MLB Ballparks: 5 worst in Major League Baseball for 2018
For all the majesty of MLB ballparks, some have veered off in the wrong direction. Here are five that have gone the wrong way.
Five worst MLB Ballparks for 2018.
So much of the beauty of Major League Baseball comes from their ballparks.
Regal places which bind generations of families together with the smell of green grass, stale beer and quality baseball on a perfect field, with the idyllic setting straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting or John Updike story.
Oh, those floodlights, a freshly steamed hot dog, and your favorite pitcher warming in the outfield. Can you get more schmaltzy? Sure, catch a foul ball, and the experience is perfect.
Yep. That is what baseball sells you. MLB ballparks act as the linchpin for a wonderful evening a sober you will never forget. Just thinking about those nights brings back memories of peanuts and wafting cigar smoke.
OK. Nice moment over. Although MLB has a few true palaces left, this article is not talking about those. No, sir. Nope, instead, we will focus on the five-worst stadiums in MLB.
You can still have a good time at these places, but they are mixed with silence from empty seats or an empty wallet. Sterile comes to mind. Places built for baseball, football, basketball, hockey and whatever rinky-dink event to fill calendar dates. Aunt Gertie’s flower swap? Sure Gate 4 and admission is five bucks.
Remember, every list is subjective. Ease of getting around, comfort level at games and how natural the experience are the main factors. How good the team is, is not. Bad clubs play in masterpieces; good squads make you suffer from bad fields.
This is not about fan bases. Every club has good and awful ones that either add or detract from the overall enjoyment. Ownership groups are another story. Crass commercialism can turn a monument into an eye-sore.
With the flame-resistant suit within reach, here are the five worst MLB ballparks in the majors in 2018.
MLB Ballparks: FENWAY PARK
The lyric little ballpark nestled in Boston’s Back Bay has grown to be an East Coast version of the Las Vegas Strip.
To the credit of the ownership group of John Henry, Larry Lucchino, and Tom Werner, Fenway Park avoided the wrecking ball fate of Tiger Stadium, Ebbets Field, and old Yankee Stadium. Now 106, Fenway will live on well past 125.
And, you will be squeezed into bad seats, be broke at the end of every game. The Boston Red Sox financial empire has taken the art of commercialism and brought it to a new level. There are enough neon billboards around the place to make Times Square blush.
To maximize revenue, seats were added everywhere. The Green Monster, which wears ads again after nearly 50-year hiatus, offers intimate views. The party decks on the roofs offer cash to the Red Sox. Want to buy a beer and burger where the batting cage was kept in center? Now, you can!
Always sensitive about having a capacity around 33,000, Fenway now seats above 37,000. The older seats remain narrow, and a pillar lurks to obstruct a view, but you can pay $10 for a sausage and pepper sub outside the gate and bring it in as they own that land too.
Fenway does not fit in with the surrounding neighborhood. Instead, they did their best to go full Walt Disney World and dominate it.
Most of the refurb could have kept the capacity around 34,000 with added seats and broader chairs for modern bodies. Instead, they turned a monument into an ATM. All teams do this to a degree, but Fenway brings it to a gaudy excess like a tacky strip mall.
MLB Ballparks: ROGERS CENTRE
When the Toronto Blue Jays moved from Exhibition Stadium to SkyDome in the summer of 1989, it was a breath of fresh air. Gone were the freezing nights on Lake Ontario in a park built for Canadian football. Now, controlled climate, screaming neon, and concrete greeted those coming in.
An absolute marvel of a stadium that became outdated four years after opening.
Imagine growing up in the 1980s, and the crush of your dreams had the perfect hair-sprayed head with sweaters full of shoulder pads. You still see her today occasionally, the hair still brown with help, and those jeans are too tight. That is Rogers Centre.
Although the CFL Argonauts left for the new Exhibition Stadium, the artificial surface remains laid in squares visible on television. The place is huge and sucks sound well. Those strips of colorful neon, straight out of Miami Vice, are there like a food court holding on to a pretzel place and cheap Chinese.
A combination of things doomed the place almost from the start. When the Baltimore Orioles unveiled Camden Yards, the era of the full-service cookie-cutter ballpark was over. Baseball-only yards were in. Sharing with the NFL was thankfully over.
