Old Yankee Stadium, site of the Pine Tar Home Run

Recently at Kauffman Stadium the Kansas City Royals hosted “Pine Tar Night” as a promotion for one of their games. It’s safe to say that at least half the stadium probably wasn’t even alive for the Pine Tar Home Run or at least weren’t old enough to remember it when it happened. Occurring against the New York Yankees, it is probably one of the most legendary episodes in Kansas City sports history.

After four dramatic AL pennant showdowns in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Royals and Yankees were deep into a heated rivalry. On June 24th, 1983 they met in Yankee Stadium for a regular season game. Down 4-3 with two outs in the top of the ninth inning, Royals third baseman and future Hall of Famer George Brett hit a two-run homer to seemingly take a 5-4 lead. After rounding the bases he went into the dugout. Unfortunately Billy Martin, the Yankees manager, had picked up Brett’s bat and was showing it to the umpires.

George Brett was unusual among modern ballplayers in that he did not wear batting gloves at the plate. Brett, like many players before him, used a dark sticky resin called pine tar on the handle of his bat to give him better grip. A baseball fired from the pitcher’s mound to home plate at over 90 mph can be very hard to see; as such it became illegal in the early 20th century to do anything to darken, scuff, or otherwise change the appearance of the baseball. In addition, foreign substances can make the ball behave erratically, and these are also illegal. Any ball that has been marked or damaged is required to be replaced, which can be expensive. To avoid accidental contamination, an ancient rule was that pine tar on a bat was not allowed to exceed 17 inches from the bottom, which incidentally is the width of home plate. The rule states that any bat with pine tar exceeding this limit “is to be removed from the game”.

Earlier in the season, wily Yankees manager Billy Martin had noticed Brett’s pine tar far exceeded 17 inches, but had decided not to say anything until Brett had caused the Yankees some damage. The two-run homer that gave Kansas City a 5-4 lead in the top of the ninth was the perfect opportunity and he sprang into action, grabbing the bat and showing it to the umpires.

For several minutes Brett and the rest of the Royals watched curiously as the umpires inspected the bat and then measured it against home plate. Finally they motioned to Brett in the dugout and indicated he was out, ending the game with a 4-3 Yankees victory.

In a sudden, fantastic rage that would immediately become iconic, Brett tore out of the dugout after the umpires, seemingly intent on tearing them limb from limb. He was just barely restrained in time, his own teammates and manager trying to contain his temper tantrum-fueled state while simultaneously screaming at the umpires themselves. Brett would later say he couldn’t remember the actual tantrum, consistent with a person who has temporarily lost their mind.

In the near-brawl that followed, crafty Royals pitcher Gaylord Perry slipped the bat to the Royals batboy and sent him into the clubhouse to remove the evidence. Yankees manager Billy Martin saw him and sent Yankees security after him. As one of the TV commentators later remarked, “Brett has become the first player in Major League history to hit a game-losing home run.”

The Pine Tar home run has since often been held up as an example of the conflict between adhering fanatically to the letter of the law (and an ancient, outdated one at that) and the spirit of the game. In Brett’s case, his extra pine tar did not help him achieve an illegal advantage at the plate.

I will go one further and touch on a more complicated nuance that is rarely brought up when the Pine Tar controversy is discussed. The specific rule concerning pine tar simply states that if the bat has too much pine tar, “it is to be removed from the game”. Nothing is mentioned about a player being out. Therefore, even if one is inclined to a strict interpretation of the rule, the next course of action would seem to be to simply remove the bat from the game. The home run would still count, the Royals would have a 5-4 lead in the top of the ninth, and if Brett came up to the plate again, he would have to use a different bat.

However, the umpires defined the home run as an illegally batted ball, which is an explicit out, resulting in their ruling and the subsequent tirade by Brett.

