Major League has not become unpopular. It is still a moneymaking league with pretty high overall attendance. But as football and basketball have emerged, baseball today clearly takes a second or third seat when it comes to popularity as a sport. This is in contrast to the 1950's and 1960's, when baseball was the 'national pastime'. It's clear that today, football, or perhaps basketball, are closer to being the national pastime.

Surely, some credit must be given to the sports of football and basketball. These sports do provide plenty of excitement. Peoples' opinions change. But let's assume for a moment that the rise of those sports happened at least in part because of a decline in the popularity of baseball. What has changed about baseball in the last 40 or so years that might have contributed to this decline?

1. Free agency

Baseball was major sport to adopt free agency. Allowing players to become free agents allowed the players to get paid a lot more money. And it also gave an advantage to teams with seemingly deep pockets. Small market teams have more trouble holding onto players. Increased salaries can also lead to higher ticket prices. That makes it harder for poorer people to enjoy a game.

However, free agency happens in the other sports too. As do higher ticket prices. So I doubt this change is at the root of baseball's decline in popularity. Baseball and football have always been more expensive than baseball, and still are. So I don't think this is a big reason for the shift in popularity.

2. The designated hitter. \

Starting in the mid-seventies, the American League has allowed another player to hit and run for a pitcher.

As dumb and offensive to baseball tradition as this rule is, if it was to account for baseball's decline in popularity, then we would see a large difference between the popularity of baseball and American League baseball, and we don't. So I'm not buying it.

3. Starting pitchers pitching fewer innings

This is a recent development in the past 10-20 years. While dumbfounding, it is a strategic choice of the managers and possibly the general managers and/or players, and not a structural change. While it may be responsible for a decline in the appeal of the game, it's also not something that requires a structural change to remedy. I believe that, in time, this will work itself out as teams realize that the classic way of doing things actually made a lot of sense.

4. Length of the game. Since the 70's, a game that is already on thin ice when it comes to attention span has gotten even longer. Each inning change and pitching change creates a commercial break, and these breaks have been constantly extended as TV providers seek to include more commercials. There are fewer pitchers working fast, and, until recently, not much of an effort to get them to speed up.

I think this does have a small but significant contribution to the decline in popularity of the game.

5. Astroturf

This blight upon the game has been almost entirely removed. And yet, baseball's popularity has not magically returned. It's true that there is a difference between grass and when experiencing the game as a . But in my opinion, this is a relatively minor issue when talking about the experience of the fan.

Which brings us to:

6. The replacement of the places we go to watch the game. There are now only two remaining that were in operation 50 years ago, and only 5 that were in operation 30 years ago.

Everybody knows about the 'scourge of cookie cutter stadiums' introduced in the 1960's and 1970's. These stadiums moved fans farther away from the field and were also lacking in quirky character compared to the fields they replaced. They also frequently featured artificial turf. But like artificial turf, these abominable cookie cutter monstrosities have all been eliminated, right? Well.. yes. All but one ('s Skydome, which is also used for Canadian Football) has been replaced by a new built exclusively for baseball - a new modern retro ballpark designed by the architectural firm HOK. Almost all of these new stadiums have less capacity than their predecessors. They do have built in quirks and asymmetrical fields to go with their wider concourses and greater of food choices. Sure, they are more expensive, but isn't it worth it to get an ideal mix of authentic baseball and modern convenience?

Well….

With the help of the excellent baseball websites clemsbaseball.com and stadiumpage.com, I conducted research - looking at the designs and profiles of every stadium that was ever home to . And I discovered something extraordinary. Contrary to popular belief, for the great majority of fans, these new retro parks don't bring you significantly closer to the action. In terms of where they position fans in relation to the field, they have much more in common with the scourge-y, multi-sport cookie cutters than they do with the ballparks of the first part of the 20th century. And not only have these new retro parks replaced the stadiums built from 1962 - 1985 - they've also replaced all of the pre-1962 ballparks, with the exception of and .

So not only have , the , the , , and their ilk been replaced - the new retro parks have also replaced , , , and *

*Technically New Comiskey Park is not a 'retro' stadium, but it is a baseball only facility.

In 1960, a trip to the ballpark meant you could see a game in a certain way. That way is now completely unattainable for 28 of the 30 major league teams. In this article I will explain how it came to be that your chances of getting a great seat at a major league baseball game are worse now than they were in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000.

