So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[HudsonHawk]

I don't get those who simultaneously decry the sterile circular "modern" stadium and the ones done in more classic architecture. It's further proof that some people just refuse to be happy no matter what. There seems to be no shortage of faux outrage manufactured under the guise of historical preservation. It's like the ongoing debate here about what to do with the Astrodome. Nobody cared for 20 years and now it's crumbling. But mention the thought of demolishing it and you'd think it was the Taj Mahal. If you really cared about it, you wouldn't have let it rot. If you really respected it, you'd let the old girl have a dignified end.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Colt Stadium, now *that* was a ballpark...

 

[tonyb]

Gotta wonder if some structures aren't deliberately left to rot, until they get to be so far gone that restoration would be prohibitively costly.

Preservationist that I am, I acknowledge that maintaining and operating an old building often costs more over a fairly short span than would tearing it down and starting over from scratch. And some buildings become white elephants. Witness the Pontiac, Michigan Silverdome. Just keeping its basic mechanical systems up and running would cost some tens of thousands of dollars per month, I'd wager. And to what end?

The Astrodome, unlike so many other stadia of its era, is historically and architecturally significant. Can't say that I've kept up with its ongoing saga, but I'd hate to see it go.

When I first moved to Seattle, in 1968, and for several years thereafter, I was often found in and around the Pike Place Public Market. Respectable people avoided that district back then, which suited me just fine.

When the market and its surrounding area were slated for demolition a concerted effort by a coalition of interests thwarted those plans and instead the market got extensively renovated and seismically upgraded (it's somewhat surprising that it hadn't already toppled down the hill into Elliott Bay).

The structures still stand, but the market is in few other ways the place it was. And I accept that that's essentially how it had to be. Scruffy types who hang out in seedy bars when they aren't loitering outside don't spend enough to pay the bills. You need tourists and yuppies for that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of Walter F. O'Malley's tricks for getting out of Brooklyn was to deliberately allow Ebbets Field to go to seed -- plumbing wasn't maintained, ironwork was left unpainted and allowed to rust, and little was done beyond the bare minimum to keep the place operating for the last seven years they played there. And he spent a lot of time complaining in the papers about the shabby conditions that existed in the park -- conditions that he himself had fostered. This had the effect of discouraging attendance -- which helped him make his case that he needed to move. He didn't miss a trick, and other owners -- notably Reinsdorf in Chicago -- have followed his example in getting what they wanted.

 

[tonyb]

When Ken Behring owned the Seahawks he argued that the Kingdome was unsafe! He couldn't in clear conscience allow himself to be party to putting so many innocent lives at risk! And he had no difficulty finding some structural engineer he could pay a sufficient amount to say just that.

The structure was about 20 years old then.

Awful as it was for baseball (people in reliably cool and damp Seattle really don't wish to go indoors on a halfway sunny summer day, and certainly not to watch a losing team), for football it was okay. The seats were filled, and going indoors during the fall and winter isn't such an unhappy proposition. It was loud, it was fun. It was fine.

The Kingdome got demolished and literally in its place is an open-air football stadium (the Seahawks played in the University of Washington's quite large stadium a few miles away while their new playhouse was under construction). Just south of the new football stadium is a retro baseball stadium with a retractable roof. Maybe I'll live long enough to hear some team owner argue that these facilities are no longer adequate. If history is a guide, there's a solid chance of that.

 

[DJH]

Won't be long, Tony. In our area, the town of Arlington built a really nice outdoor stadium for the Texas Rangers - baseball has to be outdoors they said.

Now, the team has decided that playing afternoon games in August is a bad idea (strange that MLB schedules so many afternoon games here), so threatened to move unless the town came up with a new place that has a retractable roof.

Of course, the town gave in - the nice, less than twenty year old, stadium will soon be demolished to build the sexy new one.


Cheers!
David!

 

[tonyb]

Won't be long, Tony. In our area, the town of Arlington built a really nice outdoor stadium for the Texas Rangers - baseball has to be outdoors they said.