After the game the Royals immediately filed an appeal with the American League. AL President Lee MacPhail overruled the umpires under the premise that Brett’s use of pine tar was not an attempt to obtain an unfair advantage, nor against the spirit of the rules. The game would be resumed when possible with two outs at the top of the ninth, 5-4 Royals. Brett, Perry, and Royals manager Dick Howser were all officially ejected for their role in the subsequent outburst.

The game was eventually resumed on August 18th, but not before Yankees lawsuits, an injunction to delay the game by a New York Supreme Court justice, and a subsequent overturning by a second New York Supreme Court justice.

Only 1,200 showed up for the final outs to be played in front of a different set of umpires than the original game. Yankees manager Billy Martin protested every possible way he could think of to show what a farce he considered the ruling. He started left-hander Don Mattingly at second base, a cardinal sin in baseball. This remains the last time in Major League history a left-hander has played second. More importantly, Martin began the action by having the Yankees throw to first, claiming Brett hadn’t touched the base and the home run was invalid. The nonexistent Brett was ruled safe. The ball was then thrown to second, with the same results. Martin stormed out onto the field to protest, but the umpires were ready, with a signed affidavit from the original crew that all bases had been touched.

Martin’s attempts to wreck the game exhausted, he stormed into the clubhouse and watched TV. The Royals eventually won the game 5-4, the Pine Tar incident passed forever into baseball lore, and Brett and his infamous bat would eventually make their way to Cooperstown.

Picture Credit: Fotopedia

The official Olympic Games logo, symbolizing the harmonious intermeshing of human cultures from around the world

Ah, Leap Years. So many rare, exciting things happening in the same twelve months. A 29th day in February. US Presidential elections. And the Summer Olympics! Guess what? It’s 2012, and in just a few months the XXX Olympiad will officially kick off in London. What do the Olympics mean to people around the world? It’s a celebration of international peace and cooperation, harmony and goodwill, glorious pageantry and a rare view into the beauty of the human spirit and form at their most highly developed levels.

Eh, okay. I can buy that. But if you’re going to get very culturally disparate humans together from every corner of the globe, no matter what the high-minded motivation, we’re also going to take our shadier baggage with us. Of course I could write about all the great and wonderful things the Olympics bring us, but that just wouldn’t be as much fun. What’s the Olympian subject of this blog post? Why, controversy of course!

Being the professional realist that I am, I have scientifically concluded that Olympic controversy can be broken down into three broad categories in order of ascending severity: competitive, municipal, and national/ideological. I will attempt to briefly address a single example of an historical high(low?)light in each subject.

First, the competitive. This is the stuff that has to do more with individual people. The athletes and officials that arrive at each Olympics represent their respective countries and are the best in the world. They have trained their entire lives for this moment. Motivation, tensions, and emotions are at a fever pitch.

The former 1972 Basketballhalle, site of the United States’ national basketball team’s most controversial loss

In 1972 the American basketball team was still all-time undefeated in Olympic play. In the final game they took a 50-49 lead against the Soviets with three seconds to play. The referees then stopped the game with one second left and added three more seconds because the Soviets had been complaining they had signaled for a time-out at the three second mark that wasn’t awarded. The Soviets then inbounded the ball a second time and the horn signaled the apparent end of the game with an American gold medal victory. The Americans celebrated a second time, but both teams were then ordered back on the court again, the referees now saying the clock had not been properly reset. Play resumed a third time with the Soviets this time throwing the ball the length of the court for a game-winning lay-up at the buzzer. This time the referees said it was final. The shocked Americans refused to accept the silver medal. An American appeal was lost 3-to-2, with all three judges voting for the Soviets members of Communist countries. To this day the American basketball team refuses to accept the silver medal; they sit in a vault in Lusanne, Switzerland. American team captain Kenny Davis has it written into his will that his wife and children are not allowed to accept the silver medal either.

The second category of Olympic controversy is municipal. By this I am referring to the city government and infrastructure that hosts the Games. The prestige that goes with hosting the Olympics is enormous; the entire world is focused on your city for nearly a month. Politics and money clearly play a central role in landing and producing the Games. Corruption and Pollyannish financial predictions are common.

