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A
new sports bar and concession stands, air-conditioned
children's play area and additional club seating with
spectacular views of the field are among new
fan-friendly features under construction at the Rangers
Ballpark in Arlington. The team provided local media a
first look at $12 million in improvements to the
city-owned stadium, which hasn't been significantly
renovated since it opened in 1994. To help give fans
relief from the elements, the Rangers are adding 23,000
square feet of indoor, air-conditioned space, which
includes a two-story restaurant and sports bar with
views of the field, a kid's zone to replace the outdoor
Vandergriff Plaza Sports Park and a 100-seat Batter's
Eye Club on top of Greene’s hill in centerfield.
After
his final shift is over in the NHL's version of Old
Timers' Day, former Flyers great Eric Lindros wants to
stick around and catch the Winter Classic. Can't blame
him. The outdoor extravaganza has blossomed into a
coveted score, with the price of admission rivaling a
Super Bowl seat or Final Four trip. Now can anyone find
some tickets for Lindros to watch the Jan. 2 game
between his former teams, the Philadelphia Flyers and
New York Rangers? "I've got a group of buddies and we're
all going to head down and enjoy the weekend," he said.
"We hope to get some tickets to the Classic game. It's a
hot ticket in town." There's not a hotter pair for any
marquee event in Philadelphia.
Baseball’s
two oldest and most iconic ballparks are on divergent
paths when it comes to recognizing their historic
status. After a decade of renovations, Boston’s Fenway
Park is hurtling toward federal landmark recognition —
and the tax credits that come with it. Meanwhile, in
Chicago, the Cubs contend that Wrigley Field’s local
landmark designation is a roadblock to upgrading the
stadium and increasing revenue. On Wednesday, the
Massachusetts Historical Commission unanimously voted to
approve Fenway’s application for a listing in the
National Register of Historic Places. That sends the
nomination to the National Parks Service for a final
decision that could come as soon as early 2012. Barring
an unexpected turn of events, Fenway should have no
trouble clearing the final hurdle. “We rarely overturn
anything supported locally,“ said Patrick Andrus, a
historian at the National Register.
The
When
it came to creating Snow Days, an event that transforms
Progressive Field into a winter playground, the goal for
the Indians from the start was to find a way to bring
people together in downtown Cleveland during baseball's
dormant period. This offseason, Snow Days is back --
with plenty of improvements -- for a second consecutive
year. Last winter's event was a kind of experiment. This
time around, the Indians believe they have added
elements that will make the unique experience even more
appealing. "The basic premise is still the same,"
Indians president Mark Shapiro said on Tuesday, during a
Snow Days media event at the stadium. "It's an
opportunity to get people into this ballpark, to keep it
active, to bring people to downtown Cleveland and keep
an association with the Indians and family
entertainment."
There's
no question the new Marlins ballpark will be a huge
improvement over playing baseball in a cavernous
football stadium. "This is a spectacular venue that
South Florida will be proud of, it will be a point of
destination for folks from Florida, other parts of the
country, and beyond, especially South America," said
Sean Flynn, the Marlins' spokesman. But it didn't just
rise from the ground, the ballpark was fertilized by
controversy. Almost from the day the Florida Marlins
started playing at what is now Sunlife Stadium, a
succession of team owners lobbied local governments in
Broward and Miami-Dade Counties for a real baseball-only
ballpark, often threatening to move the team out of
South Florida if they didn't get their way.
Royals
owner David Glass said on Monday that the team has no
agreement in place for naming rights to Kauffman
Stadium. The subject arose over the weekend in various
media reports, prompting the club to issue a statement
that while Royals officials are open to listening to
proposals, "at this time no deal has come to fruition."
Glass reiterated that point. "They don't have a
deal," Glass said. "There have been proposals made. The
Royals have not been out looking for a naming-rights
deal, but as proposals come in, obviously they have a
responsibility to look at them. And whether they'll wind
up with a deal or not remains to be seen, but there is
no deal right now." Although the majority of Major
League stadiums carry names of sponsoring companies or
products, the Kansas City park has been known only as
Royals Stadium and, since July 2, 1993, as Kauffman
Stadium, to honor team founder Ewing Kauffman. It's
become known as "The K."
The
Texas Rangers on Thursday unveiled plans for an $11.5
million ballpark renovation that includes a center-field
club, two-level sports bar and restaurant and new
children's play area. The renovations, which CEO Nolan
Ryan said in a release would be "the most extensive
renovation in the history of the park," should be
complete in time for the Rangers' home opener April 6
against the Chicago White Sox. The Rangers emphasized
the air-conditioned aspect of the improvements,
mentioning that several times during an afternoon news
conference at the ballpark. "Rather than have your kids
out in the 100-degree heat, you provide an environment
inside," Rick George, the Rangers' chief operating
officer, said. "Hopefully, this will bring more people
out to the ballpark."
