Here’s my list:
Just one – the defunct Cleveland Stadium. Between attending as a spectator and spending six years as a vendor there, though, I was present for about 500 Indians games.
Parks I’ve seen from the road:
Wrigley
U.S. Cellular
Busch Memorial Stadium (the Cardinals’ home from 1966-2005)
County Stadium (Brewers’ former home)
Miller Park (I think – can’t remember for sure whether I passed it when I was in Milwaukee about six years ago)
Now if someone starts a thread about arenas in which we’ve seen basketball games, I’ll have a somewhat longer list…
Wrigley
Fenway
Old Busch
New Busch
Metrodome
Apparently I need to get out more.
Tropicana Field at least isn’t filthy, from what I have been told. The Metrodome was hideous. But I may be wrong.
Either way, Stade Olympique was a hundred times worse. If I had season’s tickets and lived a 3-minute walk from the stadium I wouldn’t have gone to any games after the first one. It was a disgrace to the team, to Major League Baseball, and to the city of Montreal.
It’s a shame Montreal now has a reputation for not having baseball fans, because it just isn’t true. I can’t believe ANYONE in Montreal went to see the Expos the last few years. I wouldn’t have gone for free, and I love baseball as much as life itself. The Montreal Expos were the professional sports equivalent of running a grocery store where the store is in an old, abandoned factory and there’s dust and mold everywhere, and it smells like horse shit, and the canned food is just lying in piles and the meat and bread are moldy and filthy, and then when the store goes out of business people say, “I guess people in that neighbourhood don’t like eating food.”
The Expos played in a stadium that was an absolute joke. It was appalling; I can’t believe MLB allowed a team to play there. I felt bad for the players. It was ugly, filthy, insufficiently lit, not anywhere near the standards of a big league stadium, had terrible food, and was unsafe. The worst minor league park I have ever been to was twice as nice. I believe the stadium alone might have killed the franchise, but to make sure it was really dead, they won next to nothing in 37 years of existence, stopped broadcasting the games (!!!) and in the last five or seven years told the fans “We’re moving the team, or maybe just contracting it.” If you ran the Yankees the same way they wouldn’t draw flies. Why would anyone want to invest any money, time and emotional attachment to that?
How strange - I’d been inside Olympic Stadium, albeit not for a game (this was in fall of 1997, just in case that makes a difference), and didn’t find anything so terrible about my surroundings. It certainly had its faults - e.g., the fact that the dome was meant to be retractable but the mechanism didn’t work and had to be permanently affixed - but it hadn’t struck me as such an awful place to play or watch baseball. Youppi seemed to be a cute enough mascot, in the Phillie Phanatic tradition. True, they never won anything more than a division title, but neither have the Rangers or Mariners.
Also, weren’t they on the verge of getting a nice, new, modern stadium built before MLB pulled the rug out from under the team?
I don’t understand this. Olympic Stadium was no worse than Fenway Park 10 years ago. I enjoyed it a lot every single time I went.
Edit: I got to see young Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero, Orlando Cabrera, etc., the list goes on…
I’ve seen games at:
Candlestick Park (3com Park)
Oakland Coliseum (I forget the names)
Dodger Stadium
Pacific Bell Park (SBC Park/AT&T Park)
Anaheim Stadium
Yankee Stadium
I’ve toured:
Fenway Park
Safeco Field
Wrigley wasn’t offering tours when I was in Chi, but I walked around it and touched it, so I count it.
I was just in NY, so I saw New Yankee Stadium when I went to see the Red Sox, and after takeoff from Laguardia, I had a great view of Shea & Citi. And I saw New Comiskey from the El on the way to Midway.
This is my rather sorry list:
–Oakland Coliseum
–The Kingdome
–Safeco Field
I almost went to Municipal Stadium in Baltimore to see the Orioles and Indians but the game got rained out and I never used the ticket for a make-up date.
Of the few parks I’ve been to, I rate Safeco the best, the Kingdome the worst, and the Oakland Coliseum surprisingly underrated as a baseball park. Of course, it’s been 20 years since I’ve been there and from what I’ve heard, they really screwed things up there when the Raiders returned.
Not that many
[ul]
[li]Candlestick Park[/li][li]Shea Stadium[/li][li]Fenway Park[/li][li]Three Rivers Stadium[/li][li]Olympic Stadium[/li][/ul]
You never made it to the Bronx, but you made it to Fenway? What’s up with that?
No. The plan was long dead.
It must have really deteriorated, then. What I saw was unfit for beer league softball.
I was visiting family, and they took me. But yeah, never been to the Bronx (at least not on purpose)
Oh, I forgot, I’ve also seen a Reds home game and an Orioles home game (but I cannot remember the stadium names)