I've seen bogus "studies" this week about cities most overdue for hurricanes (Tampa was #3) and the most dangerous zip codes in the country (Downtown St. Pete was #8). But the sports world had it's own - baseball's best ballparks, judged by fan ratings on review site Yelp.com.
As someone who has been to two-thirds of these parks, I can tell you there are plenty of slights (Wrigley Field 10th? Nationals Park 26th?). There are also head-scratchers, like how the White Sox' U.S. Cellular Field ranked higher than the Diamondbacks' Chase Field.
The Rays ranked 28th, by the way.
Article author Nate Silver, formerly of 538.com, concluded some of the surprises could be explained by fans' perceptions of their team's performance, rather than the stadium.
He also concluded that it's not worth building a retractable roof since the five stadiums with the expensive technology averaged a 3.86 rating, compared to 4.10 without them.
Silver didn't make any conclusions with regards to attendance, however. Maybe it was because the most-popular park belonged to the Pirates (26th in attendance) and other popular parks belonged to the Orioles (22nd), Royals (25th), and Indians (27th).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think it's really tough to build a good-looking baseball stadium with a roof on it. It just winds up looking like too much "structure". In contrast to other sports, baseball stadiums are better when they appear to be smaller and more intimate. PNC Park (Pirates), as you noted, is consistently ranked amongst the best. It was relatively cheap, only has two decks, and has sometimes been referred to as a very nice AAA park as opposed to be a Major League stadium, and yet that's exactly what works so well about it. If and when we do build something here, I hope that it's more along those lines.
ReplyDelete