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I think this is an enormous issue in the decline of this particular sport. It is commonly understood by most fans that, in the 1960's and 1970's, the desire for increased capacity, better amenities and multi-sport use led baseball's owners and municipalities to create venues which changed the experience of the game, and not for the better. However, what many fans don't realize is that In the 1990's and 2000's, the desire to recapture what baseball had lost, coupled with a desire to provide more luxury amenities for high-dollar customers, coupled with a desire to get an attendance boost from the excitement of a new stadium, caused baseball owners and municipalities to make the same mistake, in a different way. And this time, they have replaced not half the ballparks but almost all of them, including those used by franchises that had not fallen prey to the 'scourge' of the 60's and 70's.

Amongst the three 'new' reasons for getting new ballparks, the addition of luxury seating clearly took precedence. In terms of recapturing what baseball had lost, the new designs certainly have their share of exposed steel and brick work, and quirks that make each stadium unique in terms of its field dimensions. Also, like many of the 1950's ballparks, the new ones lack symmetry. Many of them are also in downtown, urban areas, which does contribute something positive to the feel. Also, though it doesn't have much local flavor, they tend to have advertising all over the walls, like the old parks did.

However, in terms of the most important aspect of the game experience - how the fan sees and hears the game- these new ballparks have much more in common with their 60's and 70's cookie cutter counterparts than they do with the ballparks of the 1950's. It's true that all of the new ballparks, being built for baseball alone, have grandstands that hug the foul lines rather than arc out in a circular configuration. That is an improvement for some of the replacement fields. For example, Shea Stadium in had a very wide circular configuration and corrects that. However, since Yankee Stadium did not have a circular configuration, the new Yankee Stadium does not offer that advantage over the old. And, as I shall demonstrate, in terms of other aspects of fan placement, none of the new stadiums actually bring back the baseball perspective that was attainable by the 1950's baseball fan.

To illustrate this, let's take a look at Shea Stadium, and compare to one of the ballparks it replaced, (Technically, Shea replaced the , but since Citi Field's design suggests Ebbets Field, let's just go with Ebbets). Ebbets Field was a good example of a ballpark at which one might see a game in the 1950's. It had a lower deck and an upper deck supported by columns, and a roof above the upper deck, also supported by the same columns. The grandstand went around 3 sides of the field, and the 4th side was open. Capacity was 32,000. In the mid-fifties, Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers' owner, sought to increase his profits by building a larger stadium. He wanted it to hold 55,000 people and be domed, and be located in downtown . He wanted the city to build the place in order to keep the Dodgers in town. The city attempted to meet his blackmail attempt halfway by offering to build a 55,000 seat stadium in Flushing Meadows, . O'Malley preferred the promise of in Chavez Ravine in .

Eventually, New York did build that stadium in Flushing Meadows, as fulfillment of a promise it made in order to attract a Major League expansion franchise, the Mets. To maximize the usability of this questionable public investment, the City decided to make a stadium that could be used for football and soccer as well as baseball. This responsible exercise in public works guaranteed that the new stadium would differ from Ebbets Field in two ways: 1. It would seat an additional 23,000 people, and 2. It would be useable for other sports. But there was another difference between Shea Stadium and Ebbets Field. And it is, truly, the critical difference.

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A common complaint that fans had of pre-1962 ballparks was that their view of the action was often blocked by support pillars. Ballparks built before the advent of night baseball almost always included a large roof to provide shade on hot summer days for the majority of patrons. Ballparks built after the night game era had begun, like Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, built in 1954, had pillars holding up the upper deck, but no roof and therefore no pillars that blocked views from the upper deck. 's , completed in 1961, also had pillars holding up the upper deck, and did have a small roof over part of the upper deck, but it was unsupported by pillars.

The following year, 1962, the Dodgers ended their four year interlude playing in the abhorrent LA Memorial Coliseum and moved into their splendid new baseball stadium in Chavez Ravine. Dodger Stadium, when completed in 1962, did not have any support pillars at all. It was an elegant looking, colorful structure in a pleasant setting. And so, upon its completion, Dodger Stadium became, in many ways, the blueprint for the regular fan's baseball viewing experience - a blueprint which Shea Stadium and all the other stadiums constructed the following 2 decades followed, and a blueprint which, despite quirky details and asymmetry, each of the new 'retro' ballparks also follows.

