Red Sox vs. Yankees this weekend and, sadly, it barely registers on the radar. For the first time in about 3 or 4 years, a September match-up with the Yankees really doesn't mean that much. The Yankees magic number is 6, I think, and the chances of overtaking the White Sox and the red-hot Twins for the wild card are pretty slim.
Since I don't really feel like talking about that, how about I update my annual ballpark rankings? The rankings and comments as of last year can be found here:
http://forum.officiating.com/showpos...&postcount=288
The list looked like this:
1. Camden Yard
2. PNC (Pittsburgh)
3. Citizens' Bank Park (Philly)
4. Yankee Stadium
5. Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati)
6. Jacobs' Field (Cleveland)
7. Olympic Stadium (Montreal)
8. Shea Stadium
This year we visited Comerica Park in Detroit and Rogers' Centre (formerly SkyDome) in Toronto. Ranking these two was kind of difficult. If you rated them mostly on the ballpark itself, you get a very different result than if you considered the surrounding area and the city.
Comerica is a beautiful park with lots of the "old fashioned" feel that has become popular. We had very good seats, about 20 rows back and even with the first base bag, which were about average price. There's a very cool fountain in center field (although there's a big SUV displayed with it, since it's sponsored by GM). There are tigers sculpted all over the park and the main entrance to the ballpark is framed with giant baseball bats and is guarded by a huge tiger. The food in the park was above average, I thought (my buddy John wasn't as impressed). There was also reasonably priced merchandise, so I could get something for my daughter. We didn't try to move to better seats, b/c ours were already really good. It was also "Negro League" weekend, so the teams wore old uniforms from the era. The Tigers wore the uniforms from the Detroit Stars. I forget which team the Royals wore (maybe the KC Monarchs?) That was pretty cool.
The drawback was that the city of Detroit was -- how shall I put it? -- less than appealing. The hotels in the area were priced very high and the one we were in was horrible. The surrounding area (except for Greektown, which was pretty cool) is 5 square miles of deserted buildings and empty lots. There was very little to do that we could find (except the casinos) and we simply didn't like the city itself.
SkyDome, on the other hand, is a pretty average park in the middle of an amazing city. I'm not a big-city kind of guy, but I could live in Toronto. Museums, castles, amazing history, clean city and friendly people (except the attendant at our parking garage). The most remarkable thing about SkyDome is the retractable roof. We got to the park about 40 minutes before the game and the roof was closed, despite the fact that it was a gorgeous day. Why? Because it was "Bring Your Dog to the Park" Day. They had a parade of dogs along the warning track in the outfield and they were interviewing the dog owners in the parade. I kid you not.
Anyway, when the parade was over, they opened the roof and we got to see it in action. It was VERY cool. The other cool thing about the park is that if you sit on the third base side, the CN Tower rises right behind the ballpark. It was truly an amazing sight. Otherwise, I felt the ballpark was about average. The seats down the lines are not angled toward home plate b/c the stadium is used for multiple events. So we had to crane our necks for the whole game to see the infield action. It was very tough to move to a better seat, as every section is guarded and they take it seriously. The merchandise was pretty good, but the food was average at best. We took the ballpark tour the next morning before we left for home, and it was very good. They let us out into the field and we got to walk around the outfield.
If we were just ranking the ballparks, Comerica would be way ahead of SkyDome. However, taking the town and surrounding areas into account, our updated rankings are:
1. Camden Yard
2. PNC (Pittsburgh)
3. Citizens' Bank Park (Philly)
4. Yankee Stadium
5. Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati)
6. SkyDome
7. Jacobs' Field (Cleveland)
8. Comerica Park
9. Olympic Stadium (Montreal)
10. Shea Stadium
Hope that's interesting to somebody.