An interior view of Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and its problem-plagued roof

In 1970 Montreal was named the site of the 1976 Summer Olympics, allegedly in part because it was not a superpower during this highly-charged period. Excitement to host Canada’s first ever Olympiad was intense; Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau predicted “The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby.” But the Olympics ended up being an utter financial disaster; before they began the province of Quebec had to step in to help Montreal fund it; the tower that was supposed to manipulate the retractable roof on the Olympic Stadium could not be completed in time, and ultimately Montreal would be mired in debt for the next thirty years. The Olympic Stadium was not paid off until 2006; by then it was hopelessly out of date and the final insult had come a year earlier when the Montreal Expos Major League baseball team had relocated to Washington, DC, leaving the aging stadium empty. The whole intractable mess was summed up in a tasteless political cartoon showing an obviously pregnant Drapeau on the phone inquiring about a particular medical procedure.

The third Olympic controversy category, and my personal favorite to read about or discuss, is the national/ideological kind. In theory the Olympics are supposed to be about the humanity of the individual athletes; the International Olympic Committee itself doesn’t even officially keep score of national medals. In actuality the Olympics do become about the nations themselves — who follows the Olympics without keeping track of their country’s victories? More importantly, the Olympics become a world stage for the expression of nationalism and ideology.

No Olympiad is more associated with nationalism and ideology than the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics–the “Nazi” Olympics. Berlin was voted on as the Olympic site in 1931; two years later the Nazis came to power and in typical Nazi style seized the opportunity as a showcase for Nazi German pageantry and propaganda.

The 1936 Olympic Stadium in Berlin

Among other things, the Nazis rounded up thousands of homeless Gypsies and put them in camps, but also temporarily took down the now-ubiquitous anti-Semitic signs. The German national team was composed almost entirely of Nazi-approved “Aryan” athletes. That most famous of Olympic traditions, the running and lighting of the torch, was a Nazi innovation of 1936.

In simple terms the 1936 Olympics may best be understood by a juxtaposition of Nazi Germany and the United States. The United States seriously considered boycotting the Berlin Olympics in protest of Nazi dogma. American Jewish groups were generally against participation, while African-American groups tended to support participation as a means of undermining Nazi claims of racial superiority. The United States would ultimately compete, but the city council of Los Angeles refused to spend $2,000 of taxpayer money to ship the 1932 Olympic flag to the Nazis.

1936 Olympics long jump medal ceremony — Jesse Owens is in the center, Luz Long to the right giving the Nazi salute

No discussion of the 1936 Olympics would be complete without mention of African-American sprinter Jesse Owens’ track and field domination. He won four gold medals, including a four-man relay that included two Jewish-Americans and a second African-American. One of his gold medals came in the long jump. It was here that Luz Long, a visibly textbook “Aryan” German, struck up an impromptu friendship with Owens and gave him technical advice that Owens later credited with helping him win the gold. Long won the silver, was the first to congratulate Owens, and they walked arm-in-arm to the dressing room in front of the Nazi audience. In 1943 Long, a German soldier, would die of wounds suffered in combat in Italy. Hitler infamously refused to attend the medal presentations for the rest of the Olympics. Ultimately in 1936 the Germans would win the most medals and the United States would come in second.

So as July, 2012 rolls around, I will be eagerly awaiting the London Olympic Games like much of the rest of the developed world. I will enjoy the international flavor, the pageantry, the competition, even the architecture. But I will be waiting to see what kind of yet-unimaginable controversy, mild or severe, genuine or manufactured, flares up. It always does.

