Worse than I feared
Via Jeff Jarvis, I took a look today at a collection of blogs put together by Forbes Magazine. Last night a friend of mine I'll call Jon contacted me with some questions about blogs. The Forbes list is a handy starting place to take a look around at a wide variety of blogs -- not just the political/news junkie sort of sites I usually read. Have at it, Jon!
But that's not the point of this post. One of the sports blogs on Forbes's list is Yanksfan vs. Soxfan, and Forbes clued me in to a post there on plans for the new Yankee Stadium, announced last month. Although I'd seen an exterior architectural rendering and read about how that exterior design is faithful to the original Yankee Stadium dating to 1923, I hadn't seen a good view of what the inside of the Stadium might look like until visiting Y v. S. I don't like it. In fact, I think it stinks.
Here's the problem -- designing the exterior to appear remniscent of the original Stadium is a nice touch but IMHO it's worth about 10% of the overall design. Fans don't watch games standing outside the stadium -- the experience inside the park is what counts. One of the rare features of either the original Stadium or the rebuilt 1973 version (and today it's probably a unique feature) is the degree to which the middle and upper decks hang over the lower deck. Especially with respect to the upper deck, it means the fans in those seats are closer to the field than in any other park I can think of. I've never seen a measurement, but I'll bet if you took the distance from the front row upper deck seats even with 1st or 3rd base to those bases, you'd find those seats are closer to those bases than in any other park in the majors. And if the first row is closer, so is the second, etc. I'll bet that distance is well on the way to being doubled in the new design, because there's no longer an overhang of any sort.
Add to that the fact that overall seating capacity is reduced by a few thousand seats, and that the upper deck is smaller and seats fewer, and you've got a serious depreciation of the fans experience. True, this is a benefit to fans in lower deck seats that can now see the sky, but (and this is a guess) many of those lower deck seats are also further away from the field than they are now.
The "look and feel" of the proposed new stadium's interior neither looks nor feels like either the old or the renovated Stadiums. The design doesn't even seem to mimic, in any sense, the famous facade, that swept around the top of the Old Stadium and which was at least referenced at the back outfield wall in the renovated version. But that's ok, I guess, because the outside is spectacular, right?
A word to BoSox fans -- whatever the gripes might be with Fenway, DON'T LET THEM TEAR IT DOWN AND BUILD SOMETHING ELSE.
[Linked to the Beltway Traffic Jam.]