What MLB parks have the best atmosphere?

[Sandy Beach]

I like to travel and also love baseball. What would be the best MLB parks to visit? Thank you for any information you can provide.

[TheMetetron]

Haven't been to many, but everyone should go to a game at:

[T50_Omaha8]

Fenway is the only really interesting one I've been to, but I hear it's the best. I was very much impressed by it.

[NewTeaBag]

I'm a bit partial (having grown up in NYC) but IMO, Yankee Stadium is a MUST SEE and remains the cathedral of baseball.

Others I liked:
Jacobs Field (CLeveland)
??Edison??? LA Angels Stadium
Fenway is ok but it's NOT NYC
DC is getting a new stadium for The Nationals which according to plans should be pretty goot.

Ones I abhored:
Wrigley Field (Chicago Cubs)
Safeco Park (Seattle)
Camden Yards (Baltimore)
New Commiskey (Chicago White sox)

[MicroBob]

No idea how you can hate Wrigley. That just blows me away.

Best atmosphere I've been too:
Detroit - Tiger Stadium
Cleveland - Municipal Stadium
Milwaukee - County Stadium
Baltimore - Memorial Stadium

Unforunately, they don't play baseball at ANY of those stadiums anymore. Bummer.

Only went to Fenway up in the luxury-boxes and press-box in December during a special function. But even then the ballpark flat-out blew me away. Would love to see a game there.

Wrigley is my fave of the current available stadiums.
Haven't been to Yankee Stadium yet.
Camden Yards in Baltimore is good. And much easier to get tickets now then when they first opened.
I also like Jacobs Field in Cleveland.
Comerica in Detroit is okay.

Arlington and the new one in St. Louis didn't exactly blow me away.
Sucky-ish ballparks I've been to include TB, FLA, OAK, CHW.


And now I offer my special bonus on my favorite minor-league ballparks (where you can still attend a game).
Swing by the park sometime if you happen to be in that area. I've been to about 1,500+ minor-league games in 60-70 different ball-parks.

Faves include:
Quebec City, Canada
Daytona Beach, Florida
Vero Beach, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida (probably only for spring-training games now)
Brockton, Mass
Davenport, Iowa (Quad Cities)
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Evansville, IN

Many other great ones these days that I haven't been to.
Have heard some good things about stadiums in Lincoln, NE and Winnipeg for example.
And a lot of the newer Midwest League and Frontier League ballparks are probably worth the trip I imagine.

Would love to get to some of the parks up in the Northwest League and Pioneer League (mostly Pacific Northwest and Big Sky/Rocky-Mountain regions) and there's plenty of atmosphere and tradition to be had all over the South Atlantic League and Carolina League.

[NewTeaBag]

[ QUOTE ]
No idea how you can hate Wrigley. That just blows me away.

[/ QUOTE ]

-Columns obstructing like 10% of seating (those seats stuck behind or view obscured by the columns)

-Ancient Scoreboard which rather than striking me as nostalgic, struck me more as hard to read and decrepit.

-Location. Pretty rough neighborhood if I remember correctly (Of course, Yankee Stadium is in the South Bronx so neighborhood isn't a total killer)

-Crap Team. kinda nice to at least see a semi competitive game when you got to a park.

-Barely visible/crap reporting of other league scores (Once again, ancient scoreboard)

- Easy to find a giant sausage or cake but hunt for ever to get a normal human "hotdog."

[minnesotasam]

Uhh.. Wrigleyville is not rough, the South Side (where the ChiSox play) is much worse.

Wrigley is absolutely incredible, I have to vehemently disagree. Also (unfortunately, since I hate them), they are not a crap team this year at all. If you don't like old-fashioned parks, then yeah, I would avoid the one that's been hosting games for a century or whatever, but I thought it was awesome. Plus the atmosphere/fans are great.

Fenway is also cool, but the Red Sox are even more hateable than the Cubs. Awesome stadium and experience though.

