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began in minor leagues
North County Times, March 20, 2004
by Greg Ball
Twelve years ago, Baltimore ushered major-league baseball into a prosperous new era with the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
By the time next month's home openers are completed, this most recent ballpark building boom will have given us 15 new stadiums since 1992. To say it started with Camden Yards, however, is akin to telling a child that babies are delivered by a stork.
It's an easy answer, but one that fails to investigate the how, where and why. And it misses the point on all the gritty details.
In fact, the birth of the contemporary ballpark ---- the so-called "modern-retro park" ---- started with a minor-league team in Buffalo, N.Y., four years before Camden Yards arrived. And the craze hasn't been limited to deep-pocketed major-league teams in big cities.
The past 13 years have seen an unprecedented increase in minor-league ballpark construction, partly as a result of Buffalo's success and also because of a visionary agreement between Major League Baseball and the minors.
The growth has come on an even larger scale than in the majors, and it all began in an out-of-the-way city in upstate New York.
Mom and pop operations
The outlook in minor-league baseball hasn't always been as rosy as the past two decades.
Historically, many teams operated on a significantly smaller scale than their parent-club counterparts. Young players often developed their talents in pedestrian ballparks with dim lighting, poor playing surfaces and cramped clubhouses.
Minor-league attendance had been strong through the 1940s, when nearly every small town had its own club. But it sagged as television developed and the big leagues expanded across the country.
The minors drew more than 40 million fans to their 438 ballparks in 1949. Then in the period from 1952-59, more than 300 teams folded and the number of leagues dropped from 43 to 21. The decline continued for nearly 30 years as older ballparks became less and less populated.
"The way the minor leagues used to be looked at was that the parks were built in the part of town where the land was cheap," said Mike Buczkowski, general manager of the Triple-A International League's Buffalo Bisons and one of that team's few employees still around from its 1988 move to its new ballpark.
"They got a reputation as bush leagues partly because of the parks they played in. We didn't always have a good place to present the good product we had."
Things started to change ever so slightly when a pair of state-of-the-art parks opened in the late 1970s. In 1977, the city of Columbus, Ohio, completed a multimillion-dollar renovation of Cooper Stadium that made the Triple-A Clippers the first minor-league team to play its home games on Astroturf.
Columbus drew more than 450,000 fans that season, breaking a minor-league record set in the 1940s.
The following season, Double-A Nashville, Tenn., opened another modern facility, Herschel Greer Stadium, and drew 380,000 fans. Neither ballpark was of the style that Buffalo started, but some say they paved the way for a new way of thinking.
"They date the beginning of (the boom) to the late 1970s," minor-league historian Bill Weiss said.
Now, according to Minor League Baseball, 113 minor-league teams will open the 2004 season in stadiums built since 1985, 91 of those since 1991.
The stuff of dreams
It seems appropriate that Buczkowski recalls the 1988 opening of Buffalo's new ballpark like a Hollywood movie.
That's because before moving into what was originally called Pilot Field, the Bisons played in the massive old War Memorial Stadium that was used as a movie location for "The Natural" and because Buczkowski compared the fan reaction at the new park to the closing scene in "Field of Dreams" ---- in which cars stretch for miles heading to the park.
The Bisons drew more than 1 million fans in each of their first six seasons at the new ballpark, as people flocked to the stadium that was so different from anything they had ever seen.
Buffalo was seeking to attract a major-league franchise ---- it was beat out by Miami and Denver for the 1993 expansion ---- so it poured a reported $43 million into the project and built it to big-league standards. But the Bisons and owners Bob and Mindy Rich also did something unique for the time. They built the park in the center of Buffalo's downtown area, nestled between the concrete and steel buildings in the heartbeat of the city.
Pilot Field was just like many old-time ballparks were before it had become fashionable to build parking-lot-encircled stadiums in suburban areas. The ballpark's architecture ---- the signature look incorporates white brick with giant glass arched windows ---- matched the style of the city around it.
Front-row seats were within 15 feet of the foul lines, and fans were offered a wider range of concessions options than they had ever experienced.
"We had every major-league and minor-league team that was thinking of building a stadium visit us," Buczkowski said.
Indeed, the park was a smashing success. The Bisons received great exposure the first year when they hosted the inaugural Triple-A All-Star Game, on national television. At the winter meetings following the season, then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth encouraged baseball's owners ---- in the major leagues and minors ---- to follow Buffalo's lead.
