Ballpark tours field dreams of baseball fans

Milwaukee's Miller Park, pictured earlier this month, offers a mix of old and new with a high-tech convertible roof and a traditional brick facade. Courtesy Scott Paulus/Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club

In this story: Rounding the bases Going retro Two new parks on deck Old but not obsolete Plan ahead RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Thurston Hatcher
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- While other families vacationed at national parks and amusement parks, Brian Merzbach's family visited ballparks.

He's a grownup now, but the tradition lives on for the 27-year-old IBM programmer, who heads out with his brother each summer to explore America's baseball Meccas.

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"I don't know too much about architecture, but I like to see the way they're built and the unique aspects that have been put into them, especially the older parks," said Merzbach, a Wappingers Falls, New York, resident who has visited 100 pro and minor-league parks so far.

He's among a considerable contingent of fans who will head to the ballparks after the first pitch on Opening Day this Sunday -- not just to root for a team, but also to take in the atmosphere of an unfamiliar arena.

Rounding the bases

The number of fans who want to visit different ballparks is "huge," said Jay Smith, president of Hatfield, Massachusetts-based Sports Travel and Tours, which offers a variety of stadium-tour packages around the country. "It's the best-kept secret in America."

Although his agency also offers packages in other sports, there's something about those baseball fans and their ballparks.

"We get numerous comments time and time again -- 'My goal in life is to see every ballpark in the country.' It's just fascinating," Smith said earlier this week. "The team they love or games themselves are secondary to actually getting to the ballpark."

Smith's biggest -- and most expensive -- baseball tour takes fans to 30 Major League Baseball stadiums over a month during July and August, starting with Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, and finishing at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec.

That's followed by a two-day visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Prices -- hang on to your cap -- start at $6,675.

The company also offers smaller, more affordable tours, including "Southern Exposure" in Florida and Atlanta, Georgia; the "Midwest Express," which goes to Chicago, Illinois, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Detroit, Michigan, and Toronto, Ontario; and a tour of the West that visits parks Seattle, Washington, and Oakland and San Francisco, California.

But Smith said his Eastern programs -- taking in such classic sites as Yankee Stadium in New York, Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, and Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland -- are the most popular.

Going retro

Contributing to the tour phenomenon is a ballpark building boom that has occurred over the last decade.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards led off the trend when it opened in 1992, instantly ushering in a new era of baseball stadium design and sending to the showers the colorless, multipurpose stadiums of the 1970s.

Designed by the Kansas City architectural firm of Helmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Oriole Park is a baseball-only stadium that borrows from the past. With its steel trusses and brick facade, it blends into the old port city's industrial landscape.

Others have since followed suit with aesthetically pleasing, retro-style stadiums that offer bigger and better varieties of food, luxury boxes, field- fronting restaurants and amusements for kids.

Classic stadiums, like Baltimore's Camden Yards, are the most popular with tourists

One of the latest is Enron Field in Houston, Texas, which has a retractable roof and a glass wall that gives fans a view of the city skyline. It boasts a 48,000-pound locomotive running along 800 feet of track just off left- center field.

Enron came out on top in a survey of Sports Travel tour participants, earning the highest marks for its views of the field, acoustics, restroom cleanliness and scoreboard information. It also gained strong ratings for seat comfort and staff friendliness.

Another site earning high marks is Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco, which debuted last year and replaced gusty Candlestick Park. The park -- "Pac Bell," as it's widely known -- is closer to downtown and has a sweeping view of San Francisco Bay.

The list goes on: Safeco Field, which replaced Seattle's drab Kingdome in 1999; Coors Field in Denver, Colorado; Jacobs Field in Cleveland, Ohio; and Turner Field in Atlanta.

Two new parks on deck

This April, two more parks are set to open in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Like so many of the newer parks, Miller Park in Milwaukee offers a mix of old and new with a high-tech convertible roof complemented by retro manual scoreboards and a traditional brick facade. It replaces venerable Milwaukee County Stadium.

In Pittsburgh, PNC replaces Three Rivers Stadium, which disappeared in a cloud of dust after a demolition earlier this year. The first official game in the new park takes place April 9 when the Pirates host the Cincinnati Reds.

Pirates officials say their new ballpark is the first with a two-deck design to be built in the United States since Milwaukee's County Stadium was finished in 1953.

Old but not obsolete

Despite the popularity of the newfangled parks, some purists remain dedicated to the rapidly diminishing historic parks. Merzbach, who recalls visiting parks with his family, is one.

"There are some new parks that are quite nice, but I think the older parks have more unique aspects to them," he said. "I think a lot of the new parks are just being built in a cookie-cutter fashion."

Tops on many must-see lists are two of the Major League Baseball's oldest parks, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Boston's Fenway Park.

Fenway has had a few facelifts over the years, but remains fairly similar to the original structure that opened in 1912. As the smallest park in the major leagues, it holds fewer than 34,000 people, and there's talk of replacing it. Still, it's Merzbach's favorite.

"I might be a little bit biased, because I'm a Red Sox fan. It's just a great atmosphere there," he said.

Wrigley Field has also undergone several renovations since its opening in 1914, the most notable being the addition of lights in 1988, but it's still a relic from an earlier baseball era. Although announcer Harry Caray's not around anymore to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," it still has the distinctive ivy first planted there in 1937.

Plan ahead

If none of the Sports Travel tour itineraries works for you, the agency and others like it can design custom vacations to suit your schedule and interests.

Or you can do it all on your own. For help, Fodor's "Ballpark Vacations" guide looks at major and minor league stadiums across the country and offers tips on itineraries, lodging and places to eat.

Merzbach recommends doing a little advance work. He usually starts lining up tickets and lodging early in the year, months before hardwood cracks against horsehide.

"When you're trying to hit a park every day, just going out on the road can be hit or miss," he said. "You really have to plan."

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