And the Petco thread.

Biased obviously but have also been at almost every park. Miller Park has Bernie Brewer. Sliding down from a beer barrel.

That automatically puts it top 15.

Negatives of Stadium are the now stupid name, the shadows on field during day games and weird acoustics

NL Central has two of the worst atmospheres in MLB with Cincy and Pittsburgh. Both fan bases know ownership doesn’t give a ####. It’s sad vibes.

Nationals Park always gives off a strong Citizens Bank Park aesthetic. It’s a solid, newer stadium. It has amenities but lacks overall character. If you love a backdrop of cranes and scaffolding, well, do I have a place for you!

That description is seriously out of date. The construction around Nationals Park is pretty much finished, and there is now an abundance of bars, restaurants, hotels, apartments & condominiums in the area, with the METRO subway a block from the ballpark. That makes for a pretty good fan experience, provided you can overlook the Nationals current on-field performance issues.

Let's see, I've been to T-Mobile (which is still Safeco in my mind, not that that's any less crassly commercial), Oracle (still PacBell, see above), Dodger Stadium, the Big A, Petco, Target Field, Wrigley, Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Fenway Park. That's actually more than I would have guessed. I also went to Candlestick and the King Dome, back when those were things.

Petco is a lovely park. But it'll always be hard to top Dodger Stadium for me. Not all around -- it's nice to be able to walk to the park, like at Wrigley -- but the view, the weather, the team, the history . . . hard to get better than Chavez Ravine on a July night.

Rankings with my personal notes:

30 - Athletics - bad 20 years ago.
29 - Rays - parents attended and said laughably bad.
28 - White Sox - this was not a good park when it opened, it was quite enjoyable the last time I went, this could be more of a mid-tier spot.
27 - Diamondbacks - solid but unspectacular
26 - Angels
25 - Yankees
24 - Brewers - enjoyable place, feels underrated here. County Stadium was a terrific AAA style park, die-had baseball fans only.
23 - Blue Jays - I attend in 1997 to see Mark McGwire homer off Roger Clemens.
22 - Marlins
21 - Reds - attended Riverfront
20 - Rangers - attended Ballpark at Arlington
19 - Cleveland - Cleveland Stadium was a dump, the Jake could easily swap with no. 13.
18 - Tigers - old Tiger Stadium was a favorite
17 - Astros - fair
16 - Royals - fair
15 - Nationals
14 - Phillies - attended The Vet
13 - Cardinals - ballpark village was awesome, the park not so much, no access to lower levels with bleacher seats, overrated like Old Busch.
12 - Braves
11 - Orioles - great place
10 - Mets
9 - Mariners - swap with Orioles
8 - Twins - The Metrodome sucked, air conditioning broke on a 90 degree day
7 - Red Sox - could be no.1 if the seats were larger/had less obstructed views.
6 - Rockies - 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 all could argue for first. No trips to no.5 yet.
5 - Dodgers
4 - Pirates
3 - Cubs - the inside remains a joy, besides not being able to access batting practice lower levels without box seats (instituted in 2004), the charm outside the stadium is gone, replaced by new property that has no baseball feel to it.
2 - Giants
1 - Padres

Ranking the parks I've been to, active only.

14. Nationals Park
13. Riverfront Park
12. Fish Tank
11. Miller Park
10. Wrigley Field
9. Sox Park
8. Jacobs Field
7. Tiger Field
6. Chavez Ravine
5. Camden Yards
4. Fenway Park
3. Mission Field
2. Coors Field
1. Allegheny Park

What this article tells me more than anything is that the new ballpark boom - which still seems pretty recent in my mind - was actually pretty long ago already. So many of these parks are 20+ years old now even though they still seem pretty much brand new to me.

For context - Safeco is only 3 years younger now than the Metrodome was when Target Field opened.

Cubs - the inside remains a joy, besides not being able to access batting practice lower levels without box seats (instituted in 2004), the charm outside the stadium is gone, replaced by new property that has no baseball feel to it.

Nostalgia does funny things to the human brain. As if the old McDonalds and the parking lot next door and the body shop across the street had "charm" with "a baseball feel to it".

#7: I was gonna say the same thing. I can well imagine the new surroundings have a bland, generic pedestrian mall vibe but the old surroundings ... about the best I can say is that they had a "regular neighborhood" vibe. Which was kinda cool in its way but mainly in the sense of "I wouldn't expect to find a ML ballpark here." Of course I'm going back to well before they put stands on the rooftops.

EDIT: Seems I've been to 7 existing parks and 4 demised parks. I might have been to Nats stadium for a USWNT soccer game but it's more likely that was the football stadium at the time. I'm not sure why we didn't make Milw trips back in the day -- not really much less convenient to me and my friends than Comiskey was. I think Cubs, Sox, Turner and Guardians are the only stadiums I've been in multiple times though I'm not sure I've been to new Comiskey more than once (Old certainly). I'm pretty sure the roof was open in Milw so I've never seen a game indoors.

