Our Tour of the MLB Parks

I'm at the Hampton Inn in downtown Denver, CO. Mike and I met here at the hotel on Friday afternoon as part of our ongoing stadium tour.

We were about half-way into this tour before we realized it was a tour. It started out when we wanted to see the new Bank One Ballpark in Arizona. We each visited Fenway on separate occasions and, sometime after that, we decided to see all the parks in the system.

Here is a list of the parks we've seen so far with year of first visit in parentheses, ordered by my favorites:

1. Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, CA (1974). This is my first stadium and the one I've spent the most time in. Naturally it's first. It's the stadium against which all others are judged. It is a beautiful park that straddles the old and new eras. The downside is that it's surrounded by a sea of parking lots.
2. Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL (2004). Great old park with lots of life around the stadium. It's the only one I've been to that doesn't have a big-screen TV. The fans there pay close attention to the game.
3. Fenway Park, Boston, MA (1999). Another great old park that makes it easy to imagine what baseball was like in the old days. The green monster is something to behold.
4. Petco Park, San Diego, CA (2005). This stadium has a great location--right in the old gas lamp district--and a refreshingly open layout. It's a very family friendly park. I greatly disliked the crenels in the outfield and the fact that the visiting team's bullpen is out on the field while the home bullpen is protected.
5. Pac Bell Park, now AT&T Park, San Francisco, CA (2005). Pretty average among the new parks, but having the bay right outside the right-field wall is very, very cool. People actually hang out there in boats and kayaks to fish homerun balls out of the drink.
6. Safeco Field, Seattle, WA (2000). This in my new home ballpark. It's got lots of interesting baseball art and very good sightlines (except in right field), but my favorite things about it are the closable roof
7. Bank One Ballpark, now Chase Field, Phoenix, AZ (1998). This is a very interesting park. It, too, has the closing roof and--get this--air conditioning (you need it during the Phoenix summer). It even has a pool our in center field. The downside, though, is that it's in Phoenix, which is just about as uninhabitable as it gets during the summer in this country.
8. Citizen's Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA (2006). This is a well-designed park with some great baseball-themed art. It's close to public transportation, but there's not a lot of life outside the park.
9. Coors Field, Denver, CO (2007). This is one of the first of the new park styles. It has a great location in downtown denver, but not a lot of other things that really make it stand out.
10. U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago, IL (2004). This park was pretty boring in comparison. Lots of concrete. It does have a wide public area out in center field.
11. Angel Stadium, Anaheim, CA (1997). This is a middle-generation multipurpose (football and baseball) cement civic monstrosity. Disney bought the team in the '80s and added a little whimsey (fake rocks in the outfield). It remains ugly to this day.
12. Yankee Stadium, New York, NY (2006). They say this was once a jewel, but now it seems like a minimum security prison. If you do go (it's to be torn down soon), go early so you can see the plaques in Monument Garden. They close it before the game, and it's not open afterward.
13. RFK Stadium, Washington, DC (2006). Like Angel stadium, RFK is another multiuse. It's a sad place to watch a game. Our seats on the first base line were pointed toward centerfield rather than home.