The elimination of the support columns in Dodger Stadium and every baseball stadium subsequently built was hailed as a triumph of superior, modern engineering and cantilevering know-how. However, it's actually a story of a rather low-tech trade-off - a trade-off that eliminated an entire swath of very good seats. The designers of Dodger Stadium did not eliminate the pillars by engineering an alternate way to hold up the second deck. They simply moved the second deck backward, away from the field of play, so that it did not need to be supported at all. To increase capacity, they added a third and fourth decks, steeply raked, minimally overhung, and high up and far away from the action.

If you were to look at Ebbets Field, one could say that the best seats in the house were the first 20 or so rows of the lower deck, around the infield. As anyone who's had the privilege of sitting this close to the field, this is obvious. But take a look at this perspective:

This is a picture taken, most likely from the first row of the upper deck at Ebbets Field, about 30-40 feet off the ground, about 60 feet up the foul line toward first base and approximately only 20 feet horizontally from the field of play. This is a great view. In fact, one could say that at Ebbets Field, the second best group of seats were the first 10 rows of the upper deck around the infield. And they may have even rivaled those first few rows of the lower deck, thanks to the ability to see the entire field from approximately 30 feet up. The back rows of the lower deck may not have been such a great place to sit due to possible pillar obstruction and the inability to see fly balls. In fact, the back rows of the upper deck may have been preferable, due to the higher vantage point.

In contrast to Ebbets Field, the Dodger Stadium system improved the experience for those at the back of the lower deck by eliminating pillars and allowing them to see the sky. But the design clearly degraded the experience for those in the mid-deck, both at the front and the back, by moving them away from the field of play. Dodger Stadium also added seats in a third and fourth decks, all of which were farther from the action, both horizontally and vertically.

Let's say you were to take Ebbets' Field's 32,000 seats and divide them into the best 16,000 and the worst 16,000. And let's say you built a new stadium with a 56,000 seat capacity. You'd expect that, at the very least, 16,000 seats would be as good as the better seats at Ebbets Field. It would be reasonable to say that, at your new, bigger stadium, 16,000 seats are as good as the better ones at Ebbets, 16,000 would be as good as the lesser ones at Ebbets, and the remaining 24,000 would be worse, but hopefully halfway decent. You'd hope that, with modern technology and forethought, you might even be able to improve upon that proportion.

Well, at Dodger Stadium, with it's capacity of 56,000, thanks to the grandstand configuration, I would estimate that only approximately 8-10,000 of those seats are as good as what you could get at Ebbets Field. And all of those seats are in the lower section. By moving the second deck back and adding more seats on top, we have radically altered the percentage of good seats at ballparks. But more importantly, we have significantly lowered the absolute number of good seats. To put it another way, Ebbets Field seated 24,000 less people than Dodger Stadium does - but it had 8,000 more really good seats. Seats where you can hear the pop of the glove and the voices of the players and the wrinkles in their uniforms.

Here is a comparison of the grandstand profiles of Ebbets Field and Dodger Stadium:

Every single new baseball stadium built since Dodger Stadium was completed, including each HOK retro stadium, does what Dodger Stadium did. For those municipalities that sought to mitigate the effect of owner blackmail by designing stadiums built for multiple sports, the effects were compounded by the wide curve of the grandstand. But the majority of the change came from the configuration of the decks in the grandstand - not the position of the grandstand itself.

Now that the multi-use stadiums have all been replaced by modern retro parks, the effects of municipality-fueled blackmail mitigation on the viewing experience have been eliminated. But every other effect of the Dodger Stadium precedent continues. And that precedent was brought to you by none other than Walter O'Malley. Not only did he take the Dodgers from Brooklyn - he also played a large part in taking a lot of the baseball out of going to see a baseball game - unless you're wealthy and can afford one of those increasingly rare and increasingly expensive prime seats.

During Citi Field's construction, much ballyhoo was made out of the fact that Citi Field would be a baseball only facility whose grandstands would hug the foul lines and therefore give the fans a closer view of the action. To demonstrate this point, the team released a diagram showing the Citi Field grandstand profile overlaid onto the Shea Stadium profile.