Now, the team has decided that playing afternoon games in August is a bad idea (strange that MLB schedules so many afternoon games here), so threatened to move unless the town came up with a new place that has a retractable roof.

Of course, the town gave in - the nice, less than twenty year old, stadium will soon be demolished to build the sexy new one.


Cheers!
David!

Wow. Just wow.

 

[Zombie_61]

I ride the Rock Island Blue Island Express past US Cellular Field twice daily on the office commute, and admire White Sox stadium from the distance but being a Cubs fan have never ventured inside.

"U.S. Cellular Field". When did the Sox change their name to the U.S. Cellulars? Or are cell phones so advanced now that they're playing baseball? I've only seen the new park while blowing past it on I-90; what an eyesore. I hope that never happens to Wrigley Field.

Changing focus for a moment--fireworks. More specifically, the type that are fired into the sky like military ordnance so that the entire neighborhood can experience the "joy" of hearing them explode at all hours of the day or night. Now, if it were only me and my wife who had to endure this nonsense it probably wouldn't be an issue. But our cat and dog, with their sensitive hearing, get agitated whenever our neighbors decide it's once again time to break out the mortar and set fire to more of their money, and we have to spend a good bit of time trying to calm them down.

Yes, fireworks of any kind are illegal in our fair city, but local law enforcement apparently has bigger fish to fry. You'd think we would only have to put up with this on holidays like the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve (during which our neighborhood is like a war zone), but you'd be wrong. These nitwits start at least one month before such holidays, and continue for at least two weeks after. And that's not counting the "It's 2:30 in the morning, I think I'll go outside and launch a skyrocket" events, which occur so randomly that I have to wonder about the thought process that goes into them.

 

[MisterCairo]

In Canadian cities we can legally launch fireworks twice per year, on Victoria Day in May and Canada Day, July 1st. In the country it's not common but people say they can get away with it pretty much any time. Many towns and cities of course provide their own professional displays on these days and other special occasions.

It's a fun diversion, but I can imagine if people did it regularly and at all hours.

 

[Fading Fast]

Some stadiums are perfectly adequate - even better, do their job very well and have been home to a winning team - but still the stadium itself never inspired a following. Giant Stadium from 1976 - 2010 (not a short life based on the above examples) was such a stadium.

It was architecturally very effective for football - one big, steep bowl that gave great sight lines and also had wide access aisles, ramps and stairs that made getting in and out easy. But the stadium had nothing - zero, zip, nada - in the way of architectural interest, quirkiness or presence.

In addition to being the home of the Giants through two Super Bowl winning seasons, it was the go-to venue for mega rock concerts in NJ - I saw Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Billy Joel and others there. But again, the stadium was a functional backdrop, nothing more.

Perhaps that it wasn't ugly, ungainly or awkward in addition to not having the above-referenced positive features left it with no personality, so it inspired no emotion. I remember when I read it was being torn down and replaced and thinking (1) probably a waste of taxpayer money (my default thought for every single stadium demolition and rebuild) and (2) couldn't care less emotionally and it is the stadium I've probably been to the most in my life.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maybe I'll live long enough to hear some team owner argue that these facilities are no longer adequate. If history is a guide, there's a solid chance of that.

You need look only toward Atlanta, where twenty-year-old Turner Field is playing out its last season and the Braves are salivating over the new park going up in the suburbs.

And to combine fireworks with ballparks, consider the case of Charles Oscar Finley, the carnival-style huckster who, when operating the Kansas City Athletics in the mid-1960s, decided that there ought to be an enormous fireworks show at the conclusion of every home game. Mr. Finley bought a huge stock of fireworks to make this happen -- with little consideration of the fact that Kansas City Municipal Stadium was located right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. After the first game, the A's office was swamped with complaints, threats of lawsuits, and calls from the city code enforcement office demanding to know exactly what was going on. So that was the end of fireworks.

