Tag Archives: ballparks no longer in use

demolished, missouri, national league, no longer in use, st. louis cardinals

[Old] Busch Stadium

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[Old] Busch Stadium, St. Louis, MO

Number of Games:  2
First game:  June 14, 1993 (Cardinals 8, Pirates 3)
Last game:  May 30, 1997 (Cardinals 2, Dodgers 1)

Busch Stadium was demolished after the 2005 season.

Busch Stadium is an argument for stadium improvements.  Between my first visit in 1993 and my most recent visit in 1997, they’d made some changes that made Busch less cookie-cutter and more interesting.  In 1993, Busch was more or less an exact copy of Riverfront, Three Rivers, and The Vet, except that Busch had those nice little arches around the rim.  Now, although it doesn’t have the charm of a baseball-only stadium, it feels a lot nicer…real grass, mostly, and the removal of a section of seats to put in retired players’ pennants.  (At least I think that was done since 1993.  And I like the idea of a player having his own pennant.  Feels right.)  And there are an awful lot of pennants up there, which reminds you of the rich baseball history in St. Louis.

Which is a lot of the point.  St. Louis has a reputation as a great baseball town.  As I recall, in the heat of the Mark McGwire business in 1998, Sports Illustrated called it the best baseball town in America (which, I assume, means in the world).  And my experience in St. Louis backs that up.  I like the feeling of a crowd getting riled up late in the count in a crucial situation, all the while maintaining that Midwestern politeness I like so much (St. Louis has figured it out–at a baseball game, you can be polite and loud at the same time).  I like the way the ballpark is hard by downtown and that you can see the Gateway Arch rising above the ballpark–it therefore passes the “is there any question what city you’re in” test.  I would be happy to call Busch my home park, and I hope there doesn’t come a day when the Cardinals’ brass decides to abandon Busch Stadium for something more cutting-edge that produces more revenue.  (2005:  Alas, that day has come since I wrote those words four years ago.)

Also, Busch Stadium seems to understand the “less is more” idea of ballgame entertainment.  I don’t remember being ordered to cheer so often as I have been at other ballparks.  And my favorite part of each game was the immediate aftermath…no PA guy saying “thank you for coming,” at least not

buschfromarch
immediately, but right away–DiamondVision highlights with Jack Buck’s call.  No “We win!” foolishness on the scoreboard…just the plays you want to get a look at in case you don’t catch SportsCenter.  It’s obviously run by somebody who understands that baseball is the entertainment instead of some excuse to make a theme park.

It was there that I saw Tim Wakefield at the nadir of his career, which came exactly one season after his huge 1992 debut.  He had been moved to the bullpen because he was suddenly losing.  He came on in relief in a blowout loss.  His knuckleball wasn’t finding the plate, so hitters would wait on that 2-0 or 3-0 70-mile-an-hour fastball, and they’d hit it.  Still, even when they’re not doing well, I love watching knuckleballers.  You expect to see this Pedro Martinez-style delivery–WHOOSH!!–and instead you get…whush.  The ball seems to flutter even from a distance.  I also like knuckleballers because, for a non-athlete like me (the fastest I’ve ever thrown a baseball is about 58 miles an hour), the knuckleball would be my only chance to make the major leagues.  I don’t care how much I work out, my genetics will not allow me to hurl a baseball the 88 miles an hour it would take to be even a borderline major leaguer.  But a knuckler–well, it’s a non-athletic move that beats athletes.  I remember Steve Sparks saying in an interview how he would slow down his pitches, then slow them down again, to make a huge guy like Chili Davis look ridiculous.  He said something like:  “Chili gets frustrated because he knows he’s a way better athlete than I am, and he still can’t hit me.”  Which is a fantasy I’ve had since elementary school…the idea that brains could beat brawn on the playing field.  It can’t…brains-with-brawn beats just-brawn.  Except for knuckleballers like Sparks or Wakefield striking out massive weight-room-enhanced power hitters.

So, on the whole, I was sad to see this ballpark fade away after the 2005 season.  It was somewhat charmless, sure, but now that the four worst of the cookie-cutters (Busch, Three Rivers, Riverfront, and Veterans) have all gone the way of the dodo, I do miss the dullness of them somehow.  In many ways, it’s preferable to the theme parks, especially in a baseball town like St. Louis.  I bet I’ll like the new place, but since the multi-purpose cookie-cutters were the rule of my youth, with all their problems, I’ll miss them a little.  Sentimental and foolish?  Sure.  But true.

