Rate Field: The History, the Dimensions and How the Park Plays

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 11 min read

A guide to Rate Field, the White Sox ballpark on Chicago's South Side: its four names, the parks that came before it, its dimensions, how it has played for hitters and what to know before a visit.

Rate Field is the home of the Chicago White Sox and, in its bones, the second Comiskey Park. The White Sox played their first home game there on April 18, 1991, and the building has carried four names since: Comiskey Park from 1991 to 2002, U.S. Cellular Field from 2003 to 2016, Guaranteed Rate Field from 2017 to 2024, and Rate Field from 2025. The sign on the front changes with the sponsor. The field underneath it, grass with a 400-foot center field and a capacity listed at 40,615, has stayed the same shape throughout.

The park matters beyond its address because it sits at an odd point in ballpark history. It was the last major-league park built before the retro wave that began with Camden Yards in 1992, which means it was designed in the old multipurpose-era mindset and then reworked, piece by piece, to feel more like the parks that followed it. It also hosted the 2005 White Sox, who won the franchise's third World Series, and it has been the site of a pair of perfect games. This guide covers what the building is, where the club played before it, how the historical park factors say it has played for hitters, and how to plan a visit.

Everything below about the club's results comes from the historical record through the 2025 season. The dimensions, capacity and surface come from this site's own reference data for the ballpark, which can change when a club renovates, so treat them as a snapshot and check the club's official site before you travel.

Rate Field at a glance

The reference data for the park is short, and it is worth reading line by line, because each entry tells you something about how a game there feels.

Two numbers deserve a comment. The first is orientation. A ballpark's azimuth is the compass bearing you follow from home plate over the pitcher's rubber to center field. The Official Baseball Rules state a preference that this line run east-northeast, roughly 67 degrees, so the batter is not looking into a low afternoon sun. Rate Field points southeast, at 127 degrees, well away from that suggestion. Many parks ignore the rule's preference, because city blocks and highways decide where a stadium sits long before the rulebook does.

The second is elevation. At 595 feet the park is only a little above the level of Lake Michigan, so there is no thin-air effect of the kind that reshapes games in Denver. If a fly ball carries at Rate Field, wind and heat are doing it, not altitude.

Four names in thirty-five seasons

A stadium name is a sales contract, and the White Sox have signed several. The table lists the names the historical record shows for the park, with each club's best home attendance season under that name.

Those attendance figures tell a story that has little to do with the name on the sign. The park drew nearly three million fans in a season under its first name, and again in 2006, the year after the club won the World Series. By 2025 the count was 1,445,738 in a season that ended 60-102. The year before, the club went 41-121, the worst season by winning percentage in the franchise's 125 seasons in the historical record, and drew 1,380,733.

The 1991 opening is worth noting for another reason. The White Sox kept the Comiskey name for the new park, which went up across the street from the old one, so the club kept a link to its history for a dozen seasons. The sponsor names arrived once naming rights became a standard source of revenue, a practice common to most parks in the league.

Where the White Sox played before 1991

The club's story starts with the American League's arrival in Chicago in 1901. The historical record lists South Side Park as the home from 1901 through 1909, and it was there that the 1906 White Sox won the World Series over the crosstown Cubs, four games to two. The team's league pennants in 1901, 1906, 1917, 1919, 1959 and 2005 are all in the record, and three of them ended in World Series titles: 1906, 1917 and 2005.

In 1910 the White Sox opened Comiskey Park, named for owner Charles Comiskey. The historical home-game log shows the first home game there on July 1, 1910, in the middle of the season, with the final games of that year at the new place. The park was the club's home for eighty-one seasons, through 1990, and the sheet's best season attendance there is 2,136,988.

Some of baseball's best-known episodes happened in the first Comiskey Park. The 1919 World Series, which the Cincinnati Reds won five games to three and which became tied forever to the Black Sox scandal, had home games there. The first All-Star Game was played at Comiskey Park in 1933, and the park hosted the game again in 1983. In 1959 the club won its first pennant in forty years. The 1960 season brought owner Bill Veeck's exploding scoreboard, which set off fireworks when a Sox player homered. And on July 12, 1979, a promotion called Disco Demolition Night ended with fans on the field and the second game of a doubleheader forfeited to the Detroit Tigers.

For the broader story of those teams, the franchise history article, the history of the Chicago White Sox, covers each era, and the best seasons and postseason runs piece looks at the years that filled the park.

Why a new Comiskey was built

By the 1980s the original park was in its eighth decade and showed it. The club's leaders talked openly about moving, with the Tampa Bay area as the most frequently named destination, while Illinois lawmakers argued over public money for a replacement. The state eventually created a sports facilities authority to finance and own the new park, and the club stayed. That is how most stadium fights of the era ended: a public subsidy bought the club's promise to stay, and the new building became the argument for it.

The new park opened across the street in 1991. Its original design was a product of its time: a large, symmetrical bowl with a steep upper deck, which gave good views from the front rows and distant ones from the back. Within a year Baltimore opened Camden Yards and the standard changed, because fans began to expect a park with character and an intimate scale. The White Sox have spent much of the time since softening the original design, and renovations beginning in the first half of the 2000s reworked parts of the seating bowl and the concourses.

The result is a hybrid, a 1991 structure that has been adjusted ever since to fit tastes that arrived afterward. That is worth remembering when you read fan complaints about the park's early years: some of them describe a building that no longer exists in the same form.

How the park plays: what the historical park factors show

The historical team file carries a batting park factor, BPF, for every team season. It is a three-year figure scaled so that 100 is a neutral park. A reading of 105 means the park inflated run scoring by about five percent compared with the same teams' road games, and a reading of 95 means it suppressed scoring by the same amount.

The White Sox figures for the current park run in three phases.

