The $22 million Banner Island Ballpark opened with a baseball game on April 28, 2005, during which the Stockton Ports defeated the San Jose Giants, 7–4, in front of a sellout crowd of 5,287 fans.

The Banner Island area is also the purported home of a previous Stockton baseball team that played in the late 1800s.

Local residents claim that the team was the inspiration for the Mudville Nine in "Casey at the Bat", a poem by Ernest Thayer.

This was once an island in the San Joaquin River delta, noted during the Civil War for the huge "Stars and Stripes" posted by a Union supporter.

In time the island was connected to the mainland through land fill and only the southern shore remains.