Baseball Toaster Bad Altitude
Help
Ballparking
2005-06-14 11:53
by Mark T.R. Donohue

The MLBlogs homepage is encouraging us to write about our favorite ballparks, so I thought I might jot down a few thoughts about the parks which I've visited. First, though, it's not every day that the New York Times (registration required) runs a feature on the Rockies, so that's worth a link. It's nothing you haven't heard before (ballpark wacky, pitchers sad), but it has that classy Times sheen. On to the ballparks, rated off the top of my head from best to worst:

  1. Wrigley Field, Chicago. A real no-brainer. Other than the ones immediately behind support columns, there are no bad seats, and the view from the upper deck (which seems closer to the field than the mezzanines at a lot of newer parks) of sailboats on Lake Michigan is postcard-pretty. The surplus of day games and lack of annoying JumboTron animations are added bonuses. You have to love the ragtime band that wanders around entertaining fans between innings, too. On the other hand, the food is not great, the concourse is ridiculously crowded, and Cubs fans have grown obnoxious in recent years.
  2. SBC Park, San Francisco. They could have cruised on the design of this one and gotten by on location alone, as the park is tucked into an artificial extension of the San Franciso Bay. You take a trolley down from the Embarcadero (or a ferry across from Oakland, which I've never done but I've heard is cool) and pass a statue of Willie Mays on your way in. The "portholes" in right field through which passersby can stop and watch the action are a great touch. The park is a little crammed with advertising (the little car that pops out of the left field fence is extremely tacky) and everything is Bay Area-expensive. The outfield could stand to be a little bit less self-consciously eccentric. And why are there only four fingers on the giant glove in left?
  3. Coors Field, Denver. A field with all the conveniences of the recent renaissance in ballpark architecture, but one that doesn't constantly scream new, new, NEW at you. The nature of the games there, where no lead is safe, is part of the charm as well. Compared to the stadiums I've ranked above it, it's a cinch to get to and cheap to park around. The view of the Rocky Mountains from the right-field upper deck is so beautiful at sunset that it can actually make you forget there's a game taking place below you. However, the upper deck is needlessly hard to get to, and why does it extend all the way around the right-field foul pole? And what's up with the Rockpile, the bleacher-style centerfield upper deck?
  4. Miller Park, Milwaukee. The nicest of the new retractable roof parks to which I've been. It looks very high-tech approaching from downtown. The interior has the weird not-quite-outside feel that all of the pseudodomes have, but the perks are great. The food is spectacular, Bernie Brewer's slide is hysterical, and the sausage race is something everyone should witness once in person before they die. With the roof closed, though, the place has the atmosphere of a very gauche airplane hangar. Go on a nice day. And go early. People from Wisconsin have refined tailgating to an art, and Miller's parking lots are thoughtfully designed as a gallery for it.
  5. Fenway Park, Boston. Fenway is encrusted with history, sure, but it hasn't aged gracefully as Wrigley has. The seats are cramped and don't point directly at the action, the field itself looks like a swamp after even a drizzle, and they wrap the hot dogs in stale bread instead of buns. I haven't been there since the new seats were added on top of the Green Monster, but they look cool on TV. God help you if you're an out-of-town fan. I remember quite distinctly being cursed out musically and at length by an inebriated Red Sox National for wearing an A's hat to a game I attended with my uncle. I was ten years old at the time.
  6. Minute Maid Park, Houston. It slightly resembles a sardine tin from outside, but on the inside it's an interesting mix of pretty and silly. The concourses are broad and the restrooms immaculate. The grass looks incredible for a retractable-roofed joint. You get a lot of different and interesting views, at least from the lower level. However, a lot of the exaggerated touches are goofy. The short porch in left field (the Crawford Boxes) provides a great view, but at the cost of the cheapest home runs in the majors. The ramp in center field (Tal's Hill) looks even dopier in person than it does on TV. And the giant train with the payload of baseballs painted like oranges, what's the story there?