Finley was a man known for acting out of spite, however, and as soon as he got the injunction stopping his fireworks show, he went out and bought the biggest surplus steamship air horn he could find -- he claimed it had come from the Queen Mary, in fact -- and installed it on his scoreboard, the better to blast it at the end of every game. There was no ordinance regulating the use of air horns, and despite the complaints that poured in, Finley kept blowing his horn for as long as he operated in Kansas City. Even after he'd moved the team to Oakland, the first time the A's came back to play the expansion Royals in 1969, he bribed a groundskeeper to give the horn one last blast.

 

[tonyb]

I tip my hat to the citizenry and the electeds in Seattle who refused to be extorted by the owner of the city's NBA team, who moved the operation to Oklahoma City.

The team's Seattle facility had undergone an extensive rebuild (it was for all intents and purposes a new building) maybe a decade prior, and locals were in no mood to pay for another, especially considering they were already on the hook for the baseball stadium which actually failed at the ballot box but got built on the taxpayers' nickel anyway.

As it turns out, the departure of an NBA team matters not so much to most people. The prevailing sentiment seemed to be "don't let the door hit you on your way out."

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing with the Braves is that they've been like this for the past sixty-odd years. They played 37 years in Braves Field in Boston, but when Milwaukee dangled a shiny new municipal stadium in front of them, with a sweetheart rent deal attached, boom, they were gone. Then thirteen years later when Atlanta dangled a shiny new muncipal stadium in front of them with a sweetheart rent deal attached, boom, they were gone again. Thirty years later, they wanted to get in on the new-ballpark trend, the shiny municipal stadium wasn't good enough, but there was this shiny new stadium built for the Olympics, and boom, they went for it. Twenty years after that, the shiny new stadium wasn't shiny enough, and they got a better deal in the suburbs, and boom, here they go again. But they haven't actually built a ballpark entirely with their own money since 1915.

Five different stadiums since 1952, at a total adjusted-for-inflation cost of over a billion dollars. Maybe teams like this shouldn't have a stadium at all. They ought to play in a big circus tent that can be moved anywhere they can get a good deal on a pasture.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ The reason I hit like on Tony B's last post is that it is great to see the citizens (1) have a true say (or vote) and (2) say "go, leave, we don't need you" to a greedy team / owner trying to shake them down. Nothing is perfect in the world, and that economics drives sports is reality - and I'm sure there are times it makes sense for communities to participate in stadium builds, etc. - but if fans didn't show up when teams obnoxiously switched cities, blackmailed their own city/state for a new stadium, then the behaviors would change as greedy owners would be fearful of undermining their own team's value.

Unfortunately, most of the time, the fans show up, the cities pay up and the owners win. While it takes each individual making a independent decision, the power to stop the greedy behavior is with the citizens / fans if they'd simply stop supporting the teams. I try to practice (imperfectly) what I preach as my support for sports has dropped as the greed of owners and players (switching from a team they've been with for 15 years because they can get 8 billion instead of 7 billion dollars with the new team - and I'm a big advocate of players having more rights and getting their fair cut, but sometimes their greed is as ugly as the owners)* - I just don't have the enthusiasm and don't spend the dollars I did several decades ago as I get that it's all just a business run to manipulate my emotions.

* Tom Brady took less money to stay with the Patriots as he said he felt loyal to the team, fans and management which had supported him all his career. Yes, he still makes a bundle of money and maybe he had an ulterior motive, but he did factually turn down more money to play elsewhere (a few years ago).

 

[DJH]

Sometimes demolishing a stadium is a good thing. Veterans Stadium for Citizens Bank Park (I hate commercial naming) was a huge upgrade for the Phillies.

 

[Fading Fast]

Sometimes demolishing a stadium is a good thing. Veterans Stadium for Citizens Bank Park (I hate commercial naming) was a huge upgrade for the Phillies.

No question. I don't know (and don't want to know) the economics and perfidy (this is NYC after all - nothing political is honest) behind the new Yankee stadium, but as the old one had lost it character through renovations, the new one has been a huge and needed upgrade. But again, I might not feel that way if I knew how much the Yankees probably took the city to the cleaners to get it built.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's an excellent book about the ballpark situation in Philadelphia prior to CB Park -- "To Everything A Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia. 1909-1976" by urban historian Bruce Kucklick. This isn't a sports book or a nostalgia book -- it's a serious study of the rise and fall of Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium as a neighborhood institution, and the circumstances which led to its abandonment and replacement by Veterans Stadium. It's probably the best book ever written on ballparks and what they mean to their communities.