You can see that the Citi Field upper deck isn't as high as that of Shea, and is a little bit closer to the field. However, upon studying this image, I noticed something. This is a comparison to the profile and field relation to the Shea grandstand at the point in its curvature in which the top of the field level is flush with the bottom of the loge - the point at which the grandstand is farthest away from the field. The diagram shows that compared to the worst section of Shea's curved grandstand, Citi Field offers an improvement. But if you were to compare the Citi Field profile to the Shea profile at Shea's closest approach to the field - behind home plate, where there was about a ten foot gap between the top of the field level and the bottom of the loge, the Shea upper deck and mezzanine would be closer to the field than those decks at Citi Field.

Now, it's true that Citi Field's upper deck doesn't extend quite as high. But it also has 10,000 less seats than Shea, and a higher proportion of those seats are in the outfield. There's no doubt that there are more bathrooms and food choices at the new field, and Shea's annoying, view-blocking aisle and seat configuration in the rotating field level grandstands has been eliminated. But in terms of actual baseball viewing, these two ballparks are, on average, closer to a wash than the Mets would have you believe.

In conclusion: Citi Field's grandstand is not a series of stacked decks like Ebbets Field. It's a jagged bowl like Dodger Stadium and Shea Stadium.

There have been a couple of exceptions to the Dodger Stadium precedent. One was National Stadium in Washington, D.C. (later renamed after RFK) which was also, like Dodger Stadium, completed in 1962. RFK's second deck was cantilevered quite brilliantly over the lower deck, approaching an Ebbets Field-like grandstand profile without the use of support columns. Sadly, this stadium was rarely used for baseball during its lifespan. The second Washington Senators franchise played there for only 8 seasons - from 1962 until they moved to Texas in 1971 to play at the single-decked, roofless (in Texas!) . RFK finally saw some action once the Expos moved out of awful Olympic Stadium to play there as the Nationals in 2005. By 2008, however, the Nationals had a new HOK retro park, featuring a moved back second deck. RFK stadium was actually one of the blackmail-mitigation multi-sport stadiums. Unlike Shea Stadium, however, RFK employed some brilliant engineering that actually retained some pretty good baseball sightlines and refreshing quirks. Sadly, this structure has been replaced with a facility that is not actually a superior place to see a ball game, and this has been done at public cost. RFK Stadium still stands today, and is used for Soccer games, but likely will never be used for baseball again. I suppose Nationals fans may be too busy stuffing their faces with garlic fries to notice.

The other exception to the Dodger Stadium rule was the renovation of the old Yankee Stadium, completed in 1976. Yankee Stadium, unlike Ebbets Field, had an enormous capacity from its in initial construction in 1923, exceeding that of even Dodger Stadium. It also had pillars and a roof. It was decided in 1973 to renovate the stadium - and the main thrust of the renovation was to modernize Yankee Stadium by eliminating the support pillars. This was a very extensive procedure that took two full seasons. The final result was a tradeoff, but it also involved some good engineering. First, the field was lowered and moved toward the outfield, and extra rows of seats were added around the infield. Additional rows were added to the top of the upper deck, and new pillars were put in, farther away from the field. Any seats behind these new pillars were eliminated. Therefore, there were no longer any seats obstructed by pillars. The upper deck was not moved, however, in comparison to the position of the field, the upper deck had been moved upward and backward. The effect was to make the seating configuration more like Dodger Stadium. However, despite the changes, Yankee Stadium retained a larger upper deck overhang than virtually any other post-1961 ballpark.

For the 2010 season, the Yankees moved into the new Yankee Stadium, which has a grandstand profile almost identical to Dodger Stadium. Yankee fans can now see a frieze hanging from the top of their stadium, which may remind them of the original, pre- renovation Yankee Stadium. But in terms of how they see the field, there's not much in common with the original Yankee Stadium. I wouldn't wish this kind of 'progress' on my worst enemy. In fact, the Yankees and their fans are my worst enemies, and I feel bad for them and wish they could have their old stadium back.