Further Reading:

The Olympics, a history of the modern games

The Olympics at the millennium : power, politics, and the games

The Olympics’ most wanted : the top 10 book of gold medal gaffes, improbable triumphs, and other oddities

Photo Credits:

http://www.texample.net/media/tikz/examples/PNG/the-olympic-rings.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle.jpg

http://www.fotopedia.com/items/7k3jkt6f5ca4b-G50tg4ZsITE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iltempoperduto/2822202739/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-G00630,_Sommerolympiade,_Siegerehrung_Weitsprung.jpg

Moraine Lake in Banff National Park

I enjoy the scenery and outdoor activities available in the mountains. One mountain range I’ve never been to and plan on eventually visiting is the Canadian Rockies. It would be easy to assume that what merely makes the Canadian Rockies “Canadian” is that they’re north of the border. But there are also a number of other factors that make the Canadian Rockies distinctive from their American cousins to the south.

Lake Louise and Victoria Glacier in Banff National Park

The Canadian Rockies are much closer to the Pacific Ocean, which makes them much wetter than the American Rockies in Colorado and Wyoming. Combined with their more northerly location, they have been historically much more heavily glaciated than the American Rockies and still are today. In addition, the Canadian Rockies are made of more easily eroded sedimentary rock instead of the harder metamorphic rock in the United States.

The heavier glaciation and softer rock makes the Canadian Rockies much more easily carved by ice than the American Rockies and gives them their distinctively vertical shape, with expansive U-shaped valleys in between the mountains compared to the V-shaped valleys more common in the United States.

Whereas glaciers are small and rare in the American Rockies, they are large and extensive on the Canadian side, expanding at times into large “icefields” that stretch across many mountains and are many square miles in size. Many lakes at the edge of glaciers typically contain “glacial flour”. This is a milky white sediment fine enough to remain suspended in the lake and lend a distinctive opaque turquoise color easily recognizable to the Canadian Rockies. Finally, the increased moisture results in especially thick, green foliage and often misty, cloudy days when compared to the drier, sunnier American Rockies to the south.

Peyto Lake in Banff National Park

Seven contiguous parks make up the Canadian Rocky Mountains UNESCO World Heritage Site. They are the four National Parks Banff, Jasper, Yoho, and Kootenay, and the three British Columbia Provincial Parks Mount Assiniboine, Mount Robson, and Hamber. In addition to the spectacular scenery, Jasper National Park also contains the Burgess Shale, one of the largest and most important fossil beds in the world and invaluable to modern science’s understanding of biological history on Earth.

To the south is the fifth and last National Park in the Canadian Rockies, Waterton Lakes, which borders Glacier National Park to the south in the United States.

Morant's Curve on the Bow River

In 1932 the two parks were combined into the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and in 1995 it too was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Connecting Lake Louise, Alberta in Banff National Park to Jasper, Alberta in Jasper National Park is the 140-mile long Icefields Parkway, completed in 1940. It is intended specifically for sightseeing and commercial vehicles such as semi-trucks are prohibited. The Icefields Parkway accesses the Columbia Icefield and has frequently been called the most beautiful drive in the world.

Like many of their famous American cousins across the border, the Canadian Rockies National Parks were created primarily by the railroad industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in order to produce a market for tourism. In this case establishment of the parks was the result of the Canadian Pacific railroad, which is still synonymous with the area and built many of the magnificent hotels that dot the region.

Banff Springs Hotel

Information about the Canadian Rockies can be found in various Canada-themed books at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. A few of the TSCPL books that inspired this article are Florian Schulz’ Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam, Marion Harrison and Peter Thompson’s Explore Canada: The Adventurer’s Guide, and Reader’s Digest’s Through the Great Canadian Wilderness.

Ahearn Fieldhouse was the site of numerous NCAA Tournament games from 1953 to 1969

We’re nearly halfway through March, which means March Madness is upon us. The annual Division I NCAA Tournament is rivaled only by the Superbowl for transcending sports (and sports fans) and becoming an American cultural event relevant to even usual non-fans.

Certainly every sports fan has their favorite moments, opinions, or memories of what the NCAA Tournament means to them. One of my favorite aspects is the truly national nature of it, unique in American sports. Each year the Tournament is contested in over a dozen sites around the country.

