The Camden Yards Era Is Done, What Do You Think
by BaltimoreSportsFan on Jul 10, 2009 5:19 PM EDT
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Starting next season with target the Camden yards era of ballparks will be done. The new era is what I call the "iBallpark" Look at Target Field the first one of the iBallparks
it looks very futuristic and doesn't try to look like Camden Yards or any other the new old school-new school parks. They are no longer going for the nostalgia factor, they're going for technology factor.
It's now "Look we have the biggest Jumbotronon the planet" Instead of "Look our ballpark has modern conveniences but it still looks like it from a by-gone era."
if you have a Blacberry or iPhone at the game you can order food, watch instant replay and a bunch of other stuff you can imagine you could do with a Smartphone at a baseball stadium.
And I want to know what do you think?
Do you welcome this new era of "iBallparks" or do wish all the stadium constructed would have that Camden Yards flavor to it?
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Better park then they have now
"You don't EVEN KNOW who Nick Markakis is"- .....My 4 year old daughter to another kid.
"I'll never play for New York"-The dumb one... Johnny Damon
"and hopefully never for the O's"-.....me
"I'm a Country Boy"- ......Alan Jackson
About your quotes
Jason Giambi said he’d never play for New York, either. He said he hated them after they knocked him out of the playoffs the first time. When they did it the next year, I guess he started liking the abuse a little bit.
My daughter said the same thing but she means it
"You don't EVEN KNOW who Nick Markakis is"- .....My 4 year old daughter to another kid.
"I'm a Country Boy"- ......Alan Jackson
i can order food with my iphone at camden yards
i call my buddy and ask for a hot dog. impressive use of technology there
by twistedlogic on Jul 10, 2009 5:31 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
funny!
Sliced bread is the best thing since Matt Wieters.
Crabcakes and The Ravens that's what Baltimore does, hon!
by BaltimoreSportsFan on Jul 10, 2009 5:34 PM EDT up reply actions
Don't forget
Those poeple called vendors who save me from getting up to go purchase another 7 dollar beer!!!!
One thing I love at Camden yards is the kid zone, where every food item is 1 dolla. My daughter really like hot dogs!
"You don't EVEN KNOW who Nick Markakis is"- .....My 4 year old daughter to another kid.
"I'm a Country Boy"- ......Alan Jackson
you can order crabcakes if you want, do you see vendors sellling those
Sliced bread is the best thing since Matt Wieters.
Crabcakes and The Ravens that's what Baltimore does, hon!
by BaltimoreSportsFan on Jul 11, 2009 4:26 PM EDT up reply actions
They should do whatever they like
when every park looks like camden, it kinda takes away from it. I like different places to actually look different.
Matt Wieters can get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop in under one lick.
i don't mean they look like photo copies of Camden Yards
I mean the flavor of it the old school-new school feeling and look
Sliced bread is the best thing since Matt Wieters.
Crabcakes and The Ravens that's what Baltimore does, hon!
by BaltimoreSportsFan on Jul 10, 2009 5:35 PM EDT up reply actions
yeah, but...
old school for the sake of old school is silly. cbp in philly has no business doing this b/c it’’s just sitting in the stadium complex. the shitty hotels and convention center notwithstanding, opacy captured the vibe of its surrounding neighborhoods and, of course, the warehouse. what’t the point of the ballpark in arlington?
i’ve said it before, but i’ll say it again: next to opacy, the new ballpark in pitt is my fave.
"If they pitch to you, make them pay."
--Diamond Dave to the Phenom
by j.q. higgins on Jul 10, 2009 5:47 PM EDT up reply actions
The shitty hotels
are new… except Holiday Inn. The Convention Center is a Dinosaur… whether or not you’re in the convention industry.
1933 was a bad year
by Senatorrosewater on Jul 12, 2009 1:26 AM EDT up reply actions
yea I got that
I didnt literally mean if they were all camden yards it’d be boring. I just meant that if every park is retro, then its boring. Let them do whatever they want.
Matt Wieters can get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop in under one lick.
Usually architecture that aims to reflect current technology, or worse attempts to be futuristic, quickly goes stale.
thats what I was thinking
look at everything built in the 70s.
Matt Wieters can get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop in under one lick.
Let me get this straight
An open air park in MINNESOTA with no roof or dome?
Oh, yeah, sign me up for season tickets in April and September. Are you allowed to build a fire by your seat to stave off hypothermia?
You know, there’s a reason the Vikings play in a dome there. It’s freakin’ cold there a lot of the year.
"We're not the other teams' farm system." - Andy MacPhail
The other way to look at it:
why watch baseball indoors in one of the few times all year where you can actually go outside?
In Minnesota in July, I’d be on my front porch with lemonade and the radio.
The stock market will never recover, our armies will never again be #1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of their lives - HST
by the fix is in on Jul 10, 2009 10:57 PM EDT up reply actions
In JUly? Sure.
But they play games in April, May, September, and October when the nights can get REALLY cold, too.
"We're not the other teams' farm system." - Andy MacPhail
The obvious answer to this problem
is a retractable roof
Jioe Flaacco, Hon!!! "He’s like a live JUGS machine."
One would think
I mean, Jerry Hoffberger drew one up on a napkin for a new Orioles park in the late 1960s. It’s not a new idea.
"We're not the other teams' farm system." - Andy MacPhail
My father, born and raised on a Minnesotan farm would always tell me
while we’d be shoveling snow in January: “THIS….IS…NOTHING GRRRR”
lol April is not cold for Minnesotans. It might be cold for the rest of the league. My father used to always tell us how much better the Vikings would be if they played outdoors. My dad was a 20 year old running for legislature, and the core of his campaign was “don’t build that fucking thing with taxpayers money”
The stock market will never recover, our armies will never again be #1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of their lives - HST
by the fix is in on Jul 11, 2009 2:29 PM EDT up reply actions
The weather in Boston
is not appreciably different and everyone seems to survive. Though it is puzzling.
by Awesome Mike Awesome on Jul 11, 2009 6:55 PM EDT up reply actions
can you only drive there in cars from 1991 or earlier?
for an artists rendition, they really dont try very hard. just sayin
Matt Wieters can get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop in under one lick.
the bottom left car looks like an SUV
those won’t even EXIST in two years.
June 30, 2009 — Birdland Day
Does it even have bricks?
Baseball stadiums need to be made of bricks.
The stadium should match it's environs.
What makes OPCY so special isn’t that it’s “retro”, it’s that it perfectly matches the surrounding area. The aim was to nestle a stadium downtown & make it look like downtown was built around it – and they wildly succeeded. The only other place that enters that area of perfection is the Pirates’ stadium. All the others (I’m looking at you, Cleveland) were blatant copycats that tried to look like Camden Yards without bothering to check if their surroundings looked like downtown Baltimore.
The spirit of Camden Yards was actually aimed for with the Nats’ park – they wanted it to blend in with downtown Washington. And it does, really. But all that does is expose how vanilla downtown Washington can look. Gee, white stone. If you don’t have the Roman columns or views of the other white stone buildings, it feels like another sterile government facility. Stadium fail.
Now, my con for the “iStadium” idea is that these “futuristic” designs won’t look so futuristic in 10 years. They’ll look like those houses that were built in the 60’s to look uber-modern that looked outdated as early as the 70’s.
It’s a neat idea, but I look at the conception above & think “The Jetsons”. Looks brand new until style takes a turn you weren’t expecting in 2-3 years. Then you end up way off-target when the actual future arrives.
From the Land of Pleasant Living...
Your first sentence
shows why whatever zoning official signed off on the Hilton should be impeached and imprisoned.