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I have been to two baseball stadiums with support pillars. One is Wrigley Field. I was seated along the left field line near the foul pole, not under the upper deck, so I cannot speak to what it was like to watch a game through pillars. The other park I attended that has pillars is Candlestick Park in San Francisco. I went to 3 or 4 games there, and I remember thinking that, aside from the weather, it was a good place to see a game. I only sat in the lower deck once, and I don't recall my view being blocked by a pillar. In fact, until I read it years later, I didn't realize there were any pillars.

Which brings to mind an interesting point. I remember sitting pretty far back, under the upper deck, at Candlestick. Why don't I remember my view being blocked by pillars? If you consider that pillars were usually placed about a third of the way into the length of the upper deck, less than half of your lower deck seats would be behind where the pillars are, and if you were seated in between the pillars, they would never block your view of the playing field, and in many cases, they might only block your view of the outfield, and most of the time you are focused on the infield anyway. So, only certain seats are likely to have their view of the infield obscured by pillars. As far as I can tell from old pictures of Ebbets Field, using 1913 technology, the pillars were placed anywhere from 10-30 feet apart. They seem to be more numerous behind the plate. Later stadiums that used pillars, for example, Candlestick Park and Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, were better designed and had pillars set farther apart. They also were built in the era of night baseball and did not have roofs supported by pillars. I think we can assume from comparison of these pictures of Ebbets Field that perhaps 10 percent of the seats at Ebbets Field had their view of the infield obscured by pillars. At Candlestick and Memorial Stadium, You could cut that percentage nearly in half, because there are no support columns blocking views from the upper deck, since there are no pillar supported roofs. And since greater spacing was used, even more blocked views were eliminated. Furthermore, at Memorial Stadium, the space behind the columns was utilized for walkways. So what percentage of seats there, or at Candlestick Park were obscured by columns? 4%? 3%? Is it worth it to eliminate 8,000 great seats in order to avoid blocking the views of 3 or 4 percent? Can't you just eliminate those seats that have blocked views of the infield? Rope them off, use the space for vending, or even restrooms? What about if you could find technological ways to cut the number of pillars in half? Now we are talking about 1.5-2% of seats having their infield view blocked. 2 percent of 40,000 is 800 seats.

I'm sure sitting behind a pillar is a drag. But I think it's clear that the pillar problem has not been solved to the benefit of the average fan. It's been solved in the cheapest way possible. It's clear that the problem of pillars is half-solved by the advent of night baseball. The rest of the problem can be solved with some combination of technology and elimination of approximately 2% of the seats at the back of the lower deck. However, baseball owners would rather use an uncreative, 1962 solution and hope the patrons are too distracted to notice. And distracting the fan is the name of the game these days, because if you don't, they're going to notice that they're paying an awful lot of money to be seated too far away to really appreciate the nuances of the game.

I think that what's happened to the popularity of baseball is that the game simply has less appeal when you're not close enough to it. And even though seating capacities have fluctuated over time, the number of great seats attainable to the average, middle-class fan has continued to decrease.

I think it's sad, because to me, a great opportunity existed to right this wrong and recreate the classic 1950's ballgame experience while modernizing amenities and engineering. And not one franchise has taken advantage of this opportunity. As a person that grew up watching games at Shea Stadium, it wasn't until I really began examining the construction of Citi Field and comparing it to Ebbets Field and Shea Stadium that I really began to understand what had happened. Now that virtually every bad stadium has been replaced with one that's almost just as bad or worse, it seems that the opportunity is lost for the next 50 years.

So, then, what should teams like the Mets have done when presented with an opportunity to build a new ballpark? I will outline some ideas below:

1. Hang the second deck over the lower deck in a way similar to Ebbets Field. Try to do it without pillars. Perhaps cantilevering would work. Perhaps the deck could be suspended by cables. I'm not an engineer, but I'm sure there is a way to do this. If you have to use pillars, use them, but set them as far back as you can and eliminate the worst seats behind them. Give the fans a chance to see a game from the superior perspective. If the Mets had done this, they may still have been second in prestige and history to the Yankees, but they would have a clearly superior ballpark for truly knowledgeable fan. This would be a turnabout of the previous situation. The Yankees handed the advantage to the Mets on a silver platter and it was there for the taking. The Mets, to use an apt metaphor, took a called strike three.