The
offseason hasn't officially gotten underway, but we
already know one way the Mets are going to look
different next season. At least, the place that they
call home is going to look different: Discussion about
the difficulty of hitting home runs at Citi Field
started almost immediately after the ballpark opened in
2009, and the team is finally taking steps to make it a
bit more favorable to hitters. Adam Rubin of
ESPNNewYork.com
The
New York Mets, fourth-place finishers in the National
League East, won at least one title—for its corporate
stadium sponsor,
The
last thing Philadelphians expect to see upon entering
their beloved South Philly ballpark is a frozen pond
engulfed by a sea of orange and black. But that's
exactly what they'll get on Jan. 2, when the Flyers host
the New York Rangers in the 2012 Bridgestone NHL Winter
Classic at Citizens Bank Park. Beginning in the last
week of December, the home of the Phillies will be
transformed into a winter wonderland that can best be
described as a both a festival of hockey and a
celebration of all things Philly.
"Our special-events
people will do a great job of integrating all of
Philadelphia into what we represent here and what the
place looks like all dressed up for hockey," NHL
commissioner Gary Bettman said.
The
Detroit Economic Growth Corporation has rejected an
offer by Chevorlet to pay for rehabilitation of the
baseball field at site of old Tiger Stadium, which the
city has largely ignored as it attempts to lure would-be
developers. In an August 9 letter sent to Mayor Dave
Bing and DEGC President George Jackson, Chevy
promotional manager Phil Caruso explained how the auto
brand could help makeover the field for youth baseball
this year. But Jackson, in a subsequent letter sent to
Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy President Thom Linn, made
it abundantly clear the DEGC, which acts on behalf of
the city's Economic Development Corporation, was not
interested in the offer.
For
baseball fans, one of the first and most enjoyable
things about going to the ballpark is the initial sight
of a large swath of manicured green grass. Don't be
fooled. While it is only on display for a few hours
every night, maintaining the grass is a full-time job.
Just ask Rangers grounds director Dennis Klein or
assistant director of complex grounds Stephen Lord.
Their jobs have not been made any easier by the
summer-long heatwave in Texas. Klein estimates that the
surface of the field has reached 130 degrees in the
afternoon heat. "At those temperatures, nothing really
likes to grow," Klein said. "We can maintain with what
we have. With Bermuda grass, we can maintain."
Parts
of the sidewalk around Busch Stadium were blocked off
Monday after a 100-pound piece of metal trim fell from
the stadium, prompting an inspection of the rest of the
building's trim. Inspectors will check this morning to
see whether other pieces of the covering, used on all
sides of the stadium, need to be better secured, Busch
Stadium Director of Operations Mike Bertani said
Monday.The 2-foot-by-4-foot black metal plate fell from
the west side of the stadium, off South Eighth Street
near Spruce Street, and was discovered shortly after
noon by a landscaper, according to Ron Watermon, the
Cardinals' director of public relations and civic
affairs. The trim is about 80 feet off the ground,
bolted beneath exposed brick.
When
Bill Findley came aboard as the assistant head
groundskeeper at Busch Memorial Stadium in 1996, the old
ballpark was just switching over from artificial turf to
grass. During the artificial turf days, concerts and
large events at the stadium were a relative piece of
cake for the groundskeeping staff. For the U2 concert
that took place on sweltering Sunday evening, an event
that drew more than 50,000 to the current stadium, the
logistics have been enormous and exhausting. When all is
said and done, when the Cardinals return home to face
the Houston Astros on Monday, once again they will be
playing on a vibrant — and entirely new — natural grass
field. At least, that's the plan. This week's heat wave
will complicate it. "It's a dual situation, but what
Mother Nature is throwing at us is really unexpected,"
Findley said. "The sustained heat they have in the
forecast for the next 10 days is going to make our job
that much tougher."
