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After a century and a half, St. Paul's home team is returning to Lowertown.

Since the 1850s, St. Paul's team has had nebulous nicknames, a half-dozen ballparks, and about as many owners. Ticket prices have gone from 50 cents to 16 bucks. The team that moved out of town to eventually morph into the Chicago White Sox will play their first game Thursday at the new CHS Field.

The St. Paul Saints are billing brand-new CHS Field as the “Greenest Ballpark in America.” And while they may get an argument or two from any number of stadiums — including the big-league ballyard at the other end of the Green Line — they make a good case.

The Saint Paul Saints have a new ballfield in St. Paul, CHS Field. Take a tour.

For the first time since 1908 or 1909, there is a ballpark in downtown St. Paul. At the turn of the 20th century, the park was called, for lack of marketing, The Downtown Ballpark (also known as the "Pillbox"), and it sat about where the old Taystee Bakery was, if you remember that. A fire destroyed that little bandbox and the Saints moved to what was then a first version of Lexington Park.

At various points in its history, the Lowertown site of the new CHS Field housed a rail yard, a coal-gasification plant, a slaughterhouse and a shampoo plant. It was one of the 10 most-polluted brownfield sites in the Twin Cities, according to the St. Paul Port Authority.