2. Be creative when it comes to adding luxury boxes. I realize that luxury suites are big moneymakers. But instead of simply putting them at the back of the lower deck and roping off the first bunch of rows of the stadium for the exclusive use of the rich, how about trying a few new things so that you don't have to be a reverse robin hood? Some examples:

a) The outfield wall is either blank or covered in advertisements. Why not put windows in it and put rich people behind those windows? You could do the same along the foul lines. The wealthy individuals and corporations can have seats just like those the players have in the dugouts. Without eliminating the second deck.

b) The geometric challenges in trying to jam as many people as possible around the baseball diamond, oriented toward that diamond, while still allowing those people to see the rest of the field, is kind of staggering if you really start to look at it. But it does create areas, such as the outfield corners, where vertical levels of suites would be a good use of space.

c) Some retractable dome stadiums have arched bridges over some of the grandstand. You can seat people in such places, as long as there is only one row of seats.

Bottom line? Luxury boxes are easy to squeeze into locations. Grandstands are not so easy. If you build the grandstand for the people, you can still find good places for the suites. If you build the grandstand for the suites, you can't find good places for the people.

Why did team owners have to build their stadiums for the wealthy and then convince the masses that it was built for them? Why not build it for the masses and convince the wealthy you built it for them? Then you're tricking less people. But even without trickery, when it comes to the awkward geometry of a baseball stadium, it just makes more sense to put the luxury suites where grandstands don't fit. If I may digress a bit, it seems that the practice of wealthy people making policies for the short term benefit of wealthy people, chock full of illusory benefits for non-wealthy people (who are summarily excluded), is the preferred activity of wealthy people these days. Even if those policies make no sense at all and cause trouble for everyone (even the wealthy people) a couple of years down the line. What's the f**king point of this sort of thing?

3. Instead of creating pale imitations of past fields that were quirky because of the land they were squeezed into, create quirks for the purpose of creating unique and special seating arrangements. For example, why not create a semicircular field level luxury suite jutting into the outfield? Luxury patrons could experience a view that would almost be like being a fourth outfielder. And don't treat asymmetry as some sort of stylistic holy grail. Instead, create quirks in order to accommodate fans better. Let form follow function. That's what the early ballpark pioneers did.

4. Don't cut capacity just for the hell of it, or to create scarcity. Cut capacity so that you can have an open end to see the city, or to make sure all seats are good seats.

Lets' think of it this way. In the mid-50's, Walter O' Malley wanted to increase capacity at Ebbets Field in order to get more revenue. But he couldn't expand the grandstand to right field, because there was a street there. And he couldn't add a third deck, probably because the building couldn't support the weight and/or the corridors couldn't support that many fans.

However, lets say you were to magically transport Ebbets Field to, say, the parking lot of Shea Stadium, an area with plenty of space all around. How would you expand it? Well:

1. You would widen the hallways and fan entrance/ exit areas. No problem. 2. You could extend the grandstand around toward right field. Again, no problem there. 3. Using modern construction techniques, you could eliminate half the pillars. 4. You could extend the upper deck backwards an additional 10 or 20 rows. Thanks to the cantilevering effect, you might be able to move the support pillars backward a few rows. 5. You could replace the pillar supported roof with a smaller, cantilevered roof. Roofs aren't so heavy. 6. You could put luxury boxes in the outfield wall, behind the screen in right field, or at the top of the second deck.

If you took these six steps, you'd have a ball park with plenty of bathrooms and food options, that is easy to get in and out of. There would be plenty of money to be made on luxury boxes. You'd have a capacity in the 40,000 range. But the difference is that for any given game, about 8,000 additional fans could enjoy a great view of the game. And 8,000 other fans could enjoy a decent view of the game, instead of a crappy one.

If you did this kind of stuff, it would be really revolutionary. Believe me, the first guy to put a second deck on a baseball grandstand was revolutionary and that person (whoever it was) reaped the benefits. and many others followed that trend - a trend that made a a place people would pay to get into, even if it smelled like stale beer and had inadequate plumbing. Dodger Stadium and all the stadiums that followed it tossed that revolution in the trash and instead rested on the laurels of baseball's reputation while providing an essentially inferior baseball viewing product. Every opportunity to correct this wrong has, to use another apt metaphor, swung and missed at an outside pitch. Until the 1960's, baseball stadiums had about 16,000 great seats, poor amenities and quirky dimensions thanks to their urban placement. Now, despite a generations worth of opportunities, we have 27 stadiums with about 8,000 great seats, great amenities, and quirky dimensions for no reason at all. They bring back a bit of the atmosphere, but none of the actual value of the golden age of baseball.