SportsbyBrooks has
been told by multiple sources that MLB has reached out
to AEG to inquire about the feasibility of
As
architects and designers huddled over initial plans 15
years ago for what was then named Bank One Ballpark,
there was one hard-and-fast rule: The grass will be
greener on the inside. That meant real turf, the kind
that requires sunlight and water, making BOB the first
domed stadium with an organic surface. Thousands of
out-of-town visitors who are seeing Chase Field for the
first time as they enjoy the All-Star
For
the first 10 years of their existence, the Tampa Bay
(Devil) Rays provided the standard laugh track for big
league baseball. Teams that had mismanaged their clubs
or complained about the public refusing to build them a
ballpark could always point to Tampa Bay and feel
better. Since the club's first winning season in 2008,
however, the Rays have won a pennant and two American
League East titles, have drafted tremendously, and,
after stockpiling 10 first-round picks at this month's
amateur draft, are being applauded for their fiscal
responsibility and talent evaluation in a division in
which the two dominant franchises, Boston and New York,
share great advantages over every other team in
baseball. Three thousand miles away, the A's have
captured six pennants since arriving in Oakland in 1968,
second only to the Yankees in that time frame.
With
a little more than 9 1/2 months of construction
remaining, the new Marlins ballpark is 72 percent
complete, on schedule and on budget. "Every day really
counts at this point," said Claude Delorme, executive
vice president of ballpark development. "We've really
pushed. A lot of the things are out of sequence, but in
a positive light for us." The target date for finishing
the project remains March 2012, but Delorme is hopeful
that they can finish by late February in time to host
soft events before Opening Day. At the moment, the focus
remains on finishing the retractable roof by the end of
June and to then place the white membrane on top of the
roof by September before the end of hurricane season.
"If we can address that, once we've got the exterior
protected, we're in good shape and really zoom in on
anything in the inside," Delorme said.
Snowflakes
falling, the smell of crab fries sizzling in Old Bay and
the sound of hockey pucks bouncing off the glass just a
few feet from where Ryan Howard launches balls that make
the Liberty Bell gyrate. Those are just a few of things
you can look forward to this winter at Citizens Bank
Park. While a league source has confirmed that no
contract has been signed, the Flyers will be hosting the
NHL's annual outdoor game this winter at Citizens Bank
Park, as first reported by the Daily News last
month. The likely opponent is the New York Rangers,
though TSN's Darren Dreger reported yesterday that
top-level sources inside the Rangers organization have
no knowledge of the team's participation. It will be the
second time in the last 3 years that the Flyers will be
involved in the league's most highly anticipated
regular-season game, though it has only been in
existence since 2008. 
Home
to the Babe, the Splendid Splinter, Yaz and Big Papi,
venerable and much-exalted
Ballparks
are not static edifices where once built, they just soak
up any tradition they build up and operate unchanged
decade after decade. Both Wrigley Field and old Comiskey
Park evolved within the first 15 years of existence.
They added upper decks. Eventually Wrigley Field’s
bleachers were re-done – twice. Old Yankee Stadium
underwent a facelift in the mid-1970s, pushing the Bronx
Bombers to a temporary home to Shea Stadium. And so why
would U.S. Cellular Field be any different? The only
catch is the changes were instituted relatively quickly
in the ballpark’s life to change criticism into praise.
The
Boston Red Sox showed off new improvements to America's
most beloved ballpark Wednesday that included a 100-feet
wide high-def video screen and new menu options. The
team welcomed Mayor Tom Menino and city officials to the
park to review the "Year X Improvements," two days
before the team's home opener against the New York
Yankees. Three state-of-the-art high-definition video
display and scoring systems are among this year's
upgrades at the storied venue. They mark the completion
of a 10-year, $285 million improvement plan that ensures
the park remains the home of the Sox for decades to
come, the team said.
On
the unseasonably warm afternoon of April 9, 2001, after
the balloons and doves and a long, teary ovation for a
departed Pirates legend, Cincinnati’s Sean Casey came up
with one on and two out in the top of the first inning,
took ball one and then golfed Todd Ritchie’s low, inside
fastball into the right-center field seats. PNC Park's
christening was official. The first hit and the first
home run in the first game in the Pirates' new place was
struck by a lifelong Pirates fan from Upper St. Clair
who often sat with his dad or his buddies in the old
place, Three Rivers Stadium.
It's
been the host of an All-Star Game that ended in a tie, a
no-hitter by a Chicago Cubs pitcher against the Houston
Astros, a three-game series between the Cleveland
Indians and the Los Angeles Angels and two Milwaukee
Brewers playoff games. Throw in a few concerts,
including last fall's Farm Aid, a retractable roof that
took millions of dollars to fix, a flood that left more
than three feet of water in the service level and let's
not forget Randall Simon, Pittsburgh's sausage
assailant, and you've got a fair amount of history great
and small at Miller Park. Miller Park is 10 years old.
