Scoring the ballyards

Most major league ballparks exist through funding provided by taxpayers, many of whom derive little benefit from their forced subsidization. The good news, though, is that the booty has in this rare instance led to beauty: 19 of the 21 ballyards opened since 1992 are beautiful and are great improvements on the sterile, multiuse stadiums constructed during the 1960s and 1970s.

I’ve been to every current ballpark and some older ones, and every major league spring training park—76 in all, plus two major league fields in Cuba and Japan—so I feel qualified to name the best: Pittsburgh and San Francisco, based on both cozy interiors and memorable exteriors. (If parks are downtown, classic buildings should be viewable beyond the outfield walls. If they’re along a river or the sea, we want water.)

Pittsburgh’s PNC Park has limestone walls, rhythmic archways, and good vantage points throughout the ballpark. Fans in the lower deck are closer to the action, but those in the upper have a better view of the Pittsburgh skyline. The closest bridge runs almost parallel to the left field fence, so park and city dance like Astaire and Rogers. San Francisco’s AT&T Park is also an A+, with great internal and external sight lines, including SF Bay scenery just beyond the outfield stands and kayaks usually in position to scoot to a home-run ball in their midst.

Happily, 17 more ballparks rate A’s for exquisite interiors and surroundings. Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis has the Gateway Arch behind center field. Coors Field in Denver has its pine trees beyond the outfield. Safeco Field in Seattle offers views of downtown and Puget Sound. Minute Maid Park in Houston, near the train station, has its own train above the left field wall. And on it goes.

Only the Chicago White Sox ballpark has dull surroundings, and only Nationals Park in Washington deserves a dishonorable mention because it could have had a glorious background beyond the outfield walls—the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument—but is angled so only some upper deck fans get a view of the Capitol dome.

The two old ballparks, Boston’s Fenway (1912) and Chicago’s Wrigley (1914), have wonderfully cozy feels. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, with the Baltimore and Ohio warehouse behind right field, is an old new from 1992. Its architects deserve special honor for taking a chance: Ballparks for the previous three decades had emphasized modernist uniformity, with right field and left field foul lines the same length and a smoothly curved outfield fence, but Baltimore’s architects brought back unevenness complete with nooks and crannies.

My standard for spring training parks is different: They are usually stripped-down models without quirks, but maybe that’s changing. Ideally, the fields should be training devices for playing in the major leagues, so players who make their home-field debut will be like pilots flying their first jet after operating a simulator hundreds of times. That makes the new Red Sox ballpark in Fort Myers the best: It has the same dimensions as Fenway, including a Green Monster in left field. Spring training fields should also give a sense of what it takes to get to the majors by having fans reach the ballpark by walking past training fields: Salt River and Camelback in Phoenix are perfectly situated that way.

My perfect score on ballpark visits will soon end, though. Atlanta’s new $622 million ballpark ($392 million of it from taxpayers) hosts its first major league game on April 14.