Many local college basketball fans might not be aware but since 1953 the state of Kansas has hosted the NCAA Tournament twenty-five times. In fact, in the 29 Tournaments from 1953 to 1981 the Sunflower State hosted the NCAAs 22 years, twice at two sites simultaneously and even had a run of fourteen Tournaments in a row from 1958 to 1971. As one would expect, the local schools have piled up a considerable amount of NCAA Tournament success instate.

Then as now, newer larger arenas tended to get awarded Tournament games. It all began in 1953 with Kansas State’s Ahearn Fieldhouse. Ahearn was just two years old and with a capacity over 12,000 was one of the larger arenas in the country. That year the B.H. Born-led Kansas Jayhawks began the tradition of Sunflower State NCAA Tournament games appropriately, winning the 1953 Midwest Regional in Manhattan before eventually losing 69-68 to Indiana in the NCAA Finals.  

Wichita’s Leavitt Arena and the University of Kansas’ brand-new Allen Fieldhouse hosted their first NCAA Tournament games in 1956. Kansas State had a bye and played Oklahoma City in Allen Fieldhouse but lost 97-93. In 1958 however, Kansas State won all its NCAA Tournament games in Allen Fieldhouse and claimed a trip to the Final Four before losing to Seattle. This puts the rival schools in the interesting historical position of having advanced to the Final Four from each other’s home court.

Kansas State upped the ante in 1964, beating Wichita State on the Shockers’ home floor of Leavitt Arena to advance to the 1964 Final Four, K-State’s last to date. This is the only time Kansas teams have played each other in the NCAA Tournament in the state of Kansas. The following year, Wichita State returned the favor a bit by winning the Midwest Regional in Manhattan (against Oklahoma State, not the Wildcats) and were awarded a spot in the 1965 Final Four, the program’s only appearance. Like K-State the previous season, they lost in the semifinals to a burgeoning UCLA program.

There are a few other particular years to note. In the 1960 Midwest Regional finals Cincinnati’s Oscar Robertson-led squad ended Kansas’ run with an 82-71 win in Manhattan. Eleven years later the Jayhawks won the 1971 Midwest Regional in Wichita and became the last state team of the era to get mowed down in the national semifinals by the UCLA buzzsaw.

With their respective facilities growing older, Kansas State last hosted an NCAA Tournament game in 1969, and Kansas last hosted the NCAA Tournament in 1979. Wichita’s Kansas Coliseum was a 1994 first round site, and that has been the last time an NCAA Tournament game has been played in the Sunflower State.

• 1953 (Manhattan)
• 1955 (Manhattan)
• 1956 (Wichita, Lawrence)
• 1958 (Lawrence)
• 1959 (Lawrence)
• 1960 (Manhattan)
• 1961 (Lawrence)
• 1962 (Manhattan)
• 1963 (Lawrence)
• 1964 (Wichita)
• 1965 (Manhattan)
• 1966 (Wichita)
• 1967 (Lawrence)
• 1968 (Wichita)
• 1969 (Manhattan)
• 1970 (Lawrence)
• 1971 (Wichita)
• 1973 (Wichita)
• 1976 (Lawrence)
• 1978 (Wichita, Lawrence)
• 1979 (Lawrence)
• 1981 (Wichita)
• 1994 (Wichita)

Sailing is a fun way to enjoy the outdoors in the summer months

With increasingly pleasant weather just a few months away, it’s time to start thinking about summer activities. It’s hard to consider warm sunshine and bright blue skies without thinking about all the great lakes we have in Kansas. There are certainly quite a few water sports available to us during the summer; one of my favorites is sailing. I am certainly not what one would consider experienced; in fact I’ve only been a few times, but it’s enough to whet my appetite for more.

There are so many diverse and appealing qualities to sailing it is impossible to list them all. I enjoy the sensation of gliding along at speed in complete silence, unreliant on any form of power that must be paid for and can run out. Historically sailing is one of the world’s most ancient and universal endeavors–evidence exists that humans have been sailing since at least 4000 BC–and I think it’s exciting to be a part of that human tradition. Together these qualities produce a romantic appeal that is difficult for other activities to match.

