Tuesday, August 31, 1999
Hope for Reds park: Swing for the bleachers
BY JOHN BYCZKOWSKI and JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Unless the Reds, Hamilton County and the architects blow it, Cincinnati ought to end up with a pretty good ballpark in 2003, maybe even a great one.
All of us can hope, of course, but better yet, you can speak up now, before they start pouring concrete and welding steel.
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THREE-DAY SERIES
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With the Reds and architect HOK Sport close to unveiling a design for the team's new ballpark, The Enquirer wanted to show readers what the state of the art looks like. Reporters John Byczkowski and John Erardi visited six of baseball's newest ballparks — Safeco Field in Seattle, Camden Yards in Baltimore, The Ballpark in Arlington, Turner Field in Atlanta, Coors Field in Denver and Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix.
Sunday:
• A search for the perfect ballpark
• The best of Coors and Camden Yards.
• Comparing state-of-the-art ballparks
Tuesday:
• The latest design plans for the Reds' new ballpark
• Who else in Major League Baseball is building ballparks.
Today
• Twenty-five tips from our experts on how to build a special ballpark in Cincinnati
Talk it up
Join a discussion on the new ballpark at www.cincinnati.com/talk.
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To that end, we — Enquirer reporters John Erardi and John Byczkowski — spent nearly two weeks visiting six of the newest ballparks in the nation. As sports fans, we've been to dozens of other facilities, from Fenway Park and Jacobs Field in Cleveland to Maple Leaf Garden and the Brickyard in Indianapolis.
The problem with buildings of all sorts is that very often, the owners know more about what they don't want than what they do. Unable to speak the lingo, they leave it up to the architects to read their minds.
Architects can be spectacular or spectacularly bad, and ballparks are no exception. HOK Sport, Kansas City, Mo., architect for the Reds' new ballpark, gave the world Camden Yards in Baltimore and new Comiskey Park in Chicago. The former wowed everyone, helping to kick off the busiest stadium-building era in baseball history. The latter is so embarrassingly bad the Chicago White Sox don't even publish their anemic attendance figures in their media guide.
Here's the best of what we saw on our six-city tour and what we think the Reds need to take into account. In some cases, the Reds and HOK have already penciled in some of these features, but it's the accountants who have the ink. It's possible not everything's going to make the cut when it comes to money:
• A wide concourse all the way around the ballpark, so fans can walk around and see the game from anywhere. Denver has it; Seattle copied it. Baltimore and Cleveland do not — and the result is a lot of fans milling about, watching the game on TV monitors above them at the concession stands. Fans are going to mill about no matter what; let them see the field. The Reds' new ballpark is planned with its main concourse open, except where there are 13 luxury boxes between home and third base.
• Those 13 luxury boxes on the main concourse? Find another place for them, and open up the concourse there. No other park does that. The best of the ballparks — Baltimore, Denver, Texas and Atlanta — tuck the luxury suites above and behind the pressbox-level club seats.
• A lot of nooks and crannies in the outfield wall, like Texas, and a lot of neat, different look-what-I-found places to watch the game, like Texas and Seattle.
• A double-decked home run “porch,” like Texas, with pillars that improve the proximity of the upper deck to the field. It's a great place to sit to watch the game and a neat sight to behold from the grandstand.
• Hide the glass. In Jacobs Field, there's way too much glass — on the luxury boxes, on the restaurant. Baltimore, Denver, Texas and Atlanta all have glass on the luxury boxes, but it is well hidden by the upper deck.
• A bullpen design that allows for accessible, close-up viewing by a lot of fans (Denver and Texas); and if you can give fans a bullpen-level view like Seattle, so much the better. Seattle put the bullpens end-to-end along along the outfield concourse, and lined them with chain-link fence. And better still, they put knotholes in the Bullpen Pub to allow patrons to peer into the bullpens. Very cool. (But spare us the petunias in the bullpen, Denver. To paraphrase Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, “Petunias? There's no petunias in baseball!”)
• A full-time, out-of-town scoreboard that is part of the outfield wall. Mr. Byczkowski says it doesn't have to be manually operated; electronic boards are more flexible. Mr. Erardi says it does, because there's nothing like the sound of crushed horsehide kissing tin.
