FanPost

A first hand look at a few ballparks

Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports

The offseason is upon us, so I thought I'd write a bit about a handful of the ballparks that we've seen this summer and share some thoughts about how these parks were designed.

Thanks to a number of weekend trips and a little driving in our part of the country, we've been able to see games at:

  • Oriole Park at Camden Yards (aka OPACY), Baltimore MD
  • Nationals Park, Washington DC
  • Wrigley Field, Chicago IL
  • Rogers Centre, Toronto ON
  • BB&T Ballpark, Charlotte NC (White Sox AAA affiliate)

View of the City

The thing that makes baseball parks unique among sports venues in my mind is the way that good stadium design can connect you with the environment around the stadium. When you see a game at Camden Yards, you see a game "in Baltimore." A piece of the Baltimore skyline is part of the experience visually. At Nationals Park, you don't see monuments or even the Capitol (which actually isn't that far from the sight-lines), but the collection of apartment and office buildings that have sprung up since the stadium was built are front and center when you look beyond center field. In each of these parks, the sights and sounds from the surrounding neighborhood is part of the experience.

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The real winner here might come as a bit of a surprise, though. BB&T Ballpark. That's right, in Charlotte -- the minor league park. The Charlotte skyline isn't just visible and a part of the experience. It absolutely dominates it. Watching a game here feels like you are *in* the city. It really isn't that crazy to imagine that the guys are actually just playing a pick-up game in some city park instead of being just one step away from the best in the world. Now, a big topic of conversation surrounding this ballpark when it was constructed was that it can't be expanded to hold a major league team due to the lack of space between the stadium and the surrounding buildings. There's no question this is true. There just isn't room. But, expansion is blocked behind home plate and throughout foul territory. The amount of free space beyond the outfield is right in line with MLB parks across the country. It is totally reasonable to achieve the same result with a big league park and all of the amenities that come with it.

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On the other side, the loser here is the dome in Toronto -- emphasis on dome. Unlike the removable roof in Seattle, this domed design completely disconnects the fan experience from the city that surrounds the park. The dome was closed on the day that we were there, but I'd imagine it is just as isolating when open. More than that, the acoustics inside the dome are eerie and borderline unsettling. Maybe I'm just a city critter, but I don't mind an occasional car horn and passing siren. Here, crowd noise and the sounds of the game echo in a way that makes a half-filled stadium feel empty. It was almost like being in a courtroom where sounds echo off the marble walls.

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360 Sight Lines of the Field

I've come to this tradition pretty late, but I've finally started doing a multi-inning tour of the stadium with stops along the way to watch the game from multiple angles. The Baltimore and DC parks fail this test in the entire area near home plate. Beyond that, both parks have a number of spots that are worth time but not as many as they should have. Wrigley, for all of it's amazing little quirks, fails this test too. Yes, explore every inch of this amazing little park if you get the chance. Just don't plan on catching the game from many angles while you do.

Oddly, the winner in this regard is actually the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Designers did a nice job of making the game accessible from all angles here. Granted, the upper level isn't conducive to this at all with one section completely blocked by the built-in hotel. But, the lower level has spots to stop all along the way with no barriers in the home plate area where so many stadiums fail. Very nicely done. I have to wonder if that's more luck than purposeful design, but well done regardless.

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Environment Around the Stadium

A day at the ballpark should offer more than what you get inside the stadium itself, and I have to say each of these venues proves this right -- each in it's own way. We probably can't say enough good things about cozy confines of Wrigleyville and the energy that you feel on gameday. That's true before and after the game. Our Thursday early afternoon felt like a Saturday.

Oddly, as the dome in Toronto isolates the game from the city, the environment immediately outside the dome integrates into the city beautifully. The CN Tower and aquarium are right there and are balanced quite nicely with the CANADA sign (always a great photo opportunity) and a nice fountain. You can't help but want to explore a bit walking in or out.

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But, and this might just be my biased towards my hometown park, none of them quite measure up to the environment around Camden Yards in Baltimore. The walk from Pratt Street to the bars on Washington Blvd in full view of the stadium just can't be beat on gameday. Opposite the stadium are all of the packed bars that are just converted row houses -- that's just so Baltimore. On the other side of the park, walking down Eutaw Street and then into the park where that street continues is pretty special too.

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Mass Transit

Anyone who follows me on Twitter finds out pretty quickly that I chat about baseball pretty often. But, if you're willing to see past those tweets, you'll probably see a lot of talk about transit options other than cars. Yeah, Detroit folks, cars aren't the most efficient way to move people around... Sorry to break it to you.

I know that this isn't the place to harp on how quality mass transit is the only way for a city to develop the way that it should, so I'll leave it at this: If you want to attract thousands of people to a small area for 82 home games each year, you have to provide access to a quick and efficient way to move them into and out of the area. This is even more critical for a sport like baseball that plays most of its games on weekdays. The only way to really get that done is direct access to a quality mass transit system.

I don't really want to get into obvious winners and losers in this regard since it isn't always a straight-forward comparison. To illustrate, Nationals Stadium is a few blocks from the closest metro station where users get access to a pretty good system. In Baltimore, the transit system isn't anywhere near as efficient or effective, but the station is right there at the stadium. The system in Chicago, which struck me as a little clunky, has a stop right next to the stadium. On the other hand, is a fairly long way from much of the Chicago area.

Digging a little deeper using downtown Toronto to illustrate, let's take a look at the area around the stadium from our Airbnb balcony. (Okay, it is quite likely that I've chosen Toronto because it let's me show off the awesome Airbnb that we were lucky enough to find.)

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The stadium itself can be seen on the right side of the image. Less prominent on the left side is a regional train system that runs parallel to the lake and right by the stadium. Prominently in the center is a really tall, really shiny residential building. I was standing in another residential building that is just as tall and just as shiny. What you can't tell from this view is that these two buildings are part of a long string of similar buildings of one- and two-bedroom condos full of potential season ticket holders -- all within a quick walk of the stadium. (Harping on the transit thing for a minute, this kind of dense development isn't possible without a good transit system like Toronto has. It just isn't possible to squeeze in the kind of road network that would be needed.) In case you are wondering, Scotiabank Arena (home of the Toronto Maple Leafs) is just beyond the tower with direct access to all that transit.

This pattern continues along those tracks beyond the stadium as well as away from the lake all supported by Toronto's extensive transit network. Big, tall, shiny residential and commercial buildings -- one after another after another. It's going to be a lot easier to get people to attend games on a regular basis when they already live and/or work within a few blocks.

My Two Cents

Every sport is unique, and venues for those sports will be just as unique. Unlike basketball and hockey, baseball has open-air venues. Unlike football and soccer, those open-air venues don't have a full bowl of spectators to block the view of the surrounding area. With this in mind, baseball stadiums should open to the larger city around them both visually and through the fans' experiences before and after the game. Our desire to explore the ballpark, which I feel is far more common among baseball fans than other sports, should extend to areas around the park too. When all is done well, fans should have interesting and fun pregame and post options, a stadium that connects them to the outside world during the game, and an area between them and is interesting and fun to explore.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the <em>Bless You Boys</em> writing staff.