Using Bleed The Freak's list with my own annotations, along with a letter grade:

C - Athletics - Great place to sun bathe in the upper deck in the 70's when the Mustachios were winning championships
C - White Sox - Comiskey I was way too much of a pitchers' park
B+ / B- - Yankees - Yankee Stadium1 had atmosphere up the wazoo, YS2 much less so, though during the postseason it was still a perfect setting.
A- - Brewers - County Stadium was a gem - great food, good sightlines, and affordable good seats
D - Reds - Riverfront was a cookie cutter whose only redemption was The Big Red Machine
D- / B+ - Cleveland - Municipal Stadium had splinters in the seats; The Jake was great in the 90's, don't know about now
A - Tigers - Briggs / Tiger Stadium was the perfect ballpark
B- / D / C - Nationals- Griffith Stadium was quirky and unique, DC / RFK was great for football, and Nats Park is a nothingburger, no charm whatsoever, and a PITA to reach from MoCo, MD
B / C- - Phillies - Connie Mack reeked of popcorn, beer and atmosphere; the Vet's sole virtue was that it was easy to reach on public transport
C - Cardinals - Busch II seemed kind of generic multipurpose, nothing special
A / A- - Orioles - Memorial had the best atomosphere of any ballpark I've ever been to, up there with RFK for football; Camden Yards is gorgeous but needs a winning team
D- - Mets - Shea was the pits, though if I'd been there in 1969 or 1986 I'm sure I'd rate it much higher
D- / A- - Mariners - The Kingdome may have been tied with Cleveland's Municipal for the worst park; Safeco is tied with Camden Yards for the best of the new parks
D - Twins - The Metrodome was redeemed solely by the way it psyched out the Whiteybirds during the 1987 World Series, otherwise it was almost as bad as the Kingdome
B+ - Red Sox - Perfect in every way other than the sightlines down the lines and the insanely expensive tickets
B+ - Dodgers - Only went there once in '71, and had to admit it was a gem
B- - Pirates - Three Rivers was the best of all the 70's multiplexes, though I suspect it was better for the Steelers than the Pirates
A- - Cubs - Just below Briggs / Tiger Stadium, though now it suffers from the Fenway syndrome of ridiculously high ticket prices.
C+ - Giants - Candlestick was an experience, best experienced during a temperature inversion. Would've loved to have had the blanket and hand warmer concessions.
C - Padres - Jack Murphy was perfectly cromulent, though since I only went there once I can't say I remember much about it other than the Padres swept the Phillies.

Grades based on atmosphere, affordability of seats behind the plate when good teams are in town, cheap parking &/or good access by public transport, team quality, lack of gimmickry, policy on bringing in outside food or drink.

Not a factor: ballpark food (exception: County Stadium), bells & whistles in general. I go to a game to watch baseball, not to pig out or watch puppet races and all that other BS

My taste in ballparks is so different from the authors. Among currently active parks, the only ones that register as nice are SF, Chicago NL, Boston, LA NL, KC, and Miami. Everything else is boring cookie cutter.

have been to current homes of Mets, Cubs, Red Sox, Dodgers, Orioles, Phillies, Brewers.
been just outside of Padres and Pirates.
also inside former parks of Yankees, Phillies, White Sox and Indians.

love the old parks.

was disappointed by Miller Park, tbh. love the city, but nobody in attendance seemed to be watching the game. at the forefront of crap like having kids hit balls in batting cages at the stadium DURING THE GAME. geesh, they can do that anywhere.

#offmylawn

@9: You're way too charitable to Dodger Stadium, which I suspect is because your visit was 50 years ago (!). If you went today you would not give it more than a B-. As for Candlestick Park, that's an F always and forever.

If Candelstick Park was an F, Arlington Stadium was an expelled. For one thing, you had to watch the 70s Rangers.

Comiskey II is a good place to watch a baseball game, if watching baseball game is part of the reason you go to a baseball game.

@9: You're way too charitable to Dodger Stadium, which I suspect is because your visit was 50 years ago (!). If you went today you would not give it more than a B-. As for Candlestick Park, that's an F always and forever.

You could be right about Dodger Stadium, since one of the reasons I rated it so high was because they used to have the cheapest behind the plate seats of any stadium in baseball. $1.50 for the upper deck in 1971, which is nosebleed but still the ideal vantage point. That's $11.00 in 2023 currency, and I suspect they're a bit higher than that today, especially for a Braves game.

I have a slight fondness for Candlestick for two great experiences there that negated the typical frostbite. The second was in 1996, when I took an old time Brooklyn Bushwicks pitcher turned Marxist professor to the first ball game he'd been to in many years, though he still loved baseball. He lived in San Jose, and I'd just bought his immense library of African American history.

But the best was in 1971 I went to a Dodgers game there during an early September temperature inversion, when for the first time in about half a dozen trips I didn't freeze my butt off. The Dodgers came from behind to win in the 9th, but the best part was the many outbreaks in the stands that were instigated by Dodgers fans burning Giants pennants, and Giants fans burning Dodgers pennants. Total Old School ballpark experience in the heat of a division race between two bitter rivals with hostile fan bases, and with a division title hanging in the balance along with one of the biggest crowds of the year, it was an evening I'll never forget.

This is not a terrible list. My top 2 are San Diego and Pittsburgh. I do have an inherent bias against stadiums in the middle of parking lots. I will say that Anaheim was a relatively quick exit, especially compared to whatever Philly does. Nationals Stadium did have $5 tickets last season, and I hope they continue that this season.

Dodger Stadium is dated and in the middle of parking lots, but that sunset during a late afternoon game is amazing. Yankee Stadium has to be the biggest disappointment. Sterile monstrosity with so many obvious signs of class segregation. Plus terrible food choices and exorbitant concession prices. Still missing five current stadiums - I thought San Fran was the only top-tier one I'm missing, but apparently Minneapolis and Atlanta are up there.