Here's a baseball stadium I designed which combines the circular feel of Shea Stadium with the grandstand profile of Ebbets Field. This stadium is very unique, but its uniqueness arises out of creative solutions to specific design objectives. It would be as chock full of bathrooms luxury boxes, and food outlets as the owners wanted it to be. In this design, there are a small number of seats in which pillars would obstruct view of the outfield. There would be some seats where the people might not be able to see foul territory all the way to the railing. A small number of patrons wouldn't be able to see small sections of the deep outfield (but less so than at Citi Field). Yet this stadium features seats in the prime baseball viewing area. Also, every single seat in this stadium is pointed toward the spot at which the pitchers foot lands while delivering his pitches. Because of this, the outfield walls have several curves in order to mimic the approximate field dimensions of Shea, while keeping the orientation of the outfield seats toward the front of the mound. One by-product of that is that it has a deep center field nook which brings to mind the Polo Grounds (a place the Mets actually once called home). The exterior façade could be made to mock Ebbets Field, or not. It is, after all, the Ebbets Grandstand profile we are after, not its exterior appearance. The field is symmetrical (since it will be built in the Citi Field parking lot where Shea used to be), but it's plenty quirky, because it does things which provide fans with unique and special baseball perspectives. Sigh. Well, I wish I had thought of this 10 or 15 years ago.

But there is one more chance for baseball's redemption. Over in Oakland, , the Athletics play in a circular dual use park. I went to this park twice. The first time, it reminded me a lot of Shea, it it's circular multi-sport utilitarian roundness. But it did have a nice view of the hills. Years later, that view had been blocked by an ill advised concession to the blackmail of , in order to get the Raiders back. The evil . Now, it's just plain awful.

The A's have been trying to get a downtown stadium built. They've had no luck in Oakland. They tried Fremont, but that fell through. Finally, the City of San Jose has been trying to woo them. They've got a stadium designed… and it's not designed by HOK. It's squeezed into a finite space, and… wait for it… it appears to have a luxury seating area at the top of a small upper deck hung out over the lower deck. Luxury boxes appear to be concentrated in a vertical area in right field.. and there appear to be… pillars! Alas, the claim San Jose as their area, and they have to approve the A's move there. But there is hope!

I think that once the sheen of the new HOK parks wears off, and our national recession continues, baseball's popularity will continue to wane and attendance will suffer. Baseball is not a game like Football, with 16 games and the playoffs. Baseball was born as an everyday game, something that was enjoyable to experience, even without playoff intensity. The vast majority of baseball games are episodes in a long marathon race. The game is won by doing the little things right. And each of the games is a beautiful little marathon as well. There is a patience, and a pastoral elegance to the game that provides a counterpoint to the hectic lives we lead. There are glorious grand moments, and moments of chaos and excitement, but the vast majority of moments in baseball are those where we are challenged to appreciate subtlety. The venue must allow us to enjoy this sport throughout every pitch and swing of the season, not just the playoff charged moments of extreme action.

Which brings me to my second point.

In the golden age of baseball, say, from the 1920's through 1957, there were two leagues. Never did the two leagues meet until the , when two teams who were strangers to each other would meet in an exotic showdown, the best of seven World Series (except for 1903, when it was best of 9). The season was a long slog to finish first. Most teams rarely succeeded in finishing first, but when they did, it was magical. It would mean they had clearly come out on top of their league and they would now compete for the World Series. But even if they lost that World Series, the Pennant was still a major accomplishment (notice that I capitalized it). Some guy was pretty excited when the Giants won one of those in 1951.

Nowadays, does anyone even know what a Pennant is?

Expansion has brought the league from 16 to 30 teams since 1960. Populations expand, businesses expand. Where there are customers, so will there go teams. I'm not advocating contraction. I can't - I'm a Met fan, after all. But today's six division winners plus two wild card playoff system has changed the game. Now, a season missing the playoffs is considered a failure. A season with a first place finish and a first round loss is considered a major drag. There are 14 American League teams and 16 National League teams. That's unfair. There is one division in the National League with 6 teams. There is one division in the American League with 4 teams. That's really unfair. Each year teams from the NL play some semi-random couple of teams from the AL - something like 12 games. That's also unfair, because teams that play interleague games against great teams are at a disadvantage in their divisional races. Plus, it ruins the mystery. It's like showing up to your first date naked.

