A Guide to Major League Baseball Stadiums, Part 2: The Worst of the Bunch

As I already discussed in my companion piece (A Guide to Major League Baseball Stadiums: The Best of the Bunch) I fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting all 30 major league ballparks. In that article I showcased the national past time's most impressive stadiums. Sadly, as I discovered on my journey, not all stadiums are created equal. Now it's time to get down to some dirty work and let you in on the worst ballparks MLB has to offer.

Wrecking Ball Ready

Shea Stadium, New York Mets - If I can be unoriginal for a moment I'd like to quote the great acid tongued Bette Davis: "What. A. Dump." That pretty much sums up Shea Stadium. Sure it was home to the famed 1965 Beatles concert but it also looks like that's the last time anyone cleaned the place. Typical of most 1960's circular concrete designed parks, a stark and overwhelming sadness lingers over the stadium's cold facade. As all baseball fans know by now, LaGuardia Airport is located nearby and the constant slew of jumbo jets flying overhead make it a less than ideal spot to watch a game. The Mets are set to open a new stadium in 2009 and it can't come soon enough.

Dolphin Stadium, Florida Marlins - Dolphin Stadium isn't such a bad stadium really. That's assuming of course that you're there to watch a Dolphins game. However if you're a Marlins fan (and much like Big Foot sightings, I question the authenticity of such a statement) it's a whole other story. This is another prototypical multi-purpose stadium: appropriate for football, poor site lines for baseball games. It doesn't help matters that locals don't come out to support the team in spite of the fact they've won two World Series titles in the past ten years. Empty stadiums plague home games (they averaged just a little above 14,000 per game last season) and simply add to their inability to build any kind of excitement or festive atmosphere.

McAfee Coliseum, Oakland A's - McAfee suffers from the same condition as a Dolphin Stadium. It's not a hideous stadium per se, but it offers up a less than ideal baseball experience. It's simply another outdated, multi-purpose stadium that looks even worse when cursed with small crowds. I will say however that the die-hards who are present (there's that especially spirited drum section that entertains the crowd) do elevate the experience above that of say a Devil Rays game. Those loyalists deserve a more intimate, less cavernous place to call home.

New Stadiums Hit a Misstep

Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati Reds - There's nothing more disappointing than a new ballpark that fails to excite on any level. Sadly that's the case in Cincinnati. Nearly every feature that's supposed to help the stadium shine simply falters instead. Like the riverboat smoke stacks in center field. Sure they emit smoke and fireworks when the Reds do something worth applauding. Sure it's a nice riverfront theme to try and play off of. But there's also something incredibly cheap and tacky about their appearance inside the park. The stadium itself has a great location on the Ohio River but unlike, say San Francisco or Pittsburgh, smoke stacks aside, they fail to utilize it in any imaginative way. There are some nice touches, like the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, but for the most part it's simply not an aesthetically pleasing stadium.

U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago White Sox - At first glance, U.S. Cellular Field doesn't look so bad. Upon closer inspection, you soon realize that's because it doesn't look like much of anything. It's an absolutely bland and unimaginative ballpark. Sadly, I'm not the only one who feels that way. Fans were already unhappy when the White Sox unveiled their new home in 1991. Then, as if to rub salt in their still fresh wounds, just one year later Baltimore's Camden Yards was unveiled. Not only is that stadium a majestic masterpiece but it also jump started the trend of beautifully constructed "retro-classic" stadiums opening across America. It seems fitting that, with seemingly no view of Chicago's spectacular skyline or Lake Michigan for that matter, U.S. Cellular instead looks out over a series of drearily dated housing projects. The stadium has undergone many renovations since opening but they just can't seem to fix its biggest fault: its soulless nature.