Pilot Field was also one of the first major baseball projects undertaken by the now-celebrated architectural firm HOK Sport, the company lauded for conceiving Camden Yards, Petco Park and many of the major leagues' other jewels.
A new standard
"Minor-league baseball is one of the markets we can always count on," HOK spokesperson Carrie Plummer said. "The demand for minor-league facilities has been constant."
Plummer estimated that HOK, the industry leader in ballpark design, has completed 70 minor-league projects since it started with Buffalo. In the past two years, she said, the firm has worked on 16 new parks, with total construction costs of $85 million.
None of that would have been possible, many people in the minor leagues agree, without the passing of a 1991 contract between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball that, among other things, set strict new facility standards for minor-league parks.
The standards called for improved field conditions and lighting; better facilities for players; and improved seating, concessions and restroom conditions for fans.
That was important because of the premium placed on entertainment in the minors. Without control of the players they have on their rosters, minor-league clubs often focus their efforts on providing a complete fan experience. A nice ballpark is a big part of that.
"You couldn't just have some (crummy) stadium without good lighting and with one urinal in the bathroom," said Dave Oster, general manager of the Padres' Single-A affiliate in Lake Elsinore. "It forced the mom and pop ballparks either to upgrade or to move to a new facility."
Depending on whom you ask, the new standards were prompted either by the major-league clubs' desire to provide their high-paid prospects better places to develop or by those same clubs' eagerness to capitalize on the suddenly popular and profitable minors.
Either way, the change had an immediate and sweeping impact, as evidenced by the sheer number of new ballparks that have since popped up all over the country.
Padres manager Bruce Bochy worked in the minors from 1989-92 and saw the improvement in ballparks when he moved from the old Riverside Sports Complex stadium in 1990 to High Desert's Mavericks Stadium in 1991. That was one of the first new parks built after the new facilities standards were set.
"It was a huge difference," Bochy said. "In Riverside, we didn't draw very well. We were on university grounds, older ballpark, no beer. I think that even played a part in it ---- you hate to say it, but it probably did. We didn't draw very well.
"While your players are self-motivated, it does give them some extra adrenaline when there are all the fans in the stands. The next year in High Desert was a completely different atmosphere ---- new ballpark, sold out many games. You could feel the difference, the electricity, the energy in the ballpark. Those guys fed off it."
Bochy's Riverside team finished with a losing record. His High Desert squad won the California League championship. As a big-league manager, he has seen improvement on a wider scale in exhibition games against Padres minor-league clubs in Lake Elsinore; Mobile, Ala.; and Portland, Ore.
"I think High Desert is similar to Elsinore, and Mobile, too," he said. "They're all nice ballparks. Compared to what us older guys played in when we came up, they're like major-league ballparks ---- great fields, lights, they hold more fans, they draw more. Portland is a little different because it's close to a major-league ballpark so it has a little different atmosphere, a major-league atmosphere."
California League president Joe Gagliardi was chairman of a committee working with Major League Baseball on the 1991 agreement, and he immediately recognized it as a defining moment for the minor leagues.
"It created (geographic and financial) stability and a change in how we approach our business," Gagliardi said. "There is no comparison between the old and the new ballparks. It is a better fan experience."
That's especially true with many of the parks that have been built in the retro mold that has been resoundingly successful at the major-league level as well. Plummer said HOK refers to those as "contextual" ballparks.
"The idea of drawing from the surrounding area was a minor-league concept from the beginning," she said.
Fanning the flames
If construction of Pilot Field was the spark that ignited the minor-league boom, the adoption of the facilities standards was a full-on flame. Buffalo's ballpark, now called Dunn Tire Park, is already the third oldest in the 15-team International League.
Minor-league teams were required by the new standards to either upgrade or relocate by the 1995 season, which created an unprecedented level of franchise movement. Since '95, though, few teams have moved and many clubs are better off financially.
"Cities will (help finance ballparks) to keep professional baseball in their towns," said Gagliardi, who has helped lobby successfully for new or renovated ballparks for seven of his 10 franchises since 1991. "And it has made a lot of (owners) a lot of money."
The Cal League hasn't had a franchise fold or relocate in eight years, since the Riverside Pilots were reincarnated in Lancaster as the JetHawks in 1996.
Attendance has improved significantly. Cal League annual totals jumped from less than 1 million fans before the new ballparks to around 1.6 million after. Further north in the state, the Pacific Coast League's Fresno and Sacramento franchises were both in the minor-leagues' top 10 percent in attendance last season. Both play in ballparks opened since 2000.