How can we recapture the value of the pennant race with 30 teams? In the old system, it was almost certain that the two best teams got to the World Series. Multiple rounds of playoffs are OK in sports like Basketball and Football. But baseball is a different game. Each game is harder to predict, because a team is different every time a different pitcher takes the mound. And only baseball has the peculiar type of substitution where players are not allowed to go in the game once they've been taken out. Even great teams can have losing streaks and awful teams can have winning streaks. In baseball, to have the success of one's season undermined by the loss of a single seven game series undermines the meaning of the marathon that is the season. Even in football, teams with the best record get a first round bye to rest up. Can't we have the same thing in baseball? If we accept that change is inevitable, must we also accept the most mindless and uncreative of changes? If we must change the structure of baseball, can't we change it in a way that preserves the essence of what it means to have a successful season?

Until 1969, there were 4-7 playoff games. From 1969-198? there were 10-17 playoff games. Then, there were 12-21 playoff games. Now, there are 28-49 playoff games. Decreasing the number of playoff games would be a drag for revenue purposes. Or would it?

Here's an idea:

Add two teams to the American League. There would now be 16 teams per league.

Split them into two 8 game divisions. The winner of each division would play a 7 game series against the first place finisher of the other division of the league.

The winner of that matchup goes to the World Series. Where they play a best of 9 series. Strange, but hear me out. We expanded the number of teams. We expanded the number of rounds. Why can't we expand the number of World Series games? Best of 9. Win 5. Why not? It makes the World Series special. Shouldn't the World Series be special? Plus it's retro. Bring back the 1903 system. Can't get much more retro than that and still be playing baseball.

So. Two leagues. Two divisions per league. 8 teams per division.

Each team would play 22 games against it's 7 division rivals, equaling 154 games. Each team would play One (1) game against each of it's non-division league teams. Each team would play Zero (0) interleague games

162 games, 13-23 playoff games.

Why this makes sense: Each team would have an identical number of games against its seven divisional rivals as teams had in the golden age of baseball. There are no wild cards. You must win your division to advance to the playoffs. In order to win your division you have to beat out 7 other teams. There are no interleague games. (at least not ones that count in the standings. There could still be interleague exibition games).

The owners would hate this because it eliminates two playoff series' and 15-26 playoff games. But I think they can be sold on it. Why? Well, there is excitement in having so many games against a familiar team. Baseball, like any game, has heroes and enemies. The enemies will become better known. Also, there will be less team travel and travel expenses. They will also have 4 home games per year that will be their fans ONLY chance to see a team from the league for the next two years. It could be marketed, and it could be like having 4 guaranteed sellouts per year. You could also play 2 interdivision games per year against each team, and only 21 against your division rivals. And have 8 pretty much guaranteed sellouts per year. And play 163 games instead of 162. So you gain a game per year and 8 games that are special, once a season affairs. It's a bitch for travel, and you can't have an even home/away split. So I like the original idea.

Basically, instead of creating three divisions per league, you're really kind of creating two new leagues. You basically operate in the classic baseball way, except that there are now 4 leagues and a super-series.

Accordingly, there could be 3 all-star games. You'd have the National League all-star game, the American League all-star game, and the Major League all star game. One cool way to do it would be to have the winners of the NL and AL games face each other, so no player plays more than two games, and you play for your division only. The NL East all- stars would play against the NL West all stars, and the team that won would play the winner of the AL East / AL West matchup. That would be fun, and it triples the number of all-star venues per year. One of 4 divisions would get bragging rights (or home field in the series'.)

Yes, it would mean that the Mets only play the Dodgers and Giants once a year. So what?

You'd get two new expansion franchises, which for balance reasons you'd have to put in the western part of the country. Portland? ? ? Las Vegas? There are some pretty good options there. I like putting both these teams in the AL, rather than teams switching leagues again.

And two new Major League cities means two more opportunities to construct a good ballpark. 