The Norfolk Tides are a Norfolk, Virginia minor league baseball team, the AAA farm team for the Baltimore Orioles in the International League. The team was a longtime affiliate of the New York Mets from 1969 to 2006. The team plays their home games at Harbor Park.

The franchise began its history in the South Atlantic League in 1961 as the Tidewater Tides, playing at Lawrence Stadium in Portsmouth. The main newspaper of South Hampton Roads, The Virginian-Pilot, ran a contest to determine the team name. Although the chosen name was "Mariners," the Pilot's editor overruled the contest, deciding he liked the alliteration of "Tidewater Tides."

The Tides spent their first year as an "independent" team with no direct major-league affiliation, but became a St. Louis Cardinals affiliate the following season. However, the South Atlantic League decided to pull out of Virginia in 1963, threatening the future of minor-league baseball in the Hampton Roads area. A local group was able to convince the Carolina League to expand by two teams, one of them being the Tides.

In 1969, the Tides became a Triple-A team when the New York Mets moved their International League franchise from Jacksonville, Florida to Portsmouth. The previous owners of the Tides continued to run the team under the Mets' ownership. Their first year in Triple-A ended with a pennant. At the same time, the Mets and the city of Norfolk cooperated to build the team's next home, Met Park.

The Tides won the Governors' Cup, the International League championship, in 1972, 1975, 1982, 1983, and 1985. They also had the league's best regular-season record in 1987, but lost in the playoffs. In 1992, ground was broken on the club's current home of Harbor Park, and the Tides moved into the new facility in 1993. This period was a time of change in several other ways. First, in 1992, the Mets sold the franchise to a group led by a Tampa businessman. At the time the Tides moved into Harbor Park and team also replaced the "Tidewater" in its name with that of Norfolk, partly for marketing reasons and partly for political considerations. The city of Norfolk facilitated the financing and building of Harbor Park. Also in 1993, The Tides introduced their mascot Rip Tide.

The New York Mets have not renewed their contract with the Norfolk Tides for the upcoming year, ending a 38-year continuous partnership, the second longest in AAA (the Atlanta-Richmond partnership dates to 1966). The Baltimore Orioles will announce their relationship with the Tides in a press conference on September 25th, 2006. The owner of the Tides also owns minor-league clubs in Bowie, Maryland, Frederick, Maryland, and Delmarva (based in Salisbury, Maryland), all of which are affiliated with the Orioles.