  7. Comerica Park, Detroit. Generally I give a new park the benefit of the doubt if it's open-air, but Comerica isn't the best of its breed. The upper deck starts too far back from the field. The moat between where the outfield fences used to be and where they are now after Juan Gonzalez had a hissy fit looks dumb. The gigantic statues of fierce tigers are tacky. For some reason all of the interesting food selections have been placed in one circular arcade near home plate, which features epic lines and when I visited bigger crowds than the stands. Worse still, the concessions were handled by volunteers and not employees, and one trip for a pretzel with cheese ended up taking the better part of three innings. At least the park is oriented and constructed such that the hideously decrepit Detroit skyline is obscured.
  8. Bank One Ballpark, Phoenix. A pretty generic newfangled poptop job. All the decorations commemorating the D-Backs World Series victory seem somehow wrong. If ever there was a climate that required a retractable roof, however, this is it, and it is comfortable within even when it's furnacelike without. They have a McDonald's, in case you ever wanted to pay eight dollars for an Extra Value Meal. This was the first park I visited that had a radar gun, pitch indicator, and pitch count scoreboard, a feature a lot of places have adopted. The best thing about the BOB is how much information it gives the fan, from expanded stat lines to scoring decisions. That said, the upper deck is way too big, and the food isn't anything special.
  9. U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago. A relic, and it's only fifteen years old! The former New Comiskey mixes all the impersonality of the multipurpose parks of the '60s and '70s with the bombardment of advertising found in the next gen fields. The fireworks after home runs are cool, and they do have a real organ. Upper deck seats are completely worthless, but the left and right field bleachers offer really good views for a somewhat reasonable price. For years they would show this surreal animation of a fox wearing a Sox uniform clapping completely out of sync with the canned clap-clap-CLAP sound effect they ran along with it. That always threw me. The food selection is pretty good, but it always seems you're sitting on the opposite end of the park from where the funnel cakes are no matter what your tickets say.
  10. McAfee Coliseum, Oakland. The stadium itself is hideous, from the caged bridge that comes across from the BART to the colossal facade of Mt. Davis. The atmosphere is pretty excellent, though. There's no reason to go to an A's game except to watch baseball, and the fans really make the place, from the irrepressible Guy With the Horn (listen for him on TV), to the Hammer Kids, to the bums with the drums (IS!-RING!-HAU!-SEN!). I hated the Coliseum the first time I went there, but most of my fondest memories of baseball games ended up occurring there, as well as some of my most crushing defeats. Plus: cotton candy in a silly hat.
  11. Busch Stadium, St. Louis. By far my least favorite of the parks I've visited. The field is OK, but the seats are not, and the concourse looks like a refugee camp. Cardinals fans at least are friendly, fierce, and extremely knowledgeable. They don't leave early, either. I really like the collection of flags Busch has in the outfield for all of their retired numbers. The experience that most sums up my impression of the happily soon-to-be demolished park, however, is going to the restroom and finding -- how shall I put this? Someone had used one of the stand-up toilets for an activity usually reserved for the sitting-down ones.

I've also visited four parks that aren't in service any more -- Old Comiskey, Candlestick Park, whatever they called the old park in Milwaukee, and Tiger Stadium. None of them was particularly memorable, except for Candlestick's extreme cold and the proximity to the players offered at Comiskey the First. You could yell stuff at the guys in the on-deck circle and know they were hearing you, which the south side fans took full advantage of, I assure you. This year I hope to make it to Kansas City and Minneapolis for games.

There's no one perfect place to go to a baseball game. if you could combine Wrigley's atmosphere with Coors' amenities, Fenway's history, the BOB's air conditioning, St. Louis's fans, and Oaklands'...Oaklandness, you might have it, but why would you want to? The frustrations of going to the ballpark, whether it's the mosh pit bathroom lines on the North Side of Chicago or having to go down a whole level because the upper deck is out of dollar dogs in Oakland-Alameda, only add to the whole experience. And people costumed as sausages running a footrace would be truly bizarre anywhere other than Milwaukee.

Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.