Sailing can be enjoyed and practiced in a diverse range of ways. A single novice can sail an inexpensive dinghy in a small Kansas lake for casual enjoyment, or a crew of highly experienced sailors can man a large expensive ship in a competitive race at sea. For many sailors, finding other crews to sail with is a way of meeting new people with the same interests. I have found that experienced sailors are typically enthusiastic about teaching novices such as myself how to appreciate sailing as much as they do.

It is not necessary to be an engineering or technical expert to enjoy sailing, but one should have at least a basic idea how the physics work. A sail is an airfoil and works the same way as an airplane wing or propellor. When a sail begins to fill with wind it will cause one side of the sail to curve out while the other side curves in. The difference in apparent length between the two sides causes the air to travel faster on the convex side. The resulting pressure imbalance produces force in accordance with Bernoulli’s principle.The addition of a rudder allows the boat to be steered, and a fin jutting out from the bottom, called a centerboard, keeps the boat from scooting sideways or toppling over. The combination of all three elements working in harmony–the angle of the sail filled with wind, the angle of the rudder, and the stabilizing centerboard–is what produces the ability to steer and send the boat in the right direction. An experienced sailor will be more skilled at balancing these elements and heading in the direction he or she desires while efficiently harnessing the windpower available to produce speed.

As a physical pursuit sailing can be relaxing or athletically demanding, depending on what one is after. Performing in a race, or at high speeds, or high seas can demand a huge amount of agility and physical strength to keep the vessel under control. In addition the psychological stresses involved and the teamwork required by a crew to keep from being overwhelmed and swamped in severe conditions are considerable.

Sailboat racing is a regulated sport and is governed by the International Sailing Federation, not unlike FIBA for basketball or FIFA for soccer. Like those sports, sailboat racing is an Olympic event. Some of the more famous events include the America’s Cup, which is between just two yachts, the defending champion and a designated challenger, and the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, which often features over one hundred competitors.

The large lakes, clear summer weather, and frequent strong winds in Kansas provide for great sailboating.  Most of these lakes have at least one sailing club and most typically offer classes during the spring for those who are interested. Here at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library we have a considerable selection of materials for both beginning and advanced sailors. Dinghy Sailing by Sarah Ell is a good book for beginners, while more advanced sailors can always brush up on their skills and knowledge by consulting Charles F. Chapman’s authoritative Piloting, Seamanship, & Small Boat Handling.  

Kauffman (Royals) Stadium Opening Day 2009

As a sports fan growing up in Kansas, I went to plenty of Kansas City Royals games as a kid. I’m just old enough to remember Royals greats like George Brett, Bret Saberhagen, Frank White, and so on. (I don’t remember Amos Otis or Freddie Patek, sorry.) I remember actually expecting the Royals to contend every year, and could recite most of the Royals’ 1985 starting lineup and the entire pitching rotation at the age of four, which I’m pretty sure is before I could actually read. But the one thing I remember most about being a Royals fan, the one thing that got me most excited then and now, was the experience of actually going to Royals Stadium. The entire experience was pure magic — not just the team and game itself, but the sensory perceptions. The open expanse of green grass–uh, I mean Astroturf, the huge, sweeping architecture, the towering yellow and orange dot-matrix scoreboard with the gold carnival-lit crown, the thundering stadium announcer with his distinctive voice, the hot summer days and warm summer nights, the cold chocolate malt melting in my mouth on that strangely flat double-ended wooden spoon, the occasional whiff of a funny stink I found out later in life was called beer, and most importantly to a seven-year old, the really cool fountains that actually lit up different colors at night. Neat!