Yankee Stadium has to be the biggest disappointment. Sterile monstrosity with so many obvious signs of class segregation.

People today usually knock the 1909-1923 vintage ballparks, but they had the distinct advantage of not requiring a major financial investment just to get a good seat behind the plate. During the Year of Maris, Yankee Stadium upper deck seats behind the plate were $11.00 in 2023 dollars, and box seats behind the plate or behind the dugouts were the equivalent of $35.00, no matter who the opponent was. None of this dynamic pricing BS.

None of this dynamic pricing BS.

Because even in 1961, Yanks' average attendance was just over 20,000. Attendance at the game he tied Ruth was 19,401 (Tues night); the record-breaker in front of 23,154 on a Sun afternoon (last game of the season). Golly, the locals were excited.

Only 9 teams that year topped 1 M, led by the Dodgers at 1.8 and the Yanks at 1.75. Don't get me wrong, it was great to show up at 12.30 and buy a ticket to the 1.15 Cubs game for $1, the 3 of us in the upper deck with empty seats next to and in front of us (put your feet up, bang the seat next to you if -- I swear it happened once or twice -- the Cubs mounted a rally) but I doubt it was very good for the sport.

I like Comerica Park. I especially like making a complete circuit of the entire field without being hived off into a particular section. But it's not Tiger Stadium.

The Giants and Mariners have beautiful ballparks.

That makes for a pretty good fan experience, provided you can overlook the Nationals current on-field performance issues.

I think they missed a bet by not orienting the stadium so that you could see the Capitol Building out past center field. That would have been so iconic.

Among currently active parks, the only ones that register as nice are SF, Chicago NL, Boston, LA NL, KC, and Miami. Everything else is boring cookie cutter.

If Camden Yards is a cookie cutter, it is only because so many other sites used it as a template.

Agree with t he low marks for Dodger Stadium and Voxter's paean to it, which praises everything about the park but not the park itself. I'm sure Minute Maid is better with a winning team, but I found it a worse experience than the Kingdome (made enjoyable by a fan one row in front heckling the M's struggling pitcher by screaming Cal-Ga-REEEEE while his son protested, Dad! We'll wind up on television!) Also agree with Andy that Memorial was a great place to watch a game and a wonderful fan base. Anaheim was the least pleasant park I've been to. Candlestick was an adventure, the bleacher seats at the Oakland Colosseum were a great place to take in a game. Yankee I and Shea? I was a kid, they were fine.

Fresno was a nice park filled with fans who knew the team and player history, at least in the 90s they did.

Hard to believe but Camden Yards will be 31 years old come opening day.
What a ballpark…..truly is a ballpark and not a stadium.
I am also a big fan of the Pirates new park; sit on the 3rd base side for a night game as it is a great view of downtown Pittsburgh.
I very much like the Tigers new stadium; great location in downtown Detroit.
Fenway and Wrigley ar3 the last of the old pre 1920’s parks and hold up reasonably well considering their age.
Ticket prices are outlandish at both.
Looking forward to visiting the Brewers park someday as it looks great on tv and the concessions sound interesting.
Nationals new park is a disaster, especially if your are sitting in the sun on a non-windy day.
They dug the ballpark so far into the earth that lower level seats are miserable on a July afternoon game with no air movement.
Coldest July night game ever was my Candlestick experience in 1992. Good riddance.
I like the Giants new park; nice view of the east bay.

I think they missed a bet by not orienting the stadium so that you could see the Capitol Building out past center field. That would have been so iconic.

Similarly, the article author notes how the White Sox could have had their stadium facing toward the Chicago skyline, but I imagine these missed opportunities come from this line in the MLB rules: "It is desirable that the line from home base through the pitcher’s plate to second base shall run East-Northeast." I presume that suggestion is based on limiting the sun as an impediment to play and/or creating sun-based safety issues (especially for the batter).

I've only been to one game in San Diego, but I honestly found Mission Field pretty underwhelming. It was perfectly fine. But I didn't enjoy the sightlines that much. The huge tan tower things are pretty ugly. The San Diego skyline is hardly exciting.

It definitely places below China Basin (Giants), Cascadia Field (M's), and Allegheny Park (Pirates) - which are pretty easily my top three among the new parks. For nostalgia and energy, Wrigley and Fenway both place high, though they're obviously lacking in other areas. Also applies to Chavez Ravine, which is a bit nicer but also a bit less historic. I'd put it in the next group of very nice (but not thrilling) parks.

So my list would roughly go in this order (with some tiers to define the differences):

Tier 1: Unqualified greatness
San Francisco Giants - China Basin
Seattle Mariners - Cascadia Field
Pittsburgh Pirates - Allegheny Park

Tier 2A: A wonderful time, but also some caveats
Chicago Cubs - Wrigley Field
Boston Red Sox - Fenway Park
Los Angeles Dodgers - Chavez Ravine

Tier 2B: Very nice parks
Baltimore Orioles - Camden Yards
Minnesota Twins - Great Northern Park
San Diego Padres - Mission Field
Detroit Tigers - Tiger Field

Tier 3: Perfectly fine, but nothing to blow me away
Atlanta Barves - Cobb Stadium
New York Mets - Willets Point
Washington Nationals - Nationals Park
Arizona Diamondbacks - Sonoran Grounds
Anaheim Angels - Autry Field
Houston Astros - Astrodome 2000

Tier 4: I actually like this one, but can acknowledge that objectively it's the worst
Oakland A’s - Oakland Coliseum

But honestly there's not a huge gap between most of these. Most parks these days are a really nice time.