The 2013 reading of 107 is the highest in the file for this park, and 2015, at 92, is the lowest. The one outlier in the middle, 2011, read 99. Both came with the same fences and the same grass, which is the first lesson of park factors: they describe how a building plays with a particular roster, weather and set of pitchers, and they move even when the dimensions do not. A team built around fly-ball pitchers will see its own park play differently from one built around ground-ball pitchers, because the sample is the club's own home and away games.

That said, the hitter-friendly stretch from the late 1990s fits what the field looks like. The corners are short by modern standards, at 330 feet down the left-field line and 335 down the right-field line, and the alleys, 375 feet in both directions, are not deep. Compare the alleys to Philadelphia's. The site's data gives Citizens Bank Park 374 feet in left-center and 369 in right-center, one foot and six feet shorter than Rate Field's 375, so on the tape measure a ball hit to either gap needs to travel within a few feet of the same distance to leave the park in either city. Fence distances are as listed on the site, and clubs adjust walls over time. The club's own home run totals in the historical reflect the era. The 2004 White Sox hit 242 home runs, home and road combined, against 162 in 1993.

Raw park factors do not capture wind. Chicago sits close to Lake Michigan. With the diamond pointing southeast, a wind from the west blows mostly out toward center field, and a wind from the east, which is the lake side, blows mostly in toward home plate. Cold spring and fall air also lets the ball travel less far than warm summer air does. These effects vary by day, so treat them as a rule of thumb and check the forecast before you decide how many runs to expect.

The 2005 World Series and other big games

The park's defining event is the 2005 postseason. The White Sox won 99 games, swept the Boston Red Sox three games to none in the Division Series, beat the Anaheim Angels four games to one in the Championship Series, and then swept the Houston Astros four games to none in the World Series, an 11-1 run through October. The first two games of that Series were played in Chicago. The title was the club's first since 1917, an 88-year wait, and Ozzie Guillen was the manager who ended it.

The ballpark has also hosted the 2003 All-Star Game, an event remembered as the first one to decide home-field advantage in the World Series. Beyond the postseason, the home team has produced two perfect games at the park: Mark Buehrle's in 2009 and Philip Humber's in 2012. The historical record does not keep a no-hitter or perfect-game list, so those two come from general baseball history rather than the database. They are a useful reminder that a park factor describes an average, and a good pitcher can still have a perfect day in a hitters' park.

The 2021 team, which won the AL Central with a 93-69 record, lost the Division Series to Houston, one game to three. That series, and the 2020 wild-card loss to Oakland, were the club's most recent postseason appearances as of the 2025 season.

The ballpark and the players who filled it

The reference data tells you the park. The historical franchise sheet tells you who played in it. Frank Thomas, who hit 448 home runs for the club between 1990 and 2005, played almost all of his career in the new park. He is the club's career leader in home runs, RBI and walks, and he won the MVP award in 1993 and 1994. Paul Konerko, the club's second-leading home run hitter with 432, played all of his White Sox career in the new park's era, from 1999 to 2014. Jose Abreu hit 243 home runs for the club from 2014 to 2022 and was the 2020 MVP.

On the mound, Mark Buehrle won 161 games for the club, from 2000 to 2011, and his career was almost entirely the new park's decade. Chris Sale struck out 1,244 batters for the club between 2010 and 2016. For the full Position-by-position picture, the best players in White Sox history lays out the leaders and the Hall of Famers.

None of this is a claim that the park produced the players. It only tells you that the park's own era had stars. The division titles of 2000, 2005 and 2008 came in seasons when historical rated the park as favorable to hitters, with readings of 102, 103 and 105, and the 2021 title came with a reading of 101.

Planning a visit

General advice is more useful here than specifics, because tickets, entry rules, food and transit options change often. Check the club's official site for all of them before you go.

• Weather. Chicago evenings cool quickly, particularly in April, May and September, and the park is open to the lake wind. Bring a layer even if the afternoon is warm.
• Sightlines. Seats down the lines let you see the fielders' positioning; seats behind the plate give the best view of pitch movement. In the upper deck, the front rows have far better views than the back rows.
• Timing. Gates usually open well before first pitch, and arriving early lets you see batting practice, walk the concourse and find your section before the crowd arrives.
• Entry rules. Bag and security policies vary and are updated each season. Read the club's current policy the day before.
• Accessibility. The club's site lists accessible seating and services. Contact the ticket office in advance if you need them.

For a record of how the White Sox are doing before you go, the live team page shows the record and next game, and the Rate Field page keeps the reference data for the building.

Common questions

Is Rate Field the same park as Comiskey Park? Not exactly. The original Comiskey Park, which opened in 1910, was replaced by a new park across the street that opened in 1991 under the name Comiskey Park, now often called Comiskey Park II. Rate Field is the current name of that second park.

Why does the name keep changing? The name is sold. The names listed in the historical record, from Comiskey Park II to U.S. Cellular Field, Guaranteed Rate Field and Rate Field, follow the club's naming-rights deals, so a new sponsor or a rebranded sponsor leads to a new sign.

Is it a hitters' park? The historical park factors say it often has been, particularly from 1999 to 2013, with readings as high as 107. In the 1990s and the late 2010s it leaned toward pitchers. Today's reading is near neutral, so the honest answer is that it depends on the era, the roster and the wind.

How deep is center field? The reference data lists 400 feet to center field, 375 to left-center and 375 to right-center.

Is there a roof? No. It is an open-air park with a natural grass field, so games can be delayed or postponed by weather.

Where to go next

For the club behind the ballpark, start with the history of the Chicago White Sox, then compare how its division rivals are built in the Cleveland Guardians, the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals histories. To see where the 2005 title sits among all of baseball's champions, read the history of the World Series. For live news and coverage, the White Sox topic page gathers the latest stories.