BASEBALL STUFF I’VE SEEN HERE:

Andy Van Slyke, then a Pirate, broke his collarbone jumping for a catch at the center field wall.  The ball ricocheted off his glove and over the fence for a home run, and Van Slyke was out for most of the rest of the season.

I saw an awesome, awesome game–one of the best I’ve seen–in 1997.  Ramon Martinez and Andy Benes were in a pitchers’ duel, but each delivered the key hit for his team…Benes a drive to the wall for an RBI double, Martinez a lucky roller down the third-base line for a leadoff double…he eventually scored.  It was 1-1 on those plays until the bottom of the ninth, when Gary Gaetti almost hit a homer to win it…caught at the wall.  Then St. Louis loaded the bases, Los Angeles brought on Mark Guthrie to face Delino DeShields, and he walked him on four pitches to end the game.  A little bit of a letdown, but that actually only added to the game’s charm somehow.

(Written August 2001.  Updated December 2005.)
american league, demolished, no longer in use, texas, texas rangers

Arlington Stadium

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arlington
Frank Albanese.  From Frank’s Ballpark Page.  Used by permission.

Arlington Stadium, Arlington, TX

Number of Games:  1
First and Last Game:  August 4, 1992 (A’s 9, Rangers 0)

Arlington Stadium was demolished in 1994.

Arlington Stadium was the one big-city stop for Dad and I on my way to start teaching in rural Louisiana.  We had about a week to get from Denver to Baton Rouge, so Dad and I made a few rules for the trip.

Rule 1:  Avoid the interstate at all costs.  When possible, we would even take roads that were not on our map.  For instance, if there was one town in eastern Colorado or western Kansas, and another town 12-20 miles away, and no road between them on our map, we knew–just knew–that if we went to the first town and drove out of it in the direction of the second, we would be on a county road between them.  And we often were.  That is an incredibly fun way to travel.

Rule 2:  We would choose destinations based on the names of towns we liked.  Our first destination was Punkin Center, Colorado.  It ain’t much–just a couple of buildings–but I’ve been there, and you haven’t.  Then we headed down through southeastern Colorado, through some alienatingly flat (but still somehow beautiful) grasslands in southwestern Kansas, on our way to the place we both wanted to spend the night–Hooker, Oklahoma.  How could Dad and I travel across the country without visiting a Hooker?  We made it there about sunset and looked for a hotel, but the one we found, to be honest, looked like a small-h hooker motel, so we retreated to Kansas for the night.  We did pass Hooker High School, however, which boasted Hooker Pride.  The Oklahoma Panhandle…well, it once was no-man’s-land, belonging not to the Native Americans, European Americans or the Mexicans, but to nobody.  I now know why.  Nobody wanted it.  It’s flat, boring, bleak, and depressing.  Hooker is 15 miles from Guymon, Oklahoma, and from Hooker, you could not only see Guymon, but you could see where the dead-straight road you were on cut through Guymon.  Very, very dull, bleak, and hot.  But I’ve been there, and for that alone, it’s worth going.

Rule 3:  Avoid Texas if we could.  I was raised in an exceedingly tolerant and loving household, where we were taught to be kind and respectful to everyone regardless of race, nationality, gender, creed, or sexual orientation.  The only real exception to this rule was Texans.  Don’t get me wrong, some of our best friends are Texans, and we certainly wish them well.  But I think Dad saw a few too many wads of used chew on otherwise white ski slopes (I once even heard a few folks shouting “yee-haw” on the chair lift) to extend his tolerance to Texans.  But when I suggested we do a little father-son bonding at a major-league baseball game, A’s versus Rangers, he decided to set foot in Texas to bond with me.  That was quite a sacrifice, Dad, and I thank you for it.

There was nothing terribly wrong with the stadium, although it had more a minor-league feel than anything else.  Dad and I sat down the right-field line and watched Ranger pitching absolutely make a mockery of the game.  But we focused our binoculars on Rickey Henderson’s stance, marveled at how patriotic the Texas folk were (everyone boisterously singing the national anthem), and talked about whatever we thought about, since the game was so bad it wasn’t a distraction.  You know–we bonded.  You don’t need a Hooker for that.

BASEBALL STUFF I’VE SEEN HERE:

Jose Canseco walked 5 times in 5 plate appearances.  The next day, he walked in his first 2 plate appearances, which set a major league record for consecutive walks by a batter–seven.