Walt,

I understand the financial reasons for dynamic pricing: Econ 101. But that doesn't mean it's good for the fans or good for the sport. It's but one more symbol of the economic stratification of our society. The winners are the owners, the players, Ticketmaster, StubHub, and fans with deep pockets for whom shelling out a hundred dollars or more to see a Yankees-Red Sox or Giants-Dodgers game is either a business writeoff or a trivial personal expense. The losers are those in many cities who can now only afford to go to games against teams with few stars and little box office appeal. How you view such a change depends on who you are and how you're affected by it.

And yes, I also understand that nothing can be done about it, as long as the business incentives all point in one direction. But that doesn't mean we have to like it.

@24: The line from the pitchers' plate to 2nd at Comiskey II actually runs east-*south*east.

The line at Comiskey I ran ENE, but Jerry Reinsdorf wanted to keep home plate at 35th and Shields, and that was that. Whole place is turned 90 degrees from the way it 'should' be.

Notes/comments/exceptions:

Dodger Stadium is a classy, understated gem. Only knock, and it's a big one, is the traffic in/out is horrendous.

Oracle (which I still call PacBell) is perfection for day games, as well as night games in June when the sun hangs around, but for most other night games the bay view is lost/faded and it gets cold. Not Croix de Candlestick cold, but chilly.

GABP. The weakest & lamest of the new parks. Locals love it because it is indeed nicer than Riverfront (and let's face it, most of them have never left the tri-state area) but while the museum and exterior grounds are really good, the park inside is overall quite forgettable. Concourses have a parking garage feel to them.

Mile High. Cheap seats have excellent sight lines.

Pittsburgh. Perfection, even with a minor league team

Cleveland. I always thought it had a beautiful playing surface, which I guess means MLB's best grounds crew.

Should have two separate lists....enclosed/roofed stadiums and outdoor stadiums

Chase is falling apart, it's true. And they're pretty much screwed. The team is responsible for maintenance, but it seems they aren't doing much.

They either have to invest hundreds of millions to upgrade or find someone to build them a new stadium, and neither is happening anytime soon that I can see. Derrick Hall intimated that a decision needed to be made by this summer. Not holding my breath.

Their TV deal went splat of course And recently Forbes pegged the franchise value growth at 0% . Tracks.

The AC still works though, and since they installed the turf they don't need to open it during the day in the summer, so the place stays cooler. I think that part of the article was out of date.

Should have two separate lists....enclosed/roofed stadiums and outdoor stadiums

I've always found retractable roof stadiums to be hard to evaluate. For example, Minute Maid Park with the roof closed is no better than a C or C-. But with the roof open for a day game (which doesn't happen too often) it's easily a B+ or A-.

The line from the pitchers' plate to 2nd at Comiskey II actually runs east-*south*east.

That sounds like it could make things dangerous for RH batters in day games with a midday-ish start time, particularly as the sun crosses over to the southwestern side, yet the stadium has been around long enough to demonstrate the danger isn't really there.

I imagine these missed opportunities come from this line in the MLB rules: "It is desirable that the line from home base through the pitcher’s plate to second base shall run East-Northeast."

For Nationals Park to have a view of the Capitol beyond center field, which would indeed have been spectacular, the ballpark would have to be oriented much more to the Northwest, which would apparently run afoul of the MLB guidance. The other problem is that subsequent development around the park would likely have obscured any view of the Capitol. I believe that already happened to the handful of seats at the top corner of the right field stands at Nationals Park that did have a view of the dome.

I've always found retractable roof stadiums to be hard to evaluate. For example, Minute Maid Park with the roof closed is no better than a C or C-. But with the roof open for a day game (which doesn't happen too often) it's easily a B+ or A-.

I get what you're saying, but the only retractable-roof park I've been to* that really felt like a true outdoor stadium with the roof open is Seattle. The others felt more like someone took the lid off of the box, which I guess is more or less what actually happens. But when the roof is open in Seattle, it's hard to imagine what it's like when it's closed.

That's just a lovely ballpark in every respect, though.

*-Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Arizona, Toronto ... although I honestly don't remember if the roof was open at any point in AZ, so take that for what it's worth. I was there in early May 2005, so it's possible they opened it mid-game.

I get what you're saying, but the only retractable-roof park I've been to* that really felt like a true outdoor stadium with the roof open is Seattle.

The only time I've been to Safeco was for an afternoon game in early 2000, and if I hadn't known that there was a retractable roof, I never would've guessed it. It probably helped that it was a perfect afternoon.

Yeah, both times I've been to Seattle had perfect weather also. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen it with the roof closed. But it felt way more open-air than either Milwaukee or Houston, both of which I've also been to more than once with the roof open.

The first time I saw Houston, in fact, I took a tour right after the stadium was built, must have been a couple weeks after Opening Day in 2000. It was during the day and the roof was open, and I thought they actually had only opened it part way for some reason. I even asked the guide about it and was a little embarrassed when he said that was as open as it gets - it hangs out over the LF seats more than I expected, I guess.

Milwaukee is its own thing - it's a fan-shaped roof that opens down the middle, and I feel like the drawback of that design is that the stadium walls have to be so high down both baselines in order to support that, because half of the roof rests on each side. And then it's also very high in CF - they have those panels that open in the outfield, but that doesn't do much to make it feel more open-air overall. It's kind of a cool place (Milwaukee in general is a little underrated IMO) and I had fun going up there to see the Cubs, but I always felt "inside" to a degree.

