By Bob Ryan, Globe Staff, 08/06/85
Last of a three-part series
Here is a non-negotiable tenet of baseball people: The proper setting for baseball is essential to the quality of the game. Baseball is best played in legitimate baseball parks, with grass and dirt and ground rules and landmarks and an indefinable, but identifiable feel that is not present in contemporary structures whose true function, whether anyone in power wishes to admit it, is to accommodate football.
The managers, coaches, veteran players and assorted lifers who long ago gave their hearts to this game believe that in the best of all worlds they would travel only to four cities - Chicago, Detroit, Boston and New York. To these diehards, legitimate major league baseball - pure, quirky, unspoiled, cerebral, soul-stirring baseball - is now played only in Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, Fenway Park, Tiger Stadium and Yankee Stadium. And the thought that the first four of these special parks are doomed, that it appears unlikely any of them will survive very far into the 21st century and that any or all of them would be replaced by another one of the omnipresent, horrifying, oval monsters is thoroughly depressing.
"If that happens," laments Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell, "nobody will know what a real ballpark looks like."
A real baseball man knows a ballpark when he sees one. And he knows that merely measuring basepaths, lining a field and placing a pitcher's mound in the middle of a "multipurpose" stadium built with taxpayers' money does not mean that a legitimate baseball park has been created, or that anything resembling the sport he grew up with will take place there.
Most of all, he knows that baseball is best played on God's own green grass.
"The new parks do not produce baseball as we knew it before," asserts Cubs manager Jim Frey. "It's a different game. When you play on a large field with the carpet you need a different type of athlete."
Frey explodes out of his chair. Grabbing a bat, he assumes a left-handed batting stance, crouching to a Mickey Rooney level. "You see guys these days," he begins. "They don't even want to swing at the ball. No, they run up at it and slap at it, trying to hit it into the carpet so it can bounce 30 feet in the air. And the worst part of it is . . . some of these guys actually get on base!"
Actually, the worst part is that baseball has become so distort-
ed that a man such as Willie Wilson, who stands 6 feet 3 inches and weighs 215 pounds, has spent his entire career slapping the ball around and making his reputation via inside-the-park home runs. Twenty years ago a man that big would have been bred as a power hitter and would have been ashamed to go around acting like Wee Willie Keeler. But Willie Wilson is a clear product of his environment - the artificial turf of Royals Stadium.
Give Frey Wrigley Field. Give him Fenway Park. "That's the baseball I like," Frey says. "If I grew up watching the game in these new parks, I don't think I would have become very interested in baseball."
When Comiskey Park (1910), Fenway Park (1912), Tiger Stadium (1912) and Wrigley Field (1914) were built, neither the club owners nor the architects had any sense of creating an art form. The builders weren't specifically concerned with injecting a personality into their ballparks. Bigger, more modern stadiums were needed, and so they were built.
The builders often had to contend with the vagaries of local geography; hence the odd construction of so many old parks. But by their very asymmetrical nature they became intriguing, and no one could have foreseen that several decades later newer stadiums would prove to be far less satisfactory places in which to play baseball.
Making concessions to professional football? Synthetic grass? These were inconceivable thoughts 70 years ago. And it is only now, when we are subject to the sterility of a Riverfront or Three Rivers Stadium, or we are witness to the bizarre happenings in a Metrodome, that we can fully appreciate the lasting impact, and import, of the old parks.
Quite simply, it matters a great deal where a baseball game is played. No matter what the trappings of a football field, the playing surface itself will always measure 100 yards by 55, with an end zone 10 yards deep. The same goes for a basketball court (94 feet by 50) and a hockey rink (with the exception of the Boston Garden, all NHL rinks are 200 by 85). But a real baseball park has its own character. A ball put into play in Fenway may have a different outcome than the same ball put into play in Tiger Stadium. This is part - a major portion, in fact - of baseball's fascination. But a football field is a football field is a basketball court is a hockey rink, etc.
A recent visitor from Boston sat in the Wrigley Field press box and watched as Cubs right fielder Keith Moreland lined a home run into the left-center- field seats, the ball clearing the ivied wall by three or four feet. The Bostonian turned to his companion, a transplant from The Hub now working for a Chicago radio station.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" inquired Bostonian No. 1.
