Beer, Brats and Grasshoppers: The Sports Tourists Rank Baseball's Cathedrals

By Ryan Morse, Brian Burden, Blair Morse and Franklin Canterbury

What's the best park in baseball? It's a question many have debated over the years.

Is it the ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field? Or the sunshine, palm trees and mountains of Dodger Stadium? Do you prefer the laid-back West Coast vibe in San Diego and San Francisco? Or the frenzied east coast crowds of Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium?

Three veteran sportswriters set out to answer that question. They created a system to rank all 30 Major League parks based on what matters most to fans. Their 4A system factors in the cost of each park (Affordability), the beauty of the park (Aesthetics), the food, drink and entertainment options (Amenities) and the excitement of the crowd (Atmosphere).

Based on multiple visits to each park, they put together a 1 through 30 ranking of every stadium in the majors. And in this book, they share their rankings and describe each park based on their experience.

The book is a great place to start any debate over which city has the best ballpark in baseball. And you'll learn a few things you didn't know about your favorite park as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543963915

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Silver Way Publishing Inc.

All prices quoted in this publication are confirmed as of October 2018 and are purely provided for the purpose of comparison as of that date.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

ISBN: 978-1-543963-91-5

Silver Way Publishing Inc.

1123 MD Rte 3 N Suite 207

Gambrills, MD, 21054

www.silverwaypublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

God, I love baseball.

~Roy Hobbs, The Natural

Acknowledgements

There are many who were influential, but a certain few deserve recognition for helping make this long-time dream possible.

To my older brother Blair, who guided me into writing and then took an idea we casually conversed about and made it a reality. Thanks for the love, support, constructive criticism and belief that this was really possible.

To my wife Jenny, thanks for supporting this dream and supporting me from the start. It was a blast to be able to work on this project and have you alongside of me at many games. You pushed me to get better and to work hard on this project. I love you very much.

To my parents for supporting the love of baseball and for supporting me as a writer when I didn’t think I was good enough to do something of this magnitude.

To my buddies Chris and Monte for the inspiration to take a chance on a weekend trip to Yankee and Fenway and for starting great baseball-related conversations. Also for the perseverance to put a baseball road trip dream into decades of reality.

To my fellow colleagues at Old Mill Middle North for all the hard work they do to raise the next generation of leaders in this country and to my colleagues at the Capital Gazette for showing me perseverance and dedication in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

~ Ryan Morse

Baseball, for me, has always fundamentally been about a boy playing catch with his father. Everything I love about the sport evolved from countless sessions in the front yard with my pop, Richard Burden. I tested his patience often with high throws and even low ones that bounced off the car, but he always made time for them. And me. He didn’t care whether I was a stud professional prospect or not – he just enjoyed the smile on my face when he asked, Do you want to go outside? As an adult, I try to do the same for my son, Kyle and will do the same for my younger son, Declan. Thank you for always playing catch with me, dad. Those memories mean the world to me.

I also want to send love out to all high school sports reporters across the country. By the time this book comes out, I will be on the verge of completing my 20th, and final, year of high school sports coverage with The Capital newspaper, based in Annapolis, Maryland. Much of our work is done in anonymity, which is perfectly fine. I never got into this business for accolades or acknowledgement. The joy I have taken in highlighting the accomplishments of young boys and girls over the past two decades will never dissipate. For all of you who have undertaken this responsibility, thank you. Your commitment to local sports journalism is appreciated by more than you will ever know.

~Brian Burden

To my Mom and Dad for their constant belief in me and to Dad for helping me fall in love with the game of baseball. I cherish every day we spent at the ballfield together.

To my wife Victoria whose unwavering support is the only reason this book happened. I love you madly.

To the groundskeepers of Major League Baseball and all ball fields around big and small, thank you for doing so much to make that first sight of green grass and brown dirt a life-changing one.

And lastly, to my co-authors, my brother and my best friend. It was an honor to write this book together. I’m so proud of you guys and appreciative of the sacrifices you made to get this done.

~ Blair Morse

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Four-A System Explained

The List

#1: PNC Park - Pittsburgh

#2 Petco Park – San Diego

#3 Wrigley Field - Chicago

#4 AT&T Park – San Francisco

#5 Comerica Park - Detroit

#6 Safeco Field - Seattle

#7 Oriole Park at Camden Yards - Baltimore

#8 Great American Ballpark – Cincinnati

#9 Dodger Stadium – Los Angeles

#10 Coors Field - Colorado

#11 Target Field – Minmeapolis

#12 Chase Field - Phoenix

#13 Yankee Stadium – New York

#14 Guaranteed Rate Field - Chicago

#15 Rogers Centre - Toronto

#16 Citizens Bank Park - Philadelphia

#17 Fenway Park - Boston

#18 Miller Park - Milwaukee

#19 Angel Stadium – Anaheim

#20 Kauffmann Stadium – Kansas City

#21 Minute Maid Park - Houston

#22 Nationals Park – Washington D.C.

#23 SunTrust Park - Atlanta

#24 Citi Field – New York

#25 Globe Life Park – Arlington, TX

#26 Progressive Field – Cleveland

#27 Busch Stadium – St. Louis

#28 Tropicana Field – Tampa

#29 Marlins Park – Miami

#30 Oakland Alameda Coliseum – Oakland

Introduction

There’s just something different about baseball.

Maybe it’s the slower, more deliberate pace of the game, the chess match of each pitch adding to the anticipation.

Perhaps it’s the seasonal placement of baseball in the summer, when it’s pleasant to be outside. The start of the baseball season signifies the beginning of spring. No other sport can claim that.

Baseball gives you a chance to focus on your surroundings in a way the average indoor stadium doesn’t. As a matter of fact, baseball stadiums are the only place where the dimensions of the field change with each city. A football field, ice hockey rink and basketball court are all the same shape and size on the inside no matter where you go. 

And baseball’s snug, close to the field design makes it more intimate than an NFL stadium. It feels much friendlier and welcoming than other sports, perhaps for a number of different reasons.

The length of the games means you’re bound to eat or drink something, making that aspect more critical in a ballpark. Besides, a hot dog and a beer always tastes better outside than indoors.

Walking through the gates and seeing the green grass never gets old, no matter how many times you’ve done it. I can still picture the first time I saw it in 1985 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. That feeling is renewed for us every time we walked into a brand new park for the first time.

And we’ve done it quite a bit…

In fact, before we wrote this book, I’d been to every stadium at least once, including some of the old parks like Veterans Stadium, Shea Stadium, the Metrodome, old Yankee, Shea Stadium, RFK, Turner Field and Joe Robbie.

Most of these visits came on my annual boys’ trip with my best friends. We started out with a long road trip to the old Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park in 2003 and quickly were hooked.

The baseball trip became one of the most anticipated events of our year and we would begin planning the next year’s trip immediately after the previous year’s trip ended.

Every year we picked a different part of the continent and usually visit 2-4 parks a trip. We started on the east coast and started branching west, first by car, later by plane. We completed our journey in 2015 in southern California when we first laid eyes on our last park, Dodger Stadium.

The opening of SunTrust Park in Atlanta brought us back down south as we had to check it out as soon as possible. We are eagerly anticipating the next opening of a park so we can plan another trip.

The further west we went, the longer the drives were between parks.

On those long drives we naturally debated the merits of each park, the highs and lows, which we liked best. We also debated where we anticipated future parks would rank in our minds.

And we always strove to create a way to measure it, a rating system that would determine a winner.

In Beer, Brats and Grasshoppers: The Sports Tourists Rank Baseball’s Cathedrals, we put the fruits of those debates into play.

In the next chapter, we’ll explain our 4A system in greater depth. You can decide on your own if you agree with us or not. We don’t claim to have the end all, be all rankings. We’re merely hoping to spark a debate with some basic guidelines for what makes a good park.

Our ratings are mostly based on one moment in time, our specific experience at that game. Sometimes it’s a Saturday night in Milwaukee that gets the adrenaline going. Other times it’s a Monday night in South Florida in which you feel like you are alone.

The weather can certainly impact the experience in baseball too, both in good and bad ways. The natural ocean breezes at Petco Park in San Diego certainly favored our opinions. As did the indoor relief from the heat on a hot July afternoon in Houston.

On the contrary, a rainy night in St. Louis colored our opinion in an unfavorable manner, just as the game time temperature of 101 degrees at the Ballpark in Arlington did.

But all three of us have made multiple visits over the years to quite a few of these parks. And that perspective comes into play as well, especially as parks change and adapt to accommodate their fan bases.  A second trip to Arizona was a pleasant surprise, particularly in the food and drink department. Our second trip to Milwaukee, on a Thursday afternoon with the doors closed due to rain, obviously was a different experience.

One thing we want to make clear: We did not contact the teams ahead of time nor did we get any special tickets or passes. We bought tickets and attended each game just like everybody else would. We wanted to evaluate the park from a fan’s perspective.

We are also in no way affiliated with Major League Baseball or any of the clubs or stadiums we profile. Our opinions are just that – our opinions.

The ballpark experience is what makes baseball so unique. The architectural beauty, diversity in design and wide-open views make baseball parks the most visually pleasing of any sport.

Inside the book we’ve ranked every team based on the average of four scores. The teams are presented in the order they’re ranked, from 1-30.

In each chapter we’ll give you an overview on that park and then break down each of the four As in its own section.

For those of you who haven’t been to all of these parks, we hope we give you an accurate picture of what it’s like. And for the veterans, we hope we hit the nail on the head. But what happened to us and what we saw, may not be the same thing that happened to you. Keep that in mind and take our rankings with a grain of salt.

We know opinions are going to vary wildly. That’s okay. Baseball is a game that lends itself to conversation and debate. And that’s what we hope to spark here.