Miller Park (or whatever it is called now) is ruinous for day games. Though the luxury of knowing you won't freeze your ass off in April, May, part of June, and September is a great utility to the roof. I know Harveys and I often railed on the misery of day games at Miller Park here in the past. Well described way above. County Stadium had brilliant vibe for day baseball and the best acoustics of any park I've been (the corrugated metal rimming the Mezzanine was a great accident. I find the retractable roof parks to be rather fungible, with Seattle with an edge, though there's some pretty dark dingy environs within. Since I'm town, I'm going Opening Day next week in AZ, my eighth different Opening Day ball park experience.

I do love Petco. Milwaukee's tailgate scene makes it my favorite Opening Day experience. I also don't think much of GABP, stifling sweatbox, which coincidentally is a memory I had of Tiger Stadium despite loving it, very stifling park.

I also pretty much tier them (SD, SF, Pit), a tier of about 12-14 that are mostly interchangeable to me, and then the 'mehs' Kingdome, Metrodome and Tampa are just total crap.

County Stadium had brilliant vibe for day baseball and the best acoustics of any park

One of the many joys of County Stadium was to arrive early for batting practice, when you could hear echoes of the crack of the bat reverberating all over the ballpark. Along with Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, it had more character than any of the other multiplexes, even if they don't generally get put into the same category of the multiplexes that came along after 1965.

Seattle has easily the best stadium west of the Mississippi. It's my personal favorite. And it's really an outdoor stadium with a retractable roof. It's open all the way around under the roof. As opposed to say Chase Field, which has large panels that open in the outfield, but is still completely enclosed between the foul poles.

all yall have been to a lot more places than me

here's where i have gone

arlington stadium. a long time ago when i was a kid. positives - i got to watch ML baseball. the stadium was really old and was reminding me of something from how they did baseball stadiums BITGOD when all they cared about was was there an actual place to play and sit. i swear i remember sitting in actual bleacher bench seats and it being really really really hot without no shade in april

ballpark in arlington - better than the one it replaced and just as hot. at least there were actual seats

the DOME - ah, no place like Dome and the exploding scoreboard. of course i remember the endless parking lots and how ong it took to get in and out. but the seating inside was ok, and most important there was AC and no opening the Roof to save on AC bills. i don't know about food/drink because we never got any. i know there was lots of Beer Men and you could get popcorn, cracker jack or nachos. i do remember long lines for the ladies room

astros field - well, when they opened, ticket prices went up and i do mean WAY up - i think 2 or 3 times higher. much harder and more expensive to get seats behind HP where you can SEE. the first 5 or 6 years they would always open the roof during the 7th inning stretch no matter HOW hot it was outside so as you would immediately get super hit and run to the concessions or swear next time you will buy a ticket inside the glassed in mezzanine where people go to buy expensive price food and sit and maybe watch the game and home run replays on the tv and talk about some other subject besides baseball with whoever you went with. IF you know downtown houston really well and are not allergic to walking you can still get some (practically) free street parking except for weekday games, but you gotta know where to go and you gotta get there prolly a good 75-80 minutes before game time

Thoughts on ballparks that I've visited:

28. Guaranteed Rate Field - Chicago White Sox - Only visited once, it was an April game. It was cold, no vendors upstairs as the only other people there were a small handful dressed like they were going to a Browns or Bills home playoff game. Ballpark had not had its color scheme overhaul yet (lots and lots of gleaming white then), and the switch to dark green was a positive.
27. Chase Field - Arizona Diamondbacks - Fine when I was there about 15 years ago. Cannot imagine the place with the roof closed and the AC not working.
26. Angel Stadium - Los Angeles Angels - Nothing special, so I won't fight his ranking, but I would say it was significantly better than the vast majority of the pre-OPACY parks. It's a sign to me that parks have made massive steps forward from the 1980s.
24. American Family Field - Milwaukee Brewers - The tailgating felt like college football. OK, I guess. Generic experience aside from the tailgating.
22. LoanDepot Park - Miami Marlins - I miss the fish sculpture too. Felt more like an overly impressive Asian airport terminal than a baseball park, just missing the Hermes and Louis Vuitton stores.
21. Great American Ball Park - Cincinnati Reds - Wide open view of the river, which I think is only matched by a couple of highly rated parks (PNC, Oracle). Yes, dull otherwise, except I once made the mistake of wearing a Michigan t-shirt, and I wonder how different the reaction would be these days (42-27).
19. Progressive Field - Cleveland Guardians - Don't really see much difference between this and the Angels' stadium. They booed Thome when I paid my visit, which seemed classless.
18. Comerica Park - Detroit Tigers - Wandering around Detroit isn't a pleasant experience. Park felt a lot like Progressive with very large cat sculptures outside and a Ford truck in the batter's eye.
17. Minute Maid Park - Houston Astros - I was there when it was more of a miniature golf course. The acoustics had a weird tinny feel when I was there (closed roof).
13. Busch Stadium - St. Louis Cardinals - Generic. St. Louis isn't much of a place to visit, so 'generic' is probably just as well.
11. Oriole Park at Camden Yards - Baltimore Orioles - Real nice place to see a game for well-documented reasons. I was there 20 years ago, before I visited some of the other newer parks, so maybe it would feel more generic now.
10. Citi Field - New York Mets - It's still under a ####### flight path from LaGuardia, in the middle of a thousand Flushing chop shops. Yes, it's an improvement on Shea, but that's a low bar.
4. PNC Park - Pittsburgh Pirates - The backdrop beyond the outfield looks so nice that it's hard to believe it's not some holodeck projection, let alone real-world Pittsburgh.
3. Wrigley Field - Chicago Cubs - They didn't do that modern ballpark thing where the upper deck seats are pushed an extra 100 feet away from the field of play, but it smells like urine. Once you notice that, it's hard to have pleasant thoughts about the place. Not sure what to think about the urinals.
2. Oracle Park - San Francisco Giants - Nice views, of course, and while it's not that hell-hole Candlestick, it's still too damn cold to be considered a great place to watch baseball.
1. Petco Park - San Diego Padres - Newer obviously, but it still felt a lot like the Angels park to me. That's not so much a complaint as an observation that the bottom half of major league ballparks, with a couple of exceptions, have had a MUCH larger improvement than at the top end.