"Single in Fenway, right?" replied Bostonian No. 2.
"Unless the center fielder messes it up."
This mental exercise stimulated both parties, making their afternoon at the ballpark more enjoyable. Half the fun of any Red Sox-Yankees game is wondering whether Jim Rice's long fly to Yankee Stadium's Death Valley in left-center would be off the left-field wall, or whether Don Mattingly's shot to right- center in Fenway might have made it over the fence in the Bronx.
But how many such conversations could take place in the National League, where seven of the 12 stadiums are 330 feet down the foul lines, and two others are 335? The power-alley variance in those National League parks is 21 feet (365 in San Francisco to 386 in Busch Stadium). There are no unusual walls, no angles, no nuthin'. Fenway alone has The Door, The Wall, The Ladder and The Triangle. Comiskey Park has its towering roof as a conversational focus. Tiger Stadium offers an auxiliary scoreboard overhang in right and a majestic 440-foot sign in center. The new parks offer nothing but seats.
Most of all, however, the new parks offer little human contact. The greatest of all losses in this modern era of stadium construction is that of intimacy.
"I can't explain it," says Indians manager Pat Corrales, who broke into the National League before the new parks were built, "but having the fans close does make a difference. I like the idea of the fans being right on top of you, with their being able to listen and to see what's going on. It's a different feeling in a big ballpark. You don't get that same fan and player reaction to each other."
"Connie Mack Stadium, Forbes Field, Crosley Field . . . to me those were good ballparks," contends Cleveland coach Bobby Bonds, a baseball nomad who finished his career with the distinction of having homered in every park in which he performed. "They were baseball parks. They were good with relation to playing surface and involvement with the fans. Now they build these new stadiums and it's like putting baseball fields in the middle of damn circus fields. In Forbes Field, if you popped up, you knew you were going bad because the fans were just 15 feet away."
"Connie Mack Stadium," chimes in Corrales. "You couldn't hardly stand up in the dugout without hitting your head, but, to me, that was a ballpark."
"Modern-day ballplayers," continues Bonds, "didn't see those parks. They don't know what they are missing, unless they actually grew up in one of those towns and were taken to see games before the places were torn down."
Hall of Famer Lou Brock missed playing in Ebbets Field, but he did catch the Polo Grounds and the other wonderful old parks. "In the old parks fans can see the frown on a guy's face," says Brock. "They can see the sweat, the frustration. In a park like Tiger Stadium a guy gets a chance to talk back if he wants to."
And some baseball folk believe it's good for the player to hear the ol' razoo. "In the new parks a player can't get that real close blast a fan can give," says Tigers manager Sparky Anderson. "The whole thing is too plastic."
Aside from serving as a tool of humility, fan closeness can actually make for a better display of the product. "Take Tiger Stadium," says Minnesota manager Ray Miller. "Home plate there looks like you can step on it from the mound. With the feeling of people right on top of you it definitely intensifies your concentration."
To baseball people, even an empty true baseball park is preferable to a sold-out "multipurpose stadium." Not long ago Haywood Sullivan sat high in the Fenway Park stands some 3 1/2 hours before an evening game and pointed to a California Angels coach. "Look at Bobby Knoop down there," Haywood began. ''Do you think he would come in at 10:30 a.m. for a night game if he had to sit in one of those new stadiums, rather than Fenway Park? Same with Gene Mauch. How many parks would bring them out this early? All the new ones have the same design. Coming here breaks up the monotony."
Sullivan himself refers to Fenway Park as relaxing, while out in Chicago, White Sox general manager Roland Hemond says he often takes a break from the office by simply strolling out into the empty stands of Comiskey Park. "It's soothing," Hemond explains, "to look at the green of the grass and the green of the stands and just to sit here and think about some of the things that have happened here. You can have a sophisticated, modern stadium, but it could never be as relaxing as this."
