Isotopes

The Albuquerque Isotopes are a team in the Pacific Coast League, one of minor league baseball's two AAA leagues, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque was previously represented in the PCL by the Albuquerque Dukes, who won several PCL championships in the 1970s and 1980s before relocating to Portland, Oregon as the Portland Beavers in 2001.

The Isotopes began play in 2003 when the Calgary Cannons relocated to New Mexico. The "'Topes" are currently the top minor league affiliate of the National League's Florida Marlins.

The name was chosen by fans in a name-the-team contest, and is taken from an episode of The Simpsons (episode number CABF09: "Hungry Hungry Homer") in which Homer Simpson discovers that the local baseball team, the Springfield Isotopes, are secretly planning to move to Albuquerque. The "Isotopes" name is appropriate, since New Mexico has a number of well-known scientific/military facilities dealing with nuclear technology, such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), as well as hosting the first nuclear weapons test, the Trinity test.

After the Dukes relocated, the city of Albuquerque demolished most of the team's home, the Albuquerque Sports Stadium, but kept the playing field intact. The city then built a completely new, state-of-the-art stadium around the existing field. The new venue opened in 2003 as Isotopes Park. One of the major features of Albuquerque Sports Stadium was its drive-in area, where fans could sit in their cars past the left-field fence and watch the games. The renovation of the stadium originally included keeping the drive-in area, but Isotopes management decided to close it due to security concerns and has converted it into a play area for children. Isotopes Park also features a hill in center field that is in fair territory, similar to the one in the Houston Astros' stadium, Minute Maid Park. Since its opening, Isotopes Park has routinely been ranked among the top five minor league ballparks in the nation. Albuquerque fans seems to agree, as the team has set attendance records in the last two years.

The Isotopes' mascot is Orbit, a big fuzzy electron.