arlington stadium. a long time ago when i was a kid. positives - i got to watch ML baseball. the stadium was really old and was reminding me of something from how they did baseball stadiums BITGOD when all they cared about was was there an actual place to play and sit. i swear i remember sitting in actual bleacher bench seats and it being really really really hot without no shade in april

Yes, I remember sitting on the aluminum benches at Arlington behind a guy, probably BDC, who spent the whole game yelling "you're a bum, Winfield" at the Yankees' right fielder. The guy seemed obnoxious at the time, but his most vulgar word all night really was "bum", so it seems pretty tame now.

free street parking except for weekday games, but you gotta know where to go and you gotta get there prolly a good 75-80 minutes before game time

I tried to get an Astros game about 75-80 minutes early, but holy poop, the traffic in Houston was awful. I have no idea how drivers on the interstate there planned to get wherever it was they were going. I gave up and just used the access roads, which seem to be a Texas phenomenon.

Yankees Stadium has the charm of an office park and the ethics of a pickpocket.

3. Wrigley Field - Chicago Cubs - They didn't do that modern ballpark thing where the upper deck seats are pushed an extra 100 feet away from the field of play, but it smells like urine. Once you notice that, it's hard to have pleasant thoughts about the place. Not sure what to think about the urinals.

A lot of the older stadiums were like that. One of my more distinctive memories of Washington's Griffith Stadium was halftime during Redskins' games, when thousands of men would descend upon the main restroom behind home plate. The resulting smell was a distinctive mix of piss, beer, and cigar smoke** that was fortified by the heat vents. Good times.

** Along with scores of cigar butts that lined the floor and clogged up the urinals. I'm sure there were plenty of cigarettes, but the smell of one cheap cigar = the smell of an entire pack of cigarettes.

Where I've gone, in roughly ascending order:

* Stade Olympique, Montreal - Went for a couple Sox-Jays expositions and, man, it's not good, especially with temporary concession stands and the like trying to accomodate MLB for two nights at a stretch. Still, I kind of dig that it looks like a spaceship on the outside, and the atmosphere for those games was great. The seats weren't comfortable, but give Montreal a good team and them banging the seats like they're at a hockey game is probably a fun time.

* London Stadium (or whatever the place they had the Sox-Yankees games was) - Probably the only place I've gone where the building made the game more peculiar than Fenway. Just not built for baseball, although amenities were nice and the experience was terrific from the food trucks to taking the tube back to the hotel with a bunch of French Red Sox fans.

* Newest Yankee Stadium, Bronx - I've said before that it's got the ambiance of an airport, but, honestly, I like airports better; I'm usually at least excited about going somewhere/getting home in one of those places. It's the House that Jeter Built in my head, in that it's capable and good at doing its job but everything feels like the rough edges have been removed it would rather be dull than look unprefessional.

* Oakland Colosseum - I kind of like it! The atmosphere outside isn't great - close to the BART but a desert of parking lots and pathways that feel unsafe - but it's cheap, the seats I sat in both times I've visited weren't bad, and the fans are great. The RF bleachers are kind of the acid test for any stadium experience, and the crowd in Oakland is one of the best (or was, since the team appears to have driven them away).

* Shea Stadium, Queens - It was fine, but didn't really make any impression that stuck with me aside from feeling like a place with more history and personality than...

* Previous Yankee Stadium - ... which I visited the same week or so as Shea. Better crowd/more lively than the new place, and I didn't get to really walk around enough to soak the history in, so I probably didn't give it a fair shake.

* Pacific Bell Park, San Francisco - At least, that's what it was called when I went. I dug it, it's right in the city, but I had only been in SF for a day or two and was unaware how cold it got at night, even in July.

* Nationals Park, DC - Very comfortable, although I don't know that I really got a sense of it; I went to it in the last weekend of 2021, and so there was a bit of a pandemic pall plus the fans feeling the implosion. Also, felt kind of understaffed in a lot of places.

* Sox Park, Chicago - Too far from the city (feels like it's in a suburb even if it isn't) and some of those seats way up behind home are frightening, but the other seats I sat in were nice. I like the way it leans into being black metal rather than trying to look like a non-descript brick building.

* Fenway Park, Boston - My baseline as a New Englander, obviously, and the one I'm most familiar with beyond a specific seat. There are some bad spots and the T doesn't run late enough for when a game turns into a marathon, but it's part of the city, even the bad seats feel close to the action, and the renovations have it feeling pretty comfortable most of the time.