"The new ones do not have the unique style and dignity of the old ones," submits Cleveland president Peter Bavasi, who was raised in Ebbets Field. ''You may have a Pierre Cardin sport jacket in your closet, but nothing ever fits you as well as that old sport coat you've had for years."
Any time Hemond idles away a few minutes in Comiskey, his counterpart may very well be doing the same thing in Fenway. "I sit out here quite often," Sullivan says, "and I find myself thinking about players and games. 'Why didn't he catch that ball?' Or 'Why was the wind blowing in that day?' " Please don't suggest that anyone in the Houston hierarchy has ever reminisced in the Astrodome.
The numbing sameness of the new stadiums means that the games are inherently less interesting. Baseball people would rather be frightened in Fenway than anesthetized in Oakland. Sure, the dimensions in the Oakland- Alameda County Coliseum are uniform (330-372-397-372-330) and, in a strict sense, "fair" to everybody, but who cares? Life is a lot more interesting in quirky Fenway.
"You can sit around and compare ballparks all you want," says White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, "but no park in baseball compares to Fenway. If people want to come see a 'baseball game' - that's a generic term - and have a chance to see everything baseball can provide, then Fenway is the place to see it. Fenway is so great that it makes no difference whether the Red Sox are going well or poorly because you can still go to Fenway and be entertained.
"And it's not always offensive entertainment," Fisk adds. "That park can provide so many opportunities for the spectacular defensive play. The whole spectrum of thrills is available there, and no other ballpark can compare. Winning and losing shouldn't be the major reason to go to a game at Fenway."
"I was there seven years," reminds Don Zimmer, now the Cubs third-base coach, "and everybody said what a bad park it was for pitchers. But many times it was a disadvantage for hitters. Many's the time there's a man on second and a man singles to left. The runner can't even think about scoring
because the left fielder is playing so close due to the wall. Or a line-drive base hit in other parks is even an out in Fenway."
"Fenway and Wrigley," says Frey. "I call them action parks." One reason is foul territory. There is hardly any. They could practically play a football game between the foul lines and the stands in Oakland, but in Boston, both
Chicagos, Detroit and New York the stands loom very quickly. Would-be foul-out victims become base runners. The more base runners, the more runs, and the more runs, the happier the fans.
Tiger Stadium has its peculiarities as well. The distance to the right- field foul pole is only 325 feet, and psychologically it's even shorter for a good left-handed hitter because the hitting background in the park is so good and the double-decked stands appear so close.
A couple of weeks ago Minnesota manager Miller found himself so afraid of left-handed Tiger second baseman Lou Whitaker that he intentionally walked the Tiger leadoff man (who had 15 homers at the time) with two outs, a man on third and a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth. "I wouldn't have done that in a big ballpark," Miller explained, "but from the eighth inning on I was afraid of what could happen." What did happen was that right-handed hitting Allan Trammell grounded out to end the game, enabling Miller to sleep a lot better that night.
"In most parks you can feel pretty good up by six or so," says Miller. ''But in Fenway all it takes is an error, a walk and one swing and you're in trouble. You've got to keep from walking people and try to hold them to one-run innings. But I enjoy playing in these parks. It's a lot more exciting."
"If I had never come over to this league," admits Detroit's Darrell Evans, a 13-year veteran of the National League, "I would have missed something very special."
For one thing, he would have missed just about all that are left of baseball's landmarks. As it was, he came into the National League too late for the famed laundry behind the left-field wall at Crosley Field, the weird right-field fence in Ebbets Field and the Himalaya-like scoreboard perched on the right-center-field wall in Connie Mack Stadium.
Landmarks such as the left-field wall in Fenway were once a vital part of baseball lore. There is only one new one - the gorgeous fountain behind the center-field fence in Kansas City, where, save for the artificial turf, a real ballpark has been constructed. In the oval monsters, a home run is just a plain old home run, devoid of any mystique.
Tom Seaver has been around long enough to know the difference. "I was pitching in Forbes Field one day early in my career," Seaver recalls. "The right-field stands were slanted and there was a big old iron gate about 400 feet away. Willie Stargell hit a line drive for a double off the iron gate and it sounded like Big Ben was going off when it hit the gate. Then Donn Clendenon hit the next pitch off the batting cage, which they kept in left- center, for another 450-foot double. Two pitches, 900 feet worth of doubles and two landmarks. From a historical and traditional point of view, these old ballparks are an integral part of baseball and I would hate to see them go."