The
The
Angels can opt out of their stadium lease in 2016, and
there has been concern in Anaheim that team owner
Arte Moreno,
who beat the city in a yearlong legal battle over the
team's name change in 2005-06, will opt out then and
build a stadium elsewhere. Moreno said Sunday that he
has not begun to explore the possibility of building a
stadium, and that such a process would have to start at
least four years before a planned opening date. But the
owner did say the Angels must address a number of issues
with the 45-year-old stadium, the fourth-oldest in the
major leagues behind Chicago's Wrigley Field, Boston's
Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium, to keep the facility up
to date and safe.
Marlins
owner Jeffrey Loria may not be an expert craftsman, but he
and team president David Samson could not hold back their
excitement as the club's new ballpark inched closer to
completion. On Tuesday afternoon, the Marlins' two top
officials grabbed their tools and made section 19, row H,
seat 12 the first seat installed at the club's new stadium,
which is slated to open for the 2012 season. Thanks to a fan
suggestion, the historic seat will be easily found by anyone
who visits the ballpark. "I got an e-mail from a
season-ticket holder that he read an article on MLB.com that
we were doing the seat installations," Samson said. "He
said, 'I have an idea. You have all blue seats. Why not
install a seat of a different color so that everyone will
know that it was the first seat installed?' I immediately
called Jeffrey and said, 'We need to do this,' and he
agreed. Then I found out we could order one red seat, and
that's what we did." 
According
to a source familiar with the situation, the Red Sox
have withdrawn their request to the office of the
Massachusetts Secretary of State to undergo construction
that would bring in the right field fence at Fenway Park
as much as nine feet. The move, which would have
expanded the width of the Fenway bullpens fro 21 to 27
feet, had to approved by the Boston Landmarks Commission
and the Massachusetts Historical Society. The proposal
was met with some resistance from the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
It
won't be as big as Jerry's, but the
There's
always the risk of a big letdown when a game is billed as a
classic before it's even played. But the Wrigleyville Classic
football game between Northwestern and Illinois, like the Winter
Classic hockey game pitting the Blackhawks and Red Wings,
actually lived up to the hype. It wasn't that the game
themselves were all that memorable. Both were high-scoring
affairs with plenty of big plays, but neither came down to the
final minutes with the outcome in doubt.
The
clincher for AT&T Park isn't the atmospheric architecture or the
bayside setting or the smartly subtle urban design. It's the
magnetic sum of the parts, combining to reshape the larger
cultural map. The obvious examples last Wednesday and Thursday
were the orange streams toward Third and King streets, from BART
and the Financial District. They moved through an energized
terrain, past surreptitious signals of their destination: I saw
scalpers operating on Second Street almost to Mission, and
T-shirt vendors thriving in the shadows of the freeway overpass
(Cy Young winner as stoner deity, how San Francisco is that?)The
ballpark itself was a seamless fit. 
During
Game 3 of the Phillies-Marlins series that concluded Wednesday
night, the press-box announcer's microphone sputtered. The only
clearly audible words that emerged were "seven-thirty." Perhaps
only here, in the sporting morgue that is Marlins baseball at
Sun Life Stadium, could listeners not be certain whether he was
citing the game's starting time or its attendance. The funereal
baseball atmosphere in South Florida can be odd and off-putting
at any time. But it seems downright eerie when, as was the case
this week, the tension of a mid-September pennant race is
combined with the ennui that is the norm in this emotional
vacuum.
The
Oakland Athletics haven't received permission to move anywhere,
but that hasn't stopped the team's owner from hiring an
architect for a new ballpark in San Jose.A's owner Lew Wolff
said Tuesday he has hired 360 Architecture, based in Kansas
City, to design a stadium for the Athletics in downtown San
Jose. The firm will also design a separate stadium near the San
Jose airport for the Earthquakes soccer team, also owned by
Wolff.
Baseball
Commissioner Bud Selig, here Thursday to preside over a meeting
the major league owners, took time to sing the praises of Jim,
Bill and Bob Pohlad for the great job they did in building
Target Field, one of the best ballparks in the game. "You've got
to give the Pohlads an enormous amount of credit," Selig said.
"They are truly one of baseball's great ownerships over the last
couple of decades. I don't think people quite understand because
they're quiet, they're unassuming, but they are one great
ownership, no question about it."
The
push is on once again to secure a Major League Baseball All-Star
Game in South Florida. Since local officials approved funding on
a new ballpark for the Marlins in 2009, there has been talk of
the area securing the '15 All-Star Game. Marlins president David
Samson said the organization is close to submitting its
application for the Midsummer Classic in 2015. For a while, the
team has discussed the possibility with MLB Commissioner Bud
Selig. "Every conversation that we've had with Mr. Selig has
been with an eye toward an All-Star Game, because it was taken
away, many years ago," Samson said. "With this new ballpark, '15
is the natural year. It's a National League year." 
