Ruining the game
Just finished my early story, and I was about to blog all about how much I love this stadium. And then the Royals ruined it. For their ceremonial first pitch they had people dressed up as Star Wars characters take the field.
Chewbacca stood on the mound, baseball in hand. Darth Vader was at the plate, batting righthanded. And a handful of those guys in white suits with white helmets stood off to the side, almost like how those security guards walk alongside George Steinbrenner in and out of Yankee Stadium these days.
Anyway, it was a fine display, for the Long Island Ducks.
But not for a major-league baseball game.
Now, back to this stadium, and how much I like it. First, it's called Kauffman Stadium. Not Ford Field, Dodge Dome, The Ballpark Brought to You By Marriott at Kansas City. So already it's off to a good start. Secondly, the layout is great. Home plate faces the parkway, which is raised about, say, 75 to 100 feet several yards behind the centerfield wall. So when you drive down the parkway, you get a great shot at the insider of the stadium.
The waterfalls behind the outfield wall are a nice, classy touch. Not overdone. From a media standpoint, the access from the press box to the clubhouses are better than adequate. And the scoreboard in centerfield is one of the best in the bigs, too. Always displayes the linescore, count, out, batter hitting, etc.
OK, enough of that. What's up with the Yankees, you ask? Mariano Rivera is still shut down, at least through this series and perhaps beyond. He said he is feeling better and planned to play catch today. But the Yankees are taking this very slow, which makes a lot of sense. Why rush it with the division race all but over.
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Comments (1)
You see, this is a great example of how a well-designed ballpark (Kaufman, Dodgers Stadium) and a poor design (Shea, Tropicana Field, Kingdome, etc.) can make such a big difference in how they age.
Both Shea and Tropicana is younger than Dodgers Stadium but look how horribly those two have fared over the years.
As for all these cookie-cutter, retro ballparks we are seeing popping up all over the majors now, I think they are making the same mistakes all over again.
It seems like all these new ballparks look more or less alike.
Camden Yards was the first to do the retro themed and now everyone is jumping on that bandwagon.
While it may work with one or two ballparks, everyone doing the same thing just takes the uniqueness out of it.
The new Yankee and Shea Stadium is making this very mistake.