Terry Steinbach comes to the plate with the bases loaded in each of his first three at-bats.

Dave Stewart and a reliever combine for a 4-hit shutout.

(Originally written August 2001.)
american league, detroit tigers, michigan, no longer in use

Tiger Stadium

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© Lowell Boileau, The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, http://DetroitYES.com. Used by permission.

Tiger Stadium, Detroit, MI

 

Number of games: 2
First game:  August 11, 1980 (Tigers 8, Red Sox 7)
Last game:  September 3, 1982 (Tigers 6, A’s 3)

Tiger Stadium is no longer in use as of the end of 1999. The stadium has been knocked down, but the field remains.

Because I grew up in Denver before it had a major league baseball team, I didn’t begin my ballpark quest in earnest until after college.  Tiger Stadium was the exception.  I visited it twice on visits to relatives in Detroit.  I was ten and twelve.  And while I had been to a few Denver Bears and Denver Zephyrs games at Mile High Stadium, my only two childhood major league games were at Tiger Stadium.  Because I was a kid, I can’t give you a fully accurate description–I just thought it was incredibly cool.  I didn’t notice it was in a horrible neighborhood–in fact, I wandered out to the concourse alone during a rain delay to look at the skyline.  I didn’t pay any mind to the 1912 architecture and the beams that obstructed my view from the second deck down the left-field line–I had nothing to compare it to.  This sounds cliché, but what I remember of the stadium was all that gorgeous grass.  Also the funny stuff on the scoreboard.

There was a very long rain delay, which means I got to hang out with my aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandmother for a while watching highlights of the 1979 World Series.  I remember thinking it strange that the umpire would stop the game in the middle of an at-bat and not wait until between at-bats.  The rain delay was awfully long, as was the game, which didn’t finish off until 12:51 AM.  I laughed out loud when the PA announcer said:  “The next Tigers home game will be against the Boston Red Sox…tonight.  Drive carefully.  Good morning.”

My cousin Joe–maybe six or seven years old?–clued me in that Richie Hebner was the absolute greatest player in world history.  When Hebner came to bat in the third inning, Joe shouted from our upper-deck seat:  “Keep your eye on the ball, Richie!”  Even at ten, I found such advice to professionals to be superfluous and silly.  Or was it?  Hebner homered.

I faintly remember heading out to the concourse hoping to buy a pennant and finding I didn’t have enough cash for one.  But the hawker–a teenage kid–talked me into buying a pencil with a pennant on the end of it.  At first, it felt like a poor substitute for the real thing, but I was glad to leave with something.

I went to the 1982 game shortly after visiting my great-grandmother in the hospital.  She was 90 and a bag of bones.  I knew she was a baseball fan and a Tiger fan, but only after talking to her in the hospital did I realize quite how hard-core she was.  She not only knew that the Tigers were playing Oakland, but said something like:  “Every team has their really good players, and they have Henderson.  He’s really something.”  Not bad for a woman born in Kaliszka Gubernia, Poland.

I’m not 100% certain, but I may have tried to score the game when I was 12.  I remember copying the names, anyway.  Maybe I just wrote the home runs down.  No evidence survives.

In short…I have little memory snippets–mostly of the games–but Tiger Stadium will always hold quite a bit of sentimental value for me.  I have no memory of its many problems…just memory of excitement, family, and two good games.

BASEBALL STUFF I SAW THERE:

Looks like I saw Fred Lynn hit a home run.  Jack Morris and Bob Ojeda started my first ever game, but both were driven out early–Ojeda without getting an out.

Rickey Henderson stole a base in the game I saw in September 1982–his 124th of the season, extending his record in the year he stole 130.  I think it was the first inning–he was walked and stole second, but Lance Parrish gunned him down when he tried to steal third.

Dwayne Murphy hit a home run off of a light tower on the right-field roof.  I remember the sound of that.  Crack–fffsssssssssssssss–ping!!! (Okay, maybe the “fffsssss” is added only in my memory.)  The crowd was so surprised and impressed that we gave him a polite golf-clap ovation as he ran around the bases.  There can’t be too many people who have done that in Tiger Stadium’s 87 years.  If the light tower hadn’t been there, I don’t know where Murphy’s shot would have landed…I swear it was still going up.

Lance Parrish, one of my favorite players as a kid (because of these visits to Tiger Stadium, I grew up a Tiger fan), hit a homer in the Oakland game.