I agree with MicroBob that Tiger Stadium and Milwaukee County were good, but they're both long gone at this point. Old Busch in St. Louis was pretty awesome, haven't had a chance to check out the new one yet though. Cardinals fans are great just like Cubs fans (and I actually like the team), which definitely adds to the experience.

[MicroBob]

We went to a Cards/Reds game at the new Busch in St. Louis.
Being originally from the Cincy area I wore my Cincy cap with pride of course.
Almost EVERYONE wears their Cardinal logo stuff to the park. More fans wearing their team's colors than most other parks imo.

It was a sell-out and a great game. And the crowd just seemed dead. I didn't get it.
I had heard all about these passionate Cards fans, etc. But they seemed to all just show up wearing their stuff and then sat on their hands.

Reds won 9-8 on a Griffey HR off Isringhausen in the 9th inning. A terrific back-and-forth ball-game but the fans just didn't seem very into it.


Thanks for confirming my thoughts on Wrigleyville.
I was afraid to say anything about that because I hadn't been there in awhile and perhaps I had gotten lucky and parked on the right side of the stadium or something.
But I found that statement strange too because I had been there several times and found it to be one of the safest neighborhoods of any major-league stadium I had been to.
One time I went up there I crashed at the apartment of a friend who was working for the Cubs at the time (can we say, "Comp me seats behind home-plate please"??) and lived walking distance from the park.

I've walked to Wrigley from various directions and it's insanely safe.

I've been to Comiskey a couple of times and that area is definitely not the safest in the world and not very well-lit in parts either.
Take a wrong turn down there and you could really regret it.


Complaining about the scoreboard at Wrigley (and the supposedly dangerous neighborhood??) seems beyond weird.
The Cubs practically don't have a choice with that scoreboard anyway no matter how old it is.
If they replaced it they would have a near-riot on their hands.

[NewTeaBag]

OK OK folks! I gues the 2 games I went to at Wrigley, I just got "bad ones."

WRT neighborhood, I OBV have confused New Commiskey with Wrigley. (It's been a few years since I went to either)

But, I still didn't get a good vibe from Wrigley and still think the columns and ancient scoreboard are more derelict than cherished relic (Of course I'm not a zealot Cubbies fan so I can see how they might not like modernizing it).

Anywho, you also have to understand my perspective. The very 1st MLB game I attended, at the age of 5-6, was the WS game at Yankee Stadium in which Reggie Jackson hit 3 HRs. So from that moment on, There was only Yankee Stadium....and the rest for me, for life. But as I said above, I have found some other stadiums worthy of praise. I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree WRT wrigley OR take it up in MUHAHAH when it launchs. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Jim Kuhn]

[ QUOTE ]
We went to a Cards/Reds game at the new Busch in St. Louis.
Being originally from the Cincy area I wore my Cincy cap with pride of course.
Almost EVERYONE wears their Cardinal logo stuff to the park. More fans wearing their team's colors than most other parks imo.

It was a sell-out and a great game. And the crowd just seemed dead. I didn't get it.
I had heard all about these passionate Cards fans, etc. But they seemed to all just show up wearing their stuff and then sat on their hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cardinal fans are diehard fans but there is not much in the near future to be optimistic about. Their five big signings over the winter were Kip Wells, Adam Kennedy, Jim Edmonds, Mark Mulder and Chris Carpenter. Virtually no production from any of those players signed with the key free agent money. Carpenter is still having problems with his elbow and may never be the same.

The Cardinals manamgement is very frugal and sets an allowance for their payroll. With the above players and Scott Rolens bad contract the Cardinals are in for some lean years. The farm system is also very lean. The Cardinals made a horrible trade for Mark Mulder giving up their top pitching prospect, Dan Haren and also their top catching prospect, Daric Barton.

Although the Cardinals won the World Series last year they were not a very good team. Their record was only 83-78 and they got hot at the right time while opponents were very cold. Cardinals fans still go to the games wearing their Cardinal red but their is little optimism in the stands. We may be in for a few years of rebuilding and freeing up bad contracts.

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
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