* Wrigley Field, Chicago - I might like it just a little more than Fenway and I don't understand why my brother in Chicago doesn't have an annual ticket package. Thoroughly pleasant place to see a game, feels like it's in the middle of a bustling city while also being a pretty chill place to hang out after a game.

* Petco Park, San Diego - Went for a round of the World Baseball Classic, so that was a special, different atmosphere. Benefits a lot from the climate just being pleasant as heck, and sits in the middle of a nice but not too fancy area. Quality concessions but I, as a non-drinker, could have used a little less beer and a little more food in the area where I was sitting.

* Camden Yards, Baltimore - At the time, a good place to be a visiting Red Sox fan. Feels like they made the right choice everywhere without it feeling artificial.


Anyway, I'm not sure there's really such a thing as a bad ballpark, certainly not one that can make me feel negative about going to a baseball game.

* Newest Yankee Stadium, Bronx - I've said before that it's got the ambiance of an airport, but, honestly, I like airports better; I'm usually at least excited about going somewhere/getting home in one of those places. It's the House that Jeter Built in my head, in that it's capable and good at doing its job but everything feels like the rough edges have been removed it would rather be dull than look unprefessional.

* Previous Yankee Stadium - ... which I visited the same week or so as Shea. Better crowd/more lively than the new place, and I didn't get to really walk around enough to soak the history in, so I probably didn't give it a fair shake.

In terms of atmosphere, the gap between the original Yankee Stadium and the 1976 remake was at least as great as the gap between the remake and the current version. The 1976 remake flattened the outfield dimensions and removed the monuments from the CF playing field. It was a trip watching a centerfielder try to maneuver around the Babe, Huggins and Gehrig while chasing down a 450' moon shot that didn't quite make it into the bleachers.

I've been to 12 active ballparks, including Petco. I agree Petco was the best.

Not sure what to think about the urinals.

When I first went to Wrigley Field, I got teary-eyed - not out of nostalgia at being there, but because the main concourse at Wrigley is architecturally identical to old Tiger Stadium: the electrical wires running overhead, the concrete-lined, low-ceilinged concourse, the ramps leading up and down to seating sections, the pillars, the overhangs, and, yes, the urinals.

Wrigley also tends to get colder than the ambient temperature for night games, and hotter for day games, because of the prevailing winds. I've attended many a night game where I'm comfortable in my winter coat and the people around me are suffering in shorts and T-shirts.

Worth remembering that winning your home games makes up for a lot of ambience. Lots of favorable comments here & elsewhere about PNC Park, but those pluses aren’t enough to get Pirates fans to turn out in large numbers while their team loses more often than not.

When I first went to Wrigley Field, I got teary-eyed

my first pilgrimage was 1986 - I'm 24 years old, the Mets are leading the division by 20 games, and we already had a lonnnnng night on the then-red hot Rush & Division Streets bar scene behind us as we ride to the stadium.

as we enter Wrigley, the first words we hear are "COLD BEER HERE - DANGEROUSLY COLD BEER!" from an extroverted vendor. and we fell in love. the troughs in the men's room - not urinals - seemed so absurd that we loved that, too. perspiring men standing cheek to jowl (ok, cheek, in a way), making what now would be called 'Dad jokes' like "It's true what they say: you don't buy beer - you only rent it !"

there were literally thousands of Mets fans in the Wrigley stands that weekend (even with us not knowing that as of this day, this was the last time the franchise was heading to the WS title mountaintop), as People's Express Airlines had just launched cheap roundtrip tickets to Chicago - making such a dream possible for not-wealthy fans like us.

and the Cubs fans could not have been any more hospitable. over and over, we'd be told what great baseball fans we were to travel such a long way to support their team.

I have told this before, but by mid-game of course nearly everyone in the bleachers has plenty of 'rocket fuel' in them.

So when the "LET'S GO METS" chants inevitably began, there was a lot of support from the visiting crowd.
Cubs fans quickly reconfigured, adding "SUCK!" to every such chant. very effective.

Mets fans quieted for maybe as long as a half-inning.
then came the chant: "FIRST PLACE!" FIRST PLACE!"

ok, tough to counter that one - but not impossible.

soon enough, Cubs fans found their bearings and began full-throated chants of "FIFTH PLACE! FIFTH PLACE!"

howls of laughter, and high-fives all around.

well played, Cubs fans! Even now, I'm not sure any of us 7 knuckleheads on the original sojourn would choose anywhere but Chicago as their favorite U.S. city (and I've been everywhere, man).

in surely unrelated news, I met my future wife during the 11th such pilgrimage.

P.S. As far as night games, one of the original Magnificent Seven solemnly decreed to all of us when lights arrived 2 years later at Wrigley that none of us should ever attend a game at Wrigley at night. as far as I know, none of us ever have.

First time I ever saw a fan throw back a home run ball was in Wrigley in 1987, when Darryl Strawberry iced a game there with a moon shot and the fan who got it threw it back onto the field.

The Braves stadium is great, I finally went there last year, but the accessibility is a deal-breaker for me. You’ve either got to pay a fortune to park close, or walk damn near a mile. Getting there by public transit is nearly impossible.

at the risk of reprising another Wrigley memory too soon.....

one year we mistimed the start of the game, and wondering why Murphy's Bleachers bar emptied out so quickly.

by the time we realized the error, we got stuck with Standing Room Only in the RF bleachers.

