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It was easy to see this coming, but I am still in a bit of shock. One of my favorite ballparks, PGE Park, is to be converted to a soccer (and football) stadium. Portland city commissioners and Merritt Paulson, owner of the Portland Beavers (Triple-A) and the Portland Timbers (NASL) soccer team, reached an agreement on Friday that will bring Major League Soccer to PGE Park for the 2011 season. Renovations to PGE Park estimated at $31 million had already been agreed upon to allow for MLS soccer, but final details were finalized today, making the move official. Portland State University will also play home football games at the stadium. PGE Park was the stadium featured on my most recent book, "Professional Ballparks of the West Coast."

Up in the air is where the Portland Beavers will play their 2011 season and beyond, but it will not be PGE Park. With the renovations to stadium and the requirement that MLS clubs play in soccer specific stadiums, the Beavers have no place to call home after the current season. The preference of Paulson and city officials would be to have the team stay in Portland, but no plans are in the work for a new stadium. A temporary home has been proposed at the Clark County Fairgrounds, but traffic concerns make the site less than ideal. Paulson in the past has used the promise of an MLS soccer team as leverage to get a new baseball stadium built, but plans for such a venue in Beaverton fell through last year. Paulson later retracted comments made last fall that suggested he would block a MLS team if a new home for the Beavers was not built by the city.Vancouver, Washington also has been rumored as a possible new home.

PGE Park, built in 1926 is the oldest active stadium in the Pacific Coast League, and one of the oldest in professional sports. With a capacity of 19,500, the stadium offers baseball historians a glimpse of what the PCL was like when it was the major league on the West Coast. The towering grand stand featured a wooden overhang the likes of which will likely never be built again. Some of the stadium's highest seats have been tarped to give the stadium a more intimate feeling, and sky boxes (added in 2001) and artificial turf give it a modern touch, but the loss of a PCL team at PGE Park is the end of an era.

Oregon baseball will soon move out of another piece of history when the Eugene Emeralds move out of Civic Stadium to play at the new University of Oregon. Unlike the Emerald's, however, the Beavers no place to call home. With no new stadium plans apparent, little hope remains that a new home for the Beavers can be built for the team by 2011. That leaves the the top affiliate in the Padres organization looking for a place to play their 2011 season.

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