What's apropos this discussion is the way the press and pubic responded when the old park was replaced by the new one -- there was almost universal acclaim for the Vet, and universal disdain for the "warehouse like" environment of the old park, with its "ushers who looked like fugitives from a chain gang" and its "dangerous 'fifty-cents-to-watch-your-car-mister" neighborhood. Phillies broadcaster Richie Ashburn, who played most of his career at Shibe Park, is quoted as saying that moving to the new place was like "moving from the sh*thouse to the penthouse."

And yet twenty years later, Ashburn waxed nostalgic for Kucklick about the "atmosphere" of the old stadium, and how much more character it had than its replacement. Certainly the actual atmosphere of the old place hadn't changed any in twenty years -- it was demolished in 1976 -- but the memories of that atmosphere certainly had. Once the newness of the Vet wore off, Philadelphia fans could see there wasn't a whole lot of "there" there.

 

[tonyb]

I am confident that pro sports would remain economically viable without a nickel in public subsidies. This Is not to suggest that things would be as they are now. But people would still watch in person and on their modern telecommunications devices. They'd still pay too much to park near the stadium, and for their beer and hotdogs. They'd still make of themselves an audience for the advertisers who pay for the broadcast rights. (You, Joe and Josephine Public, are the commodity.)

 

[Fading Fast]

...And yet twenty years later, Ashburn waxed nostalgic for Kucklick about the "atmosphere" of the old stadium, and how much more character it had than its replacement. Certainly the actual atmosphere of the old place hadn't changed any in twenty years -- it was demolished in 1976 -- but the memories of that atmosphere certainly had. Once the newness of the Vet wore off, Philadelphia fans could see there wasn't a whole lot of "there" there.

Interesting as heck and reflects something most of us do (if we are honest with ourselves) and that is constantly revise our emotional memories. Check back with me in ten or twenty years to see if I am then waxing nostalgically for the "magic of old Giant stadium."

 

[LizzieMaine]

I am confident that pro sports would remain economically viable without a nickel in public subsidies. This Is not to suggest that things would be as they are now. But people would still watch in person and on their modern telecommunications devices. They'd still pay too much to park near the stadium, and for their beer and hotdogs. They'd still make of themselves an audience for the advertisers who pay for the broadcast rights. (You, Joe anf Josephine Public, are the commodity.)

I think another worthy alternative would be for pro sports teams to be publically owned, along the Green Bay Packers model, rather than concentrated under the control of corporations.

I don't know much about the situation in other sports, but there are no longer any mom-and-pop family owned teams in baseball -- the Macks, the Griffiths, the Comiskeys, the Stonehams, the Ebbetses and McKeevers, and the various other families which owned baseball teams as their sole means of support in the Era are long, long gone. Baseball, like the rest of the "sports entertainment industry" is now big, big, big business and this is not a good thing for the sport, the cities where it's played, or its fans.

There have only been two brief experiments in public ownership in major league baseball that I can think of offhand -- the St. Louis Browns sold stock to the public in the 1940s, and the Milwaukee Braves did so in the early 1960s. But in both cases, the public only held a minority share in the teams, and had no say in the fact that both teams ended up moving to other cities. The "stock" in these cases was like those deeds to one square inch of land in the Klondike that used to come in cereal boxes -- a novelty, a piece of cheap memorablilia, and not any actual means of having a say in what happens to the ballclub.

The Packers, in football, have thrived under public ownership -- they will never, ever leave Green Bay, and the people have a real investment in the team as an institution that transcends mere rooting interest. This is what I'd like to see Baseball do. If ever there was a team that should have been publically owned, it was the Brooklyn Dodgers -- if they had been, they would still be playing there today.