Growing up, baseball surrounded and inhabited much of our lives. In 2007, my brother and dad and I did a barnstorming tour of the Midwest, seeing four games in four baseball stadiums in four days. It was just days before my dad’s 69th birthday, and is a great memory for all of us.
We visited Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. If you click on those links from my blog back then, you’ll see how enamored I was with my first camera flip phone. It is so crazy how much technology has changed! (see more at the end)
On day 1 of this 2023 tour, I finally visited the famed Camden Yards in Baltimore, and it did not disappoint. In baseball’s golden era in the first part of the 20th century, ballparks were built uniquely, squeezing themselves into city landscapes. But in the 1960’s and 1970’s, sterile multi-purpose stadiums with football and baseball combined ruled the day, taking out the idiosyncratic charm.
Then came Camden Yards, built in 1992.
Built into the heart of Baltimore, they bought an old, abandoned warehouse building. Rather than raze it to the ground for parking, they left it and built the park around it. The street in front was vacated, and now holds restaurants and shops and a terrace, all great gathering spaces overlooking right field.
Everywhere you walk, you feel close to the field. There are places to gather, and the field itself is asymmetrical like the old golden age ballparks: right field is only 318 feet away, left field 384, and even a funky nook in left center that goes out to 398, back to 376, before pushing back out to 410 in dead center.
The Orioles lost 8-1, but got a homer from Adley Rutschman (Sherwood High School grad and family friend of my friends the McKees.) A great night, an even better experience, and probably my favorite ballpark I’ve ever been to.
Now, let’s see what 16 years of technological innovation has done:
Ha! clicked through – read – enjoyed and posted a comment! Whose an old fogey?
Awesome trip, Gregg! My best friend Adam and I have a dream of visiting all MLB parks. My favorite so far is San Diego, which has a history not unlike Baltimore’s.
I’ve been to Camden a couple of to times. It’s a great park, and even better it kicked off a wave of great parks. Even Safeco…I mean TMobile owes something to Camden Yard. The only critique is that to they didn’t angle the seat way down the RF line. To see home plate from out to there there you have to either lean forward, or crane your next and hope no one to your left leans forward.
I hope you are planning to go back to Pittsburgh on this trip. Their “new” ballpark (replacing Three Rivers which might have still been there when you were there last) is higher on my list than Camden (as is Petco in San Diego).