilot's editor overruled the contest, Norfolk Tides Tickets deciding he liked the alliteration of "Tidewater Tides."

The Tides spent their first year as an "independent" team with no direct major-league affiliation, but became a St. Louis Cardinals affiliate the following season. However, the South Atlantic League decided to pull out of Virginia in 1963, threatening the future of minor-league baseball in the Hampton Roads area. A local group was able to convince the Carolina League to expand by two teams, one of them being the Tides.

In 1969, the Tides became a Triple-A team when the New York Mets moved their International League franchise from Jacksonville, Florida to Portsmouth. The previous owners of the Tides continued to run the team under the Mets' ownership. Their first year in Triple-A ended with a pennant. At the same time, the Mets and the city Norfolk Tides Tickets of Norfolk cooperated to build the team's next home, Met Park.

The Tides won the Governors' Cup, Norfolk Tides Tickets the International League championship, in 1972, 1975, 1982, 1983, and 1985. They also had the league's best regular-season record in 1987, but lost in the playoffs. In 1992, ground was broken on the club's current home of Harbor Park, and the Tides moved into the new facility in 1993. This period was a time of change in several other ways. First, in 1992, the Mets sold the franchise to a group led by a Tampa businessman. At the time the Tides moved into Harbor Park, the team also replaced the "Tidewater" in its name with that of Norfolk, partly for marketing reasons and partly for political considerations, as the city of Norfolk had Norfolk Tides Tickets facilitated the financing and building of Harbor Park. Also in 1993, The Tides introduced their mascot Rip Tide.