• The Diamondbacks did two cool things with their field at Bank One Ballpark. The first is a strip of dirt connecting the pitcher's mound to home, as you see in old pictures of Ebbets Field. The second is a double warning track: dirt and then a 6-foot-wide strip of grass along the outfield fence, so players have something soft to land on after crashing against the wall.
• Take a cue from Baltimore, and build an open-air, festival-atmosphere concourse where you can get great food. Nothing in any of the ballparks, new or old, comes close to Baltimore's Eutaw Street. And open-pit barbecue makes the whole ballpark smell great. That won't happen if the ribs are trucked in.
• An inviting, standing-room-only area behind the outfield bleachers like Texas. And, speaking of Texas, how about a sound system as good as theirs (no spectator is more than 75 feet away from a speaker) because nothing invigorates the energy and spirit of a crowd as well as good music clearly heard.
• Do something with the batter's eye — that's the wall in dead center field, intentionally featureless as a backdrop, so the batters can follow the pitch. In Phoenix and Atlanta, it's a big, dark green wall, and it's ugly. In contrast, the Camden Yards wall is covered in ivy. The Ballpark in Arlington has a steeply sloped grass lawn (with a dark-brick back of a Sno-Cone concession building just above and beyond it). The base of the batter's eye in Denver is a boulder oasis around a clear, crisp pond that shoots up jets of water when the Rockies hit a home run. Double thumbs-up to all three.
• We like the Reds' idea of a 316-foot dimension in the right-field corner and a high red wall (a good place for the manually operated scoreboard that is a re-creation of the one at Crosley Field, perhaps?) But we're not sure about the suggestion for a replica of the steamboat that shoots out fireworks when the Reds hit a home run. We like the river theme, and the idea of something above the right field wall to symbolize the Big Red Machine. All of that would make distinctive home run video on ESPN Sportscenter. But a pint-sized steamboat? We need to see a model.
• A grand entrance to the ballpark. And then sit back and watch people's jaws hit the floor. All of these new parks are something to behold, but some don't flatter themselves enough. Cleveland does: Walk in the main gate and you're deposited in the area of the home-run porch in left field, to drink in the pasture of green grass and the grandstand canyon. Well-done to you, too, Atlanta. Your spacious plaza with giant TV screen and music stage, and food and play area, says, “Let's party,” and we couldn't agree more.
• A spot — somewhere, anywhere — where the hitter can hit a home run completely out of the ballpark.
• Public art. One disappointing thing about Camden Yards is how little there is in the way of murals, photos and sculpture. Seattle engaged 11 local — we repeat, “local” — artists and spent $1.3 million on art for the new Safeco Field, and the results are wonderful. Fans see subtle and beautiful works that feel like baseball. Every kid in Seattle will someday have his or her picture taken in front of Gerard Tsutakawa's huge bronze catcher's mitt. Denver, Texas and Phoenix also did well with murals, sculpture and other art.
• Connect with history. Once again, Camden Yards came up woefully short, especially for a franchise with such a great past. The warehouse is way cool, of course, but it has nothing to do with Brooks and Frank Robinson and Jim Palmer. (The Orioles even put up a beer stand in front of their Hall of Fame!) Cincinnati, the birthplace of professional baseball and home of the Big Red Machine, should showcase its history. The Reds' new ballpark must make the mystical connection between a team and its storied past.
• Something that is as much fun as Scout's Alley, the family fun zone beyond the left-field wall at Turner Field, Atlanta, especially because by 2003, technology will have evolved to produce even better hitting and pitching games. Also, a true kids' baseball playground that includes a 90-foot basepath with the same dirt, grass and bases of the big diamond, like Coca-Cola's Skyfield on the upper deck in left field in Atlanta. And a play-and-food area for toddlers (like Tooner Field) because toddlers are future baseball fans, too.
• The catch phrase for the new millennium is “revenue stream,” and here's one of the best ones we saw — a casual, but happening, two-tier, open-air bar and grill in Atlanta just above and beyond the outfield bleachers with a terrific view of the diamond. Even though it's crowded — and people are eating, drinking and partying — the game is still the center of attention ... especially in the late innings when the game is on the line. The sight and sound of hundreds of people on that second tier leaning over the railing and getting into the game is a great new-millennium blend.
Stadium Stories