As major American sports go, baseball has a number of distinctive features, which is part of the reason the sport is so colorful. The list is long, but for me one of the aspects that makes baseball special is the significance of the ballparks in which it is played. Baseball is unique in that the size and shape of the playing surface are not entirely fixed and intrinsically affect the outcome of the contest. In the early twentieth century Major League ballparks were crammed into whatever inner city real estate the ball club could gets its hands on and this resulted in every park being unique and distinct to that city. There were a lot of funny little angles and dimensions as a result of necessity. Most parks lasted for decades and while a young baseball fan back in the day may never have gotten to see the World Championship teams his die-hard Red Sox or Senators father or grandfather always talked about, he did get to experience where they took place — old parks like Fenway or Griffith Stadium. There was and always has been a connection there between generations of fans that is tangible.

Yankee Stadium (1923-2008)

There is no way to list every great classic ballpark that is no more, but if I could somehow visit any of them I would choose the parks with loaded tradition and freakish dimensions, places like the Polo Grounds (257 feet to the right field line, 455 feet to center) and Ruth’s 1920s Yankee Stadium (right field “porch” 295, deep center 520).

Many of these old quirky parks started to get retired in the late 1950s and on into the early 1970s. In fine modernist tradition they were largely replaced by soulless “cookie-cutter” multi-use concrete stadiums that were nearly identical–perfectly enclosed circles with virtually no distinguishing characteristics. A few from this era like Dodgers Stadium and Royals Stadium (now Kauffman) actually had some character and are practically the only parks from this period still in use–likely no mere coincidence. The inevitable backlash began with the opening of Baltimore’s Camden Yards in 1992, which was intentionally designed to remind one of the old parks with asymmetrical dimensions, brick facades, steel superstructure, and funny urban quirks like the right field wall being an old warehouse that had already existed at the site for years. The design was called “retro” and quickly held up as the highly-desirable antithesis of the now-outdated “cookie-cutters”. Before long, retro-style parks started popping up in almost every city in the Major League, eventually replacing the cookie-cutters entirely.

AT&T Park, San Francisco

I’ve seen games in three of the retro ballparks: St. Louis’ new Busch Stadium, Denver’s Coors Field, and San Francisco’s AT&T Park. Ultimately, they are all fun places to watch a game, fan-friendly and very pretty, and I would never argue they aren’t superior to the cookie-cutters they replaced, but as an idea I think the retro parks aren’t entirely deserving of the heaps of praise they have received. I couldn’t help but notice the irony in them all being more or less alike when their specific appeal was supposed to be that they weren’t alike. Yes, they are all different, but they are different in the same way. It’s not that there is much wrong with Camden Yards itself, it’s that almost every ballpark after Camden Yards had to be almost just like it.The only thing that really separates most of them are gaudy gimmicks like San Francisco’s giant Coca-Cola bottle or Houston’s running locomotive, both behind the outfield fence. (Okay, I realize Kauffman has fountains, but that is way more elegant.) Hopeless ballpark geek that I am I find it a bit patronizing that retro parks attempt to artificially recreate the real or imagined funky “charm” of the ancient inner city ballparks, which were built that way usually by necessity. It seems rather against the spirit of the old parks that the retro parks are supposed to be inspired by. I think that thirty years from now architects and sports journalists will hold the retro parks in the same smirky “what were they thinking?” aesthetic contempt that the sterile multi-use stadiums are held in today.

Of course, I probably think things over too much instead of just enjoying the game. I’ve never had a bad time at any ballpark, including the retros. For the record, my favorite non-Kauffman quirk is the line of purple seats in the dark green upper deck of Coors signifying 5,280 feet above sea level.

Coors Field — one mile above sea level

And exiting AT&T Park by ferry is definitely the neatest way I’ve ever departed a sporting event.

If you are interested in reading more about ballparks of the past and present, the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library has several books on the subject. Two of my favorites are Lost Ballparks by Lawrence S. Ritter and The Ballpark Book by Ron Smith. And of course we in Topeka are fortunate enough to be barely an hour from Kansas City’s distinctive and well-regarded Kauffman Stadium, which after another long winter will be welcoming fans back in early April. It never comes soon enough for me.