Some of the world's greatest works of art have only been accomplished because of the limitations they were under. Early ballparks were stuck wherever they could afford enough land and they were made by people doing their best with what they had. They had to be in the towns because that's where people were.
When sports got to be Big Business* the "afford" part got to be way bigger, and stadiums moved out of the cities to places where they could have enough parking lots and space for their RV parking and their "tailgaters zone" and their sponsor tents and their personal heliports. They were designed to fit as many people as possible into as little concrete as possible and to sell those people as many beers or t-shirts as possible. Fans still made the trek, of course, but the stadiums weren't places casual fans wanted to spend time. The games were still the focus, but the experience was nothing special.
Enter Camden Yards. It's a new stadium, but it's built in an old part of town, and it incorporates the limitations of the buildings around it. It looks like it is part of the city, not something dropped in from space. It's a comfortable space to be in for humans, and looks almost like humans built it to exist in. It has quirks like the old stadiums but it has fine dining and many, many places to buy beer and t-shirts. It really works. People love it. Suddenly it's fashionable and fun to go to the newly revamped downtown and see a baseball game.
Other teams see this and want it. They go to
HOK or other engineering firms and say things like "quirky" and "retro" and "exciting" and "here are millions of tax dollars" and then the firm gives them what they say they want. The problem is the people saying this are the ones who think "I had a great time at the ballpark when I was 6 and a baseball game was a rare treat for me, and that park had obstructed views and crazy sightlines and exposed beams all over" and think it was the park's design flaws that made it that fun. So the new park has all the soullessness of the concrete boxes with maybe a prettier facade, but then added quirks like poor sight lines and home run fences that aren't home run fences but rather a big yellow line painted across a wall. It also has luxury boxes and a white tablecloth restaurant and a biergarten and, I dunno, maybe a slide or a train or a sandbox or a pool or something, and then they fill the rest of it with places for people to buy hot dogs and beer.
But the thing is that to pay for all of this extra stuff** they have to charge more. It costs you money to park, and you have to park because while the stadiums were moving out of the city center, the rest of us were, too, and now we don't live by the new stadiums and there aren't any good public transportation options to get to them. You can get a program to remember the game you were at, but it costs five dollars and includes about 30 pages of ads. You can buy season tickets, but you have to buy seat licenses too if you want to stay in the same seats every year/game. You can buy a scoop of ice cream in a batting helmet for your kid, but it costs eight bucks. You can watch the game, but the replays on the Sony Jumbotron
tm are sponsored, and the Sony Jumbotron
tm itself is surrounded by ads. Pitching changes have a sponsor. The breaks between innings feature sausage races or a trivia contest with some schlub who will get it wrong. The mythical family of four can lose $200 in an afternoon, easily, and still have to sit in the third deck. Kids may love it, but their parents don't, and they don't come back that often.
I guess what I'm saying is that you'd never have gotten bleacher bums at Wrigley Field if it were made right now. New stadiums aren't designed to have cheap seats, and nowadays there are a million other ways to waste a summer afternoon that don't charge $15 for parking. They're not shrines built to allow fans to watch games, they're lures built to get fans into the building so the franchise (and its subcontractors, franchisees, and licensed distributors) can take their money from them. Most people can't afford to go to every game, so they have to add on more and more crap to attract the 2-3 visit a year fan, and those fans aren't going to be paying attention to the game anyway.
I think I forgot where I was going with this. It was something about limits, then sports got so much money they transcended limits and built crap. And now they are trying to add the limits back in but keep the crap too, and it turns in to crap with limits that tries to sell you Coca-Cola.
And a stupid hill in Houston that's going to break someone's fuck*ng ankle someday.
Today I'm going to stay up way too late writing about baseball stadiums as a metaphor for the progression of American life in general.
*plus started hitting up cities/counties/states for tax money**okay, and players, too
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