When Houston and Phoenix opened retractable roof stadiums with grass instead of plastic, the novelty of Toronto’s dome was gone. Milwaukee, Seattle, and Miami play on real green stuff — when the new Texas Rangers stadium opens, same deal.
Unlike the recently closed Turner Field and Arizona’s Chase Field, Rogers Centre is dated. The fans do their best, but the place is a monument to everything about the 1980s we disliked.
MLB Ballparks: MARLINS STADIUM
You knew this place was an unmitigated disaster from the start.
First, tear down the historic Orange Bowl for a new baseball stadium. The Orange Bowl, and the surrounding neighborhood needed a huge facelift. Built in the middle of an older residential community, nothing about the area says modern entertainment complex.
Jeffrey Loria, then-owner of the Miami Marlins scammed hundreds of millions to build the glassy, modern stadium. It is true you need a roof to combat Florida’s tropic heat and rain. Much like a bored middle school student working on a science project that was the only thing Loria got right.
From décor screaming 1970s mall tile to walls a television weather forecaster would love in their studios, it is a giant green screen; Marlins Stadium is unique the same way you hear stories of grandmothers serving tomato-flavored gelatin. One so far-fetched, it is real.
With the team drawing flies for crowds, the place as no vibe. You can hear the oxygen running through the fish tanks near home plate. The moon has more atmosphere than your average July game.
The home run sculpture, with dancing fish and such, is so out there that Sid and Marty Krofft from 1970s bizarre children’s television shows think it is gaudy. Yep, the old home of Super Bowl III and the Miami Hurricanes indeed is a circus.
A circus the city of Miami will pay for another generation. As with Olympic Stadium in Montreal, this white elephant is going nowhere.
MLB Ballparks: TROPICANA FIELD
Do you think anyone within the San Francisco Giants and Chicago White Sox organizations regret not moving to Tampa Bay?
Long used as the siren song to entice cities to build new stadiums for existing clubs, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays called Tropicana Field home from their start in 1998. The last classic dome, the faults were obvious from the start.
By the time Tampa got Major League Baseball, all but three stadiums had played on grass. Although domes are not uncommon, the rest are retractable allowing fresh air and excellent sightlines. The Trop offers an artificial surface and layers of catwalks circling under the roofs.
Granted the franchise in the mid-1990s, it never occurred to anyone that there is no easy way to get to the dome from population centers. Yes, Saint Petersburg is not small but, the stadium is in the middle of nowhere. From the start, people stayed away in droves.
Even the years where the Rays were successful, they hardly sold out. Sections of the upper decks were tarped. Still, unless the Yankees or Red Sox are in town, thousands of seats remain empty.
The Rays have fought for years to get out. St. Petersburg insists they stay in the city, but no stadium replacement plan has left the drawing board. Now, Tampa can look elsewhere. Where they go remains a mystery.
A long-term future in the Trop, however, is a non-starter.
MLB Ballparks: OAKLAND-ALAMEDA COLISEUM
Once the rare gem of a cookie-cutter palace, the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum has grown into a dilapidated mess.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
Now 50, the last North American pro stadium to host a baseball and pro football team needs replacing. When the Oakland Raiders move to Las Vegas in a few years that will help. But, the Athletics have no replacement plans that are sustainable.
Despite the Golden State Warriors moving across the bay to San Francisco, the A’s have no desire to redevelop the area into a working new stadium. That speaks volumes.
When the Raiders moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s, the coliseum was nice. Hand-operated scoreboards were high in the outfield. Never fully enclosed, you had a good view past the outfield. Then, Al Davis moved the Raiders back for 1994.
The monstrosity of Mount Davis enclosed the stadium and killed any baseball vibe. Combined with enough foul space to turn souvenirs into outs, the place fell apart fast. Seats by the thousands were tarped off. Temporary bleaches for football shredded the outfield grass.
Speaking of foul, the sewer system has a history of clogging and flooding clubhouses. If this were an ancient Single-A field, these would be quaint problems. For an MLB stadium, they are disgusting.
As bad as the Trop is in St. Petersburg, Oakland wins the award for the worst ballpark hands down. Years of needed upgrades and maintenance were ignored to where the cities three tenants had to move. Where the Athletics go is anyone’s guess. A serious bid from Portland might move them out of California.
Next: MLB mock draft version 2.0
Okay gang, flame away in the comments below! What are the worst MLB ballparks in all of baseball?