Agree or disagree, we hope you enjoy Beer, Brats and Grasshoppers: The Sports Tourists Rank Baseball’s Cathedrals as much as we enjoyed writing it.

~ Ryan Morse

Our 4A System Explained

You probably remember the first time you walked up the concourse and laid your eyes on the beautiful sight of a fresh cut baseball field. Whether it was inside one of baseball’s famous cathedrals or a forgotten venue from the past, the image is burned into the mind of every baseball fan.

In 2003 at age of 22, two of my college buddies and I decided to take a road trip from UMBC just outside of Baltimore, up I-95 to see the Yankees in the Bronx, followed by a Sunday at Fenway Park. On our long drive back from Boston we made a vow, half serious and half in jest, but 100% fueled by the enjoyment of our experiences: We would see every major league stadium as soon as financially possible.

Twelve years later I walked into Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, proud to say I achieved that goal. When stadiums closed, we went and saw the new ones.

Throughout the years, as my friends and I shared our stories with others, a common question would arise: What’s the best ballpark you’ve been to?

I always had a few obvious candidates from my initial visits but I really wanted a way to break it down to a science. I wanted to rank them based on the factors most important to me.

As I thought more about these conversations, I tried to think of how I really analyzed and reviewed the ballparks and what that would mean in terms of rankings. I wanted to create a measurement simple enough to the average local fan whose night out at the ballpark consists of a hot dog and a beer. But I also wanted the rankings to appeal to the passionate fan prepared to spend a significant amount of money to travel out of town. Was the expense worth their time and money? So many factors play a role, from the mood of the home crowd to the condition of the ballpark to the price of a beer.

So I created a pneumonic device to keep it simple. I call it my 4A System. The four A’s are: Affordability, Amenities, Atmosphere and Aesthetics. It’s this system that’s formed the basis of our rankings.

In each chapter you’ll see each team rated from 1-10 on each of the four As. For our overall score, we took the average of those four As and made it the overall score. Each chapter starts with an introduction of the park followed by a brief explanation of each A, based on our experience.

AFFORDABILITY

Affordability is the unsexy part of rating your ballpark experience. No one particularly enjoys the draining process, both literal and figurative, of researching and then booking travel, hotel, transportation and even tickets. That can be very complicated and vary a lot from place to place. Therefore, we wanted to keep it simple.

There are some outstanding tools on the Internet for pricing hotels, airfare, etc. We won’t try to duplicate those efforts. Instead, we’ll give you the low down on affordability once you’re around the ballpark.

Another note about affordability is that it’s comparative. We don’t say what’s cheap or what’s not from an overall perspective. We’re comparing the affordability in Baltimore to New York and San Francisco.

There may be nothing more American than a hot dog at a baseball game. Maybe if it was to be played on July 4th. And its perhaps best paired with a cold beer, because, hey, it’s a beautiful summer night at the ballpark. These are the first two prices we tracked at every stadium. A regular hot dog and a domestic draft beer, average size.

In every chapter, we mention the Fan Cost Index® to help clarify the price of attending a game. The good people at Team Marketing Report have been producing the Fan Cost Index® every year since 1988, focusing especially on baseball and football.

According to their website, the index compiles prices for four average-priced general tickets, parking for one car and the least expensive, in-game pricing for two draft beers, four soft drinks, four hot dogs and two (adult-sized) team caps. The teams are then ranked by their overall dollar amount. We use the FCI as a point of reference, but not ultimately to determine our rankings.

For instance, we’ve factored into the affordability of say, Miami or Oakland that tickets are rarely sold out and are readily available at a far cheaper price on StubHub. We also paid attention to the specific price of certain items given the park in question; say the price of a bottle of water in 100-degree Arlington, Texas or the price of a Bud at Busch Stadium.

Baseball is of course the only sport in which the dimensions of the playing field can vary from park to park. That can mean based on where you’re sitting, your perspective could be drastically different from place to place. Sitting behind home plate no doubt gives you the best view of the entire park and anything else the area around the park may have to offer. Even sitting in the upper part of the park behind home plate can still feel like a lower level seat in many of the parks we visited.

Since this journey began in college, we’ve always chosen to not spend too much time in our seats since the park was a place to explore and learn and interact. Despite that, many of our memories from the park are from that initial look, the same one hopefully you still feel now like you did when you were a kid. To keep things as even as possible, we factored the price of an upper level seat behind home plate into our affordability score. The best seat workingmen like us could afford.

AMENITIES

When you begin to think about the amenities at and around a ballpark, food quickly comes to mind. Perhaps it’s the good vibes of being at the game but there’s always room for more at the stadium, whether it be food or drink, especially when the options are one of a kind. Coming into a ballpark with a game plan for how you want to chow down is important. We’ll show you which ballparks step up to the plate and which ones will leave you wanting. Our ranking system gives more weight to a stadium with diverse, quality food options. Local flavor and specialty dishes are important. What can you get at this park, that you