Ballparks are the Best

I love ballparks.  It's one of the unique things about baseball I love.  Hockey used to have unique home ice advantages, but all that got taken away some time ago.  Like for example, the ice surface at the Boston Garden was actually shorter than "regulation" because of the smaller size of the old arena.  That's cool, but it's all gone now. In baseball, you can have weird demensions in ballparks for a home field advantage.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't.

Like when Houston builds a stupid, gimick mound in centerfield, I don't like that.  You only did that to get attention.  But like, the ivy and the shape of the outfield wall of Wrigley.  That's cool.  It's uniquely Wrigley.  Green Monster, obviously is another.  I don't want to just say the weird walls are only allowed in ballparks 100 years old or older, but it's sort of just always been there that way, so that's cool to me.  If there is a usefull reason for a quirky jut in the outfield fence in a ballpark, I'm okay with it.  If it's there so that people will talk about the fact that it's there, that's not okay.

Like, if a team wants to make their park tough to hit in for righties, but a bandbox for lefties and then load up the roster with left-handed batters, that's a good strategy and that makes sense.  You can do that in baseball, and I love it.

Also, I was trying to think of teams that really need a new ballpark, and I could really only come up with one.  Oakland plays in a football stadium, and I can't wait for that era to officially be over.  When the Reds, Cardinals, Phillies, Pirates, Astros, Mariners, Padres, Twins, Nationals, Marlins and Giants all moved out of the gigantic, cookie cutter, multiuse, soulless stadiums in the 90's and 2000's, it was just all-around better for the game of baseball.  The only teams still playing in giganic stadiums like that are the Blue Jays and the A's.  For some reason, I don't really have a problem with the Jays still playing in SkyDome, AKA Rogers Centre, is that dispite it being 25 years old, it still has this cutting edge, newness to it.  It was the first time I'd ever heard of a retractable roof.  What a marvel of engineering.  Plus it's the Blue Jays, Canadians don't deserve our game up there.  (signed, bitter Nashville Predators fan)

But when you look around, there are some wonderful ballparks built around baseball, and that matters a lot to me when I'm choosing what teams to watch.  I don't mind watching the A's play in that football stadium, actually, despite everything I'm saying here, because I like the team. But normally, I don't like that atmosphere.  So like I said, I was thinking about what teams need a new park, and there really isn't anyone besides Oakland and perhaps the Rays.  Everything I hear about Tropicana Field is that it's a dump.  I imagine it is, maybe that's why no one goes to Rays games?  Must be.  But at least it doesn't feel like there's 672 people in the stands because the building is too large for baseball crowds, like it was in Miami for Marlins games.  And when the Marlins were bad (were, lol) and it was really empty, it was like watching the empty arena match between the Rock and Mankind during the halftime of Super Bowl XXXIII (I think). Just a weird atmosphere for those watching at home.

When a building is full and everyone is hanging on every play, it's so much more engaging for the person at home to watch.  That's why I like watching San Francisco Giants games.  That place is always packed, it's a cool, modern stadium with a throwback feel.  It's great.  Many teams have done the right thing in the past 10-15 years to upgrade their home ballpark experience, and I think it benefits all of baseball as a result.

I've only visited four MLB ballparks.  Wrigley, Miller Park, Turner Field and Fenway, in that order.  I've got 26 to go. Easiest for me to get to would be Cincinatti and St. Louis.   Let's get on the road, Caleb.  We've got baseball to watch.

-BJP

One Tenth Done: My Reactions to MLB 2013 in April

We have played one tenth of the Major League Baseball season.  What we just watched, we'll just do that nine more times, and the season will be over before you even realized,

Some say that September wins are more important than April wins, and that may be true, a baseball team can really change complexions over the course of a season, but September wins will surely have a lot less pressure applied to them if you can get more wins in April.  Teams that get off to a hot start have a much easier path to the post season than teams that start slow and have to play catch-up all season.  Sometimes it works in the favor of the team with the slow start, but if you don't get up off the mat soon enough, you can be cooked by mid June.

One team that I recall getting off to a slow start and getting their act together was the 2005 Houston Astros.  If you remember, that team made it to the World Series against the White Sox that year.  A lot was made of their 15-30 start to the season, and I always since then check the standings at the 45 game mark, and see who is around that record at that time.  I look at that team and think, if the Astros could do it, anyone can.  So just because a team gets off to a slow start, doesn't mean their season is necessarily cooked.

The Tigers last year had a slow start, and were trying to catch the White Sox all year, and they did.  That was a good team that was underachieving early.  The 2005 Astros were a decent team, as well, a team that, if I remember correctly, had been in the playoffs the season prior.  They were expected to be good and started slow.  That's the difference between them and, lets say for example, the 2013 Houston Astros.  What a mess.  But it's not a surprise that the Astros are terrible, everyone knew they were going to be at the start of the season.  So the fact that they're bringing up the rear in the standings in the American League is no surprise at all.  Don't expect a miracle run out of these guys.

I tend to focus on the terrible teams in baseball because I feel bad for that teams fans.  I'm also very grateful that that team has never been my team.  I have this sick fascination with poor baseball teams, because it doesn't take much to be really bad.  Every team is pretty good.  Every baseball team since baseball has had a season that we record and recognize has won at least 40 games in a season.  And there is always fans in the stands.  It just amazes me that there were any fans in the stands at all for the 2003 Detroit Tigers season. Why would you waste your time?  It's just fascinating.

So 16 games (or so) into the 2013 season, we're starting to see who is good and who is not.  It's never for sure at this stage, but you can start to see it.  The Braves and Nationals are for real.  The Cubs and Marlins are really, really bad.  That's easy.  We all knew that going into this.  But it's the American League that I find really intriguing.  The AL east standings look like 2007.  The West looks like...well, not what I was exactly thinking, and the Central looks really mixed up.  I thought the Red Sox were going to be bad this year?  And I didn't think the Yankees had much of anything?  How are they the tops of the East?For the record, I wasn't drinking the Blue Jays kool-aid.  I just figured basically switch the Sox and the O's and you'd have what I expected.  But who gives a shit what I expect?  That's why they play the games.  It's early, and the difference between the last place Jays and first place Sox is only six games.  Same thing with the last place Indians and first place Royals, which is only 2.5 games.  There's still a lot of shaking out to do.  It's still too early to really say for sure who's who in the AL, but it surely feels like a different year over there.  Too bad I don't watch American League games.

More on that subject....very soon!

Go Baseball!

P.S. I've seen two instances of paper planes being flown onto the field in Toronto this season.  What's up with that?