The Dead Baseball Stadium Era

In contrast, ballparks like Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium and New York’s Yankee Stadium are the last vestiges of a golden, glorious time, standing tall as beacons of tradition amid a mass of wanton modernity.

And even though these celebrated stadiums have developed a Joan Rivers-esque affinity for facelifts, their efforts to remain true to their long and storied histories have helped produce three of the most dedicated and loyal fan bases in all of baseball.

It would be hard for the fans of these teams, whose fathers and grandfathers have perched each them on their knees and told stories with the only stadium that the franchise has ever known as the backdrop, to see a major part of that tradition literally crumble to the ground.

But Yankee faithful will have to deal with it sooner than its fellow brethren. Yes, Yankee Stadium, where young, starry-eyed major-league hopefuls dream of playing one day, where larger-than-life legends like Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Babe Ruth once played, is going to be torn down in three years, to be replaced with its own shiny, state-of-the-art and ultimately spiritless facsimile just down the road.

Indeed, if even this baseball temple is set to be destroyed, a shrine to the sport as connected to the American Pastime as the Montreal Forum—itself now nothing more than a movie theatre, is inextricably linked with hockey—nothing is sacred anymore. And while there are few doubts that there will be more plush cushioned seats, more concession choices, and more luxurious amenities, there is just as strong a certainty that the new stadium will be vacant of the stories that can only be gleaned over time. 

Where are the days where going to the ballgame was entertainment enough? When did we need to add more to the time-tested experience that baseball provides, the days where all you needed was a scorecard, a box of Cracker Jack, and a seat to watch the game. Since then, we’ve swapped scorecards for jumbotrons, Cracker Jack for wine bars and in-stadium restaurants, and the crude enjoyment of watching the boys of summer trade their gloves for bats after each half-inning and then repeat the process again three outs later for bobblehead give-aways and T-shirt guns.

Only adding to the dissipating notion of tradition and all-around lovability in sports as a whole is the increasing trend of naming ballparks after big businesses that buy the rights. There is both irony and tragedy in this—franchises selling a part of their soul, the names of their superficial stadiums, for a quick buck as their stadiums are now connected to equally cold and faceless corporations.

We no longer have friendly stadiums that fans, in doting admiration, warmly refer to by nickname, like The House that Ruth Built (Yankee Stadium) or Chavez Ravine (Dodger Stadium). Instead, we find ourselves entrenched in the days of clunky US Cellular Park, of antiseptic Tropicana Field, of robotic-sounding PETCO Park. And the aforementioned Candlestick Park, now the home of football’s San Francisco 49ers, has since been garishly renamed “Monster Park”, evoking notions of a lost member of the Addams Family.

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