Hard to say goodbye

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McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK — Two construction workers are taking a break, puffing cigarettes and talking baseball at the corner of 161st and River in the Bronx. One says Alex Rodriguez is too focused to be distracted by divorce and Madonna, and is about to start playing like a $300-million ballplayer.

The other thinks it's all about pitching, and he's not sure the Yankees can overtake the Rays, and before he can make his point, a group of a dozen or so business-types in navy blue Yankees hard hats walk out of the construction site.

"Big time," the A-Rod guy says. "This place is gonna have lots of big time."

This place is new Yankee Stadium. It sits across 161st Street from old Yankee Stadium, which Rockies manager Clint Hurdle calls "a baseball museum."

As the baseball world converges here for the All-Star Game, folks are tripping over themselves to eulogize the old Yankee Stadium in its last year before progress takes the Yankees—and a Hard Rock Cafe and martini bar—to the new palace.

But all the love letters are missing something obvious. It's like this everywhere with baseball stadiums. A Detroit contractor expects to make $1 million selling pieces of the demolished Tiger Stadium. Lawsuits are filed every year to protect the charm of Wrigley Field. Red Sox fans formed a massive campaign to save Fenway Park.

Heck, even dumps like old Comiskey Park in Chicago had people in tears when the wrecking ball came.

Football may long ago have sped past baseball as America's passion, but no sport enjoys a bond with its bricks and mortar like baseball. The reasons are embedded in baseball's DNA and history—and make new construction a delicate and multi-billion-dollar industry.

"I call it the spirit of the place," says Earl Santee, heading HOK Sport's design team for Kauffman Stadium's renovations, new Yankee Stadium and others. "You want people to sense they're at someplace different than any other place they can be in that city. While it's about baseball, it's kind of about the place, too."

Even so, there are some who wonder if the same things that make fans' marriage with stadiums so unique might also leave the sport behind for future generations.

Gil Brandt is a football man, and he will defend his beloved game until death. He started scouting pro football in the 1950s, pioneering techniques that are still used today.

In the nearly 30 years he was an executive with the Dallas Cowboys, his teams played at Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium, among several other baseball parks. On those days, Brandt remembers players pointing into the stands, surprised, like, Hey, I can see my mom and dad up there. The ballpark boom that's dominated major-league baseball the last 15 years has touched football as well, and even with the NFL's new construction it still can't approach baseball's intimacy.

"Football is such a captivating sport," Brandt says. "But if (intimacy) is an advantage, they've got it. It's a lot easier for the baseball fans to touch hands with a baseball player than it is with a football player."

There are seats at Kauffman Stadium that are as close to home plate as the pitcher. You can spend fewer than $20 and be closer to some of the players on the field than their teammates.

In football, the first 10 or so rows are bad seats. You're blocked by the players and can't see the game.

Football games are about the games, not the ambience — 70,000 people packed in for a singular, intense experience. There is no time for small talk, and besides, mentioning anything you saw on CNN might start a fight.

"You are part of something communal in baseball," says Ira Rosen, a photojournalist and author of the baseball book Blue Skies, Green Fields . "Football, they build them so enclosed so you are detached from the city, from the neighborhood. You are part of the rooting experience, but not part of the communal experience."

Amazon.com returns more than 5,000 matches for books about baseball stadiums. Before and after the unfortunate run of cookie-cutter stadiums that plagued both football and baseball through the 1970s and 80s, baseball stadiums have been uniquely tied into their cities and neighborhoods.

Camden Yards incorporates the warehouse behind right field, PNC Park in Pittsburgh gives a gorgeous view of the city's three bridges and skyline, and tickets to AT&T Park in San Francisco come with a postcard-quality look at the bay.

There are other reasons, too, beyond the familiarity produced by baseball teams playing between two and 10 times more games than other major pro sports. By rule, the playing surfaces in basketball and football are identical—despite anything Chris Berman might say about the tundra in Green Bay—and the surrounding architecture tends to follow.

It is baseball's culture that stadiums are quirky and individualized, a trend started more than a century ago when parks needed to fit into neighborhoods, and is continued today.

There is the Green Monster in Boston, the short porch at Yankee Stadium, and the goofy hill in Houston. And that doesn't even count surrounding intricacies like the fountains in Kansas City.

"You don't get that in other sports," says Peter Roby, who oversees Northeastern's Center for the Study of Sport in Society. "The layouts of ballparks play a role in the outcome of the game. People really start to identify that their dimensions, the quirkiness of each stadium, speak to them in a unique way."

The line goes silent for a moment as Bob Wood considers the question.

Twenty years ago, he went from high school history teacher to best-selling author when “Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks” graded every ballpark on eight categories from a summer-long tour he made with his father.

So you'd think the question—Do stadiums hold more of a connection to fans in baseball than other sports? — would be easy for him. Not so much.

"I would've agreed with that one million percent when I did the book," he says. "Now? I don't know. It's changing. It's a different world."

All but seven of baseball's 30 teams have built, are building, or are planning new stadiums since 1992, when Camden Yards set off a ballpark boom. That doesn't include Anaheim or Kansas City, where face-lifting renovations are completed and pending, respectively.

Those 25 construction projects total $9.8 billion, all but six of which were funded exclusively or mostly by the public.

By Sam Mellinger

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