From 1990-95, the Cal League increased its average attendance 77 percent, the Double-A Eastern League made a 78 percent jump and the Triple-A International League improved 26 percent. Last season, seven minor-league teams averaged better than 9,000 fans, compared with only two in 1995 and only Buffalo in 1990.
"People going to major-league parks and experiencing the intimacy of those places started to want that from their minor-league parks in addition to the unique experience of minor-league baseball," Plummer said.
That's a trend that hasn't escaped the watch of Phillip Bess, a Notre Dame architecture professor, author and city stadium activist. His argument is that a ballpark is among the few most critical dynamics for drawing fans.
Given the evidence, that theory clearly stands up.
"If a ballpark is good, it's the second most important factor, the most important being a winning team," Bess said. "Of course, in minor-league baseball, you can't control the players you get, but you can control the playing environment."
Best of the best
Minor-league baseball has seen 113 new ballparks pop up across the country since the 1985 season. San Diego's Joe Connor, who maintains an annually updated ballpark travel guide online at www.modernerabaseball.com, gives 10 of his favorites:
RALEY FIELD
Team: Sacramento River Cats
League: Pacific Coast League (Triple-A)
Fast facts: The River Cats were second in minor-league attendance last year and outdrew the parent-club Oakland Athletics a handful of times in their inaugural 2000 season. Raley, set on the Sacramento River across from the state capital's downtown, has an urban feel.
HARBOR PARK
Team: Norfolk Tides
League: International League (Triple-A)
Fast facts: The Virginia ballpark's scenic setting is its key drawing point and provides a fun family atmosphere. Baseball America ranked it the No. 1 stadium in the minors when it opened in 1993.
SEC TAYLOR STADIUM
Team: Iowa Cubs
League: Pacific Coast League (Triple-A)
Fast facts: Connor calls it "a mini Petco Park." The views of the state capitol building in Des Moines make this park unique. Pitcher Rod Beck lived in his RV behind the outfield wall last season before he was signed by the Padres.
CANAL PARK
Team: Akron Aeros
League: Eastern League (Double-A)
Fast facts: Built with exterior brown brick, this Ohio park blends into its city surroundings. Because Akron is within an hour's drive of the parent-club Indians in Cleveland, fans of the big-league club can see prospects before they arrive at Jacobs Field.
THE DELL DIAMOND
Team: Round Rock Express
League: Texas League (Double-A)
Fast facts: This Texas franchise, partly owned by Nolan Ryan, has been so successful since the park opened in 2000 that next year the team will move up to Triple-A. The club is expected to add seats beyond the left-field wall to accommodate more fans.
THE DIAMOND
Team: Lake Elsinore Storm
League: California League (High Single-A)
Fast facts: The 37-foot high right field wall was designed to mimic Fenway Park's Green Monster, and the views of the mountains beyond the asymmetrical outfield wall create a picturesque setting. Young fans love the mascot, "Thunder," a Phillie Phanatic knockoff.
KEYSPAN PARK
Team: Brooklyn Cyclones
League: New York-Penn League (Short-season Single-A)
Fast facts: Brooklyn hadn't had baseball since the Dodgers left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season, so baseball-starved fans latched on to the Cyclones when they arrived in 2001. Even at one of the lowest levels in the minors, the Cyclones had the 10th-highest attendance in 2003. The ballpark is a short walk from Coney Island.
HOLMAN STADIUM
Team: Vero Beach Dodgers
League: Florida State League (High Single-A)
Fast facts: This one was built in 1953 and is used as the spring training home of the big-league Dodgers, and nearly everyone who visits falls in love with Dodgertown. Without dugouts, players sit on benches exposed to the fans, making things easy for autograph hunters.
FIFTH THIRD FIELD
Team: Dayton Dragons
League: Midwest League (Low Single-A)
Fast facts: Dayton averaged nearly 8,500 fans last season. The Ohio ballpark is built into the surrounding neighborhood and is a short drive from the parent-club Reds in Cincinnati.
VOLCANOES STADIUM
Team: Salem-Keizer Volcanoes
League: Northwest League (Short-season Single-A)
Fast facts: Built in 1997, this Oregon ballpark is affectionately known as "The Crater." Connor says its burrito bar helps give Volcanoes Stadium the best food in the minors.
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