Take Me Out Of The Ballpark

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-baltimore-orioles-white-sox-stadium-hawthorne-20150430-colum.html

Fans locked out of Oriole Park at Camden Yards
Baltimore, Maryland
bostonglobe.com

Hello Everyone:

Baseball is one of the great American past times.  It is a game filled with much history and lore: the Black Sox scandal in 1919, Babe Ruth, Kirk Gibson's game winning home run in 1988, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battling for the single season home run title, and so forth.  Recently, baseball history was made again but not in a good way.  The recent civil unrest in Baltimore, Maryland, following the funeral of Freddie Gray, put Major League Baseball in a scheduling quandary.  Go ahead with the scheduled game between the hometown Orioles and the visiting Chicago White Sox or make it up another time.  The League opted to play the game, in an empty stadium, a first for the game.  Our intrepid architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne attended that game, reporting his observations in a short article, "Orioles-White Sox game: Baltimore's urban stadium becomes no-fans' land."  His story is a reminder of how the character of the game has changed from urban to suburban.

Empty Orioles Park at Camden Yards
latimes.com

The sight of a baseball game being played in an empty stadium was depressing.  In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly has never been much of a baseball fan but knows to root for the hometown Dodgers, but we digress.  The dialogue between the stadium architects and major-league sports owners has always been fraught with more tension than either side will care to admit.  Witness the ongoing struggle to build a new football stadium in Los Angeles.  Baseball used to be a game played by boys (always) in American cities. Increasingly, the game is being played by boys in the suburbs and from Latin American countries.  Mr. Hawthorne adds, "The number of African American major leaguers has declined from roughly 20% 30 years ago to about 8% today.  That growing estrangement of the sport from the black community became inextricable from architectural symbolism on Wednesday."  The allusion of the empty stadium to a scene from a movie about a viral epidemic Mr. Hawthorne uses seems apropos.

Scenes from a Major League Baseball first
reviewjournal.com

Baseball is sport that is as much about tradition as it is about acknowledging the changes in contemporary culture.  Traditions such as: the seventh inning stretch, making sense of the in-field fly ball rule  cold beer and hot dogs, peanuts and cracker jacks are passed down every season from one generation of fans to the next.  One tradition that fit this mold was decision to go ahead with game.  This decision, made by the team, upon the advice of police, to play the game, not postpone or move to another city played into this lock on tradition.

Orioles Park at Camden Yards was first of a new generation of downtown sports stadium.  Camden Yards is located in Baltimore's Inner Harbor area, near the downtown area.  Blogger disagrees with Mr. Hawthorne's assessment of the stadium, "Somewhat incongruously, these ballparks tend to combine nostalgic design touches like red brick with locations  in urban centers in need of a boost in invest and tourist spending."  If Mr. Hawthorne would have spent some time in downtown Baltimore, he would have realized that the red brick fit within the context of the Federalist-era (c.late 18th-early 19th century) architecture.

Entrance to Oriole Park at Camden Yards
HOK Sport, opened 1992
ballparkguide.com

 Oriole Park at Camden Yards, designed by HOK Sport (now called Populous), was a nostalgia trailblazer.  The antithesis of the bright shiny mid-century modern stadiums of the late fifties and early sixties that spoke of a glorious future.  Camden Yards was reminder of days gone by when fathers and sons would share a bonding moment while cheering for the home team. The stadium opened in 1992 and was part of a larger effort to resuscitate the Inner Harbor.

Blogger has another confession.  Yours truly has only experience the bright shiny mid century modern baseball stadiums but has visited Camden Yards. Honest impression was what a beautiful place to play baseball.  Blogger could have easily imagined Babe Ruth (a Baltimore native) or Lou Gehrig playing in a stadium like this one decades long ago.  The sight of two teams, playing the sport they love in an empty stadium was sad.  Sad in the thinking that this is not the way it is supposed to be.  Yours truly has been in empty buildings and there is a palpable sense of serenity, a baseball game played in an empty stadium was just depressing.  Let us hope that Major League Baseball, as well as other sports league, use this moment to address the disconnect between them and contemporary culture.