If and when they do disappear, baseball's loss will be immeasurable. ''These parks cannot be replaced," contends Seattle pitching coach Phil Regan. "An era will have ended. The uniqueness of baseball is that a fan can come into Wrigley Field with his son or grandson and say, 'There is where Gabby Hartnett hit the Homer in the Gloaming.' A guy can say who hit what ball where and when. No other sport has baseball's tradition."
But there is more at stake than history. A new park cannot be held accountable for not having history, but it can be held accountable for not being able to provide good baseball. Once upon a time, each park had a distinct personality. Playing in each represented an adventure and a renewable challenge.
"When I broke in," recalls Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale, "you had to go into each ballpark and establish a different pitching pattern. You couldn't possibly pitch the same way in Ebbets Field as in the Polo Grounds, for example. Kids today have the dollars and they don't care about any of this, but they are being cheated in their enjoyment."
What diversion is provided by new parks is negative; i.e. the perversion of artificial turf. There is an undeniable element of adventure injected into baseball by the turf, but it is not the kind of adventure a real baseball man
relishes.
Just the thought of artificial turf is enough to irritate Zimmer. Given the choice between being forced to have his ears pierced or watching games in the Astrodome for the rest of his life, well, bring on the earrings. "I can throw a ball right now on artificial turf and it will roll to the right-field wall," says Zimmer. "If I throw it here in Wrigley, it will be lucky to reach the outfield grass."
"Turf is pitiful" declares Anderson, who managed one of the great teams of all time, the '75-76 Reds, on a turf field in Riverfront Stadium. "Guys who can't throw look like they have good arms because the ball can bounce after they throw it."
(Incidentally, ask Sparky whether he would rather have managed the old Reds in Riverfront Stadium or Tiger Stadium. "No comparison," he says, his eyes widening. "Boy, would they have been streamlined for this park.")
Says Frey, "You make a good pitch and a guy hits a chopper and you have to watch it go 30 feet in the air. The next guy hits an opposite-field blooper, and before you know it the guy's on third base. I've seen guys get inside-the- park home runs on balls that were on the ground in the infield. It's not baseball."
It certainly isn't baseball as old-timers have come to know it, but it may very well be the baseball of the future. Owners such as the White Sox' Eddie Einhorn praise the turf because it eliminates the rainout on the basis of wet grounds. Indeed, that is the reason why Royals Stadium, otherwise a superb baseball park, has the loathsome turf. Economics uber alles.
All the evidence suggests that unless subjected to a Yankee Stadium-style face-lift the four oldest parks will not survive very far into the next century. Their passing will mean more than just the eradication of tradition.
"When those parks go it will bring us one step closer to total conformity," warns former St. Louis and Chicago owner Bill Veeck. "Right now the wall in Fenway is one small voice saying, 'It's all right to be different.' It's the same in Wrigley, carrying on without lights. Comiskey Park is saying, 'It's all right to be old.'
"In these parks," says Veeck, "what we have is real baseball. No one has proven to me that what goes on in the other places is as good. I ask you: How can you possibly prepare somebody to play baseball in Minnesota?"
So Fenway Park, Tiger Stadium, Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park are not simply quaint old structures. More than merely offering the best baseball now has to offer, they actually showcase, along with the somewhat younger Yankee Stadium, the best it has ever offered. The fact is that to know baseball as performed in Cincinnati or Pittsburgh today is really not to know baseball at all.
"If these parks go," concludes Veeck, "it won't be the end of Western civilization, but it will be one giant step toward the homogenization of all of us. When there is no room for individualism in ballparks, then there will be no room for individualism in life."
Just remember. Nobody ever has, or ever will, argue whether a ball hit in Veterans Stadium would have been out in Three Rivers. But we all know Bucky Dent's fly ball was just another "7" in the scorebook in Yankee Stadium, don't we? And just think, if the wind were blowing in . . .
PART I: