John Meunier still remembers the first time he walked into a baseball park. It was at the Polo Grounds in 1957. He was an undergraduate fresh from his native England, studying architecture in New York City. Some friends took him to see the national pastime of the country that has since become his home. He remembers what he thought when he came through the dark tunnel and out into the sunlight, and saw for the first time that magical expanse of green, Nature held captive in the midst of the city's stone and brick. He thought what a lot of fans think every time they walk into a ballpark:
"I couldn't believe how beautiful it was."
As a fan who has come to appreciate the intricacies of infield shifts in the late innings, and as dean of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State University, Meunier has things to say about the baseball stadium that might be built in Phoenix. This imaginary structure, of course, is dependent upon the city's capturing one of the National League's expansion teams, something that won't be decided until next year.
To listen to John Meunier talk about what the new baseball stadium should be is to hear a visionary conjure up a city of gold--verdant walls covered with cooling green plants, sun-shielding fabrics creating dappled shadows as the sun dips low at game time, sprayers gently wafting comforting mist as fans file toward their seats, everything but a good young shortstop from the Dominican turning the double play. But John Meunier doesn't have a thing to do with deciding what the new baseball stadium should look like. And that's too bad. That decision, for the past few months, has been in the hands of Lamar Whitmer and the Maricopa County Sports Authority, the municipal corporation formed to bring baseball to Phoenix, and to build a stadium to put it in when it gets here.
And for months, the Maricopa County Sports Authority has been talking about a dome.
People who do not follow the game closely cannot know the effect the word "dome" has on a true baseball lover. They cannot know it is as the sound of a fingernail across a blackboard. They cannot know that baseball fans regard April 12, 1965, the date of the first game in the Astrodome, as a day that will live in infamy. They cannot know that domes inevitably gave rise to plastic playing surfaces, and that the two MD120 Col 1, Depth P54.02 I9.03 together are regarded by baseball purists much like Famine and Pestilence are regarded in the Apocalypse, as the beginning of the end of the world.
The question of dome versus open-air stadium is not just a question of architecture. It is a question that pits baseball fanatics--the kind of folks who don't leave during rain delays--against people who go to a game because there's nothing on TV. It pits the cognoscenti who think a pitcher's duel is utterly fascinating against the unlettered for whom the designated hitter was invented. It pits the people who think baseball is the highest form of activity on Earth against people who think baseball is a product that needs marketing. It is a question that pits the romantic against the bureaucrat, the dreamer against the accountant.
The question of whether to build a dome or an open-air stadium arises whenever baseball moves to a place with too much rain, like Seattle, too many mosquitoes, like Houston, or too much cold, like Montreal. The dome question has also arisen in Phoenix, now that baseball could be moving to a place thought to have too much heat.
Because of that heat, the Maricopa County Sports Authority has placed on the open-air advocates the burden of proving that it is possible to sit quietly, drink beer and enjoy a ball game of a summer night in Phoenix without dying of heat prostration. Or, as Lamar Whitmer, president of the Maricopa County Sports Authority puts it, "The big question is how comfortable an open-air stadium is perceived to be in this community, and I'm unsure of that."
So, the Maricopa County Sports Authority refuses to stop talking about a dome. It refuses to stop talking about a dome even though two weeks ago, it told its chosen architect to draw an open-air stadium cooled by misters. "This is not a decision," said Lamar Whitmer then. "In the final analysis, we might be looking at a dome." The Maricopa County Sports Authority, as if in the grip of an obsession, told its architect to draw an open-air stadium that could accommodate a dome, which would presumably be affixed if global warming continues apace, and people begin perishing in unseemly numbers at games.
But the Maricopa County Sports Authority is also talking about a retractable dome, like the one in Toronto, which will cost even more than Col 3, Depth P54.02 I9.03 has finagled his way into pitching batting practice for the Red Sox, and who thinks when push comes to shove, you go with your gut instinct. And his gut instinct tells him God intended baseball to be played on grass in an open-air stadium. And that you can make more money that way.
A city that has watched the resounding failure of the Cardinals while 10,000 people greet the Suns at the airport has to look at what makes a sports franchise successful. Part of it is having a team that is good. But the stadium also has to be a place that people like.
"The long-term health of the franchise is closely tied to the feel of the ballpark," says Stone, who does not tire of pointing out that four out of the five lowest-drawing teams play in domes.
The question of whether Phoenix should build a dome or an open-air stadium will come up once more this week, when Martin Stone and the Maricopa County Sports Authority meet. One thing still up in the air is whose voice will be louder once the shouting starts, and that, like so much else, depends on money. Ideally, Stone and the Sports Authority will reach a consensus on such matters as design and financing; in actuality, the more money Martin Stone agrees to put up-front, the more he will be listened to.
The question of dome versus open-air stadium is not simply an academic one pitting baseball purists--people who hate Astroturf, domes and the designated hitter rule--against people who take in a ballgame the way they take in a movie, and don't really notice that the pitcher isn't batting.
Any structure large enough to cost $100,000,000 and housing an activity that will get it on national television has practical implications for the direction of Phoenix's development, and more abstract implications for Phoenix's definition of itself. The siting of the stadium will test Phoenix's commitment to the preservation of viable downtowns, as its design will test the city's commitment to good architecture. A major league baseball club, following on the heels of the town's acquisition of an NFL football team, will push Phoenix into the big time.
As Bob Di Biasio, vice president of public relations for the Cleveland Indians, says, "If you don't have our game, you're not a major city."
What Phoenix decides is of overriding importance. A dome somewhere in the suburbs will chart a Col 2, Depth P54.10 I9.14 game. Fenway is beneficent to left- handed batters like Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Wade Boggs, because they can pick up the spin of the ball as it comes at them, nicely silhouetted against the Green Monster. Scouts keep those kinds of things in mind.
These old fields were also lovely to look at. Ebbets had a marble entrance and chandeliers in the shape of bats. Shibe was a neo-classical palace, with arches, columns and a dome. From the street, they looked like buildings. From the air, they were almost invisible because they were part of the fabric of the city.
In the 1960s, however, many of these old fields were wearing out. The structures that replaced them not only lacked charm, but seemed to go out of their way to avoid it, just like they seemed to go out of their way to avoid the cities they allegedly represented. From the air, Anaheim Stadium shows up as flotsam in an ocean of cars out in some suburban No Man's Land. As playing fields, the 1960s stadiums were compromises, "multipurpose" arenas that ended up misserving both the football and baseball they tried to accommodate. And as architecture, they were interchangeable. Places like Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati are routinely referred to as "concrete doughnuts," which they indeed resemble, and dismissed as "cookie cutter," because they all looked alike.
As Richie Hebner, the gravedigger who became third baseman for the Pirates in the 1970s, said, "I stand at the plate in Philadelphia and I honestly don't know whether I'm in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis or Philly. They all look alike."
No one could ever confuse Ebbets Field with the Polo Grounds. The Polo Grounds was the one with the weird notch in the outfield. Ebbets was where Hilda Chester rang her cowbell and screamed at you in a Brooklyn accent.
The new stadiums made baseball drearier. But they did more than that. They were bad architecture, and so they coarsened the cities they were in and dispirited the very lives of the people who saw ballgames there. Anyone who watched the National League Championship Series can attest to the gracelessness with which Riverfront and Three Rivers fit into their cities; it says something about a work of architecture when it looks better at night.
