Safeco Field

Safeco Field (sometimes referred to as Safeco or The Safe) is a retractable roof baseball stadium located in Seattle, Washington. Owned and operated by the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District, it is the home stadium of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball (MLB) and has a seating capacity of 47,574 for baseball. It is located in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood, near the western terminus of Interstate 90. The first game was played on July 15, 1999.

During the 1990s, the suitability of the Mariners' original stadium—the Kingdome—as an MLB facility came under doubt, and the team's ownership group threatened to relocate the team. In September 1995, King County voters defeated a ballot measure to secure public funding for a new baseball stadium. Shortly thereafter, the Mariners' first appearance in the MLB postseason and their victory in the 1995 American League Division Series (ALDS) renewed a public desire to keep the team in town. As a result, the Washington State Legislature approved an alternate means of funding for the stadium with public money. The site for the stadium, just south of the Kingdome, was selected in September 1996 and construction began in March 1997.