Howard Johnson homers, and I was the only one to focus on the ball landing on the street (Waveland?).

young businessman walking by catches the homer on one bounce, and looks up at the bleachers.

"Who hit it?" he asks me, after spotting me as paying attention from that back row.

"HoJo," I reply, meaning the Mets' Howard Johnson.

"Nope," he replies - and then tosses it from the street OVER the bleachers and onto the field.

there's a relative quiet, so when I yelled, "HEY, DAWSON, LOOK OUT!" - the future Hall of Famer heard me and looked back. the ball landed only a few feet away from him.

the recent Wrigley renovations added a couple of rows to each bleacher section, I think. so maybe a long but doable toss back then is impractical now - not sure.

greenback does not like sand Posted: March 29, 2023 at 03:36 PM (#6121705)

arlington stadium. a long time ago when i was a kid. positives - i got to watch ML baseball. the stadium was really old and was reminding me of something from how they did baseball stadiums BITGOD when all they cared about was was there an actual place to play and sit. i swear i remember sitting in actual bleacher bench seats and it being really really really hot without no shade in april


Yes, I remember sitting on the aluminum benches at Arlington behind a guy, probably BDC, who spent the whole game yelling "you're a bum, Winfield" at the Yankees' right fielder. The guy seemed obnoxious at the time, but his most vulgar word all night really was "bum", so it seems pretty tame now.

- other memories now that i think about it

were not real too many people there and most of them were male and drunk. and using Bad Words. they didn't mess with mama and me but i remember mama and daddy having Some Words about her taking me to A Place Like That

free street parking except for weekday games, but you gotta know where to go and you gotta get there prolly a good 75-80 minutes before game time

I tried to get an Astros game about 75-80 minutes early, but holy poop, the traffic in Houston was awful. I have no idea how drivers on the interstate there planned to get wherever it was they were going. I gave up and just used the access roads, which seem to be a Texas phenomenon.

- i don't know where you were coming from seeing as how houston is a YUGE city but fer sher local knowledge of how to get somewheres is critical or you will most definitely be stuck in traffic. unless it is 11A to 2P or after 7:30 P before 6:30 A. or if you are anywheres near west loop/galleria where it is almost always BAD and construction there not exactly helping

and here they are FEEDERS, not access roads. part of the trick of driving here is knowing when and where to get on/off the feeders.

welcome to yewstin


Howie,

that is interesting about the C*bs fans at wrigley. here at the box, they have been in mah opinyin, the drunkest and most, um, Bad Words using fans in the NL. Have not been to real too many AL games but yankee fans were the most drunk/not Using Good Manners At All Times type fans (the only ones to get tossed by security from the 04 all star game)

I can't mention the only obnoxious visiting fan base I ever came across at Wrigley, because a very angry BBTF regular poster would only get angrier. but they were utterly insufferable.

out of utter coincidence, the last 4 games I have attended at Wrigley were vs the Astros - and the Cubs won all 4 games. no issues there.

my memory of Houston is that most of the roads were named "Westheimer."

:)

As a Cubs fan who's been to Wrigley for dozens of games and also seen them on the road in a bunch of places, my general rule of thumb is:

Cubs fans at Wrigley = generally chill, very easy to flatter by talking about how great Wrigley/Chicago is
Cubs fans on the road = pretty obnoxious, honestly

Great memory-lane feelings about sitting in the broiler at Arlington Stadium … anyone who jibes at the current Arlington air-conditioning should be time-machined to those outfield seats, or alternatively the sun field at the Ballpark during an August day game.

As to the rankings – TFA pretty much demonstrates that it is hard to find a bad major-league baseball stadium. I have not been to Oakland but I have seen games in St. Petersburg and in New Comiskey and they are both actually fine places to watch a game. TFA has Kauffman as mediocre … Kauffman is a beautiful place to see a ballgame. They have to concoct a complaint about the location of the park, but, like … who cares? You're there for the game.

Best stadium I have been in is probably Pittsburgh, though I have not been to Petco or SF. Pittsburgh I have actively rearranged trips so I'd have the chance to go back to.

Last games at Wrigley I ever attended were a 1991 doubleheader against the Expos that was unique: The games had been moved from Montreal after Olympic Stadium collapsed, and since they weren't part of the Cubs' regular schedule, all tickets were $3.00 and unreserved. Only about 15,000 fans showed up on a nasty September day, but it was fun being able to watch the games from every possible vantage point without being chased away by an usher.

IIRC the Cubs lost both games and nothing much was memorable about them, except for one thing: A Bleacher Bum caught an Expos' HR ball sometime in the second game, but he didn't want to throw it back. So for the next inning or so he was subject to all kinds of invective, to the point where he and his friend left the bleachers and went all the way around to a deserted section in the lower RF stands. But then some ultra-vigilant Cubs fan found him, started screaming "THROW IT BACK!", and the harassment started all over again!

Can't remember whether or not he finally gave in and threw back the ball, but I do remember thinking that those Cubs fans were seriously demented. Jesus, all this poor guy wanted was a souvenir.

The aforementioned insufferable fan base caught 6 of the 7 record-tying HRs by their team one game at Wrigley.

they made varying levels of resistance to tossing them back, one of them lasting at least a half-inning. but in the end, they all got tossed.

fun fact: first-ever road team HR hit vs Marlins induced a Marlins fan to toss it back on the field. he was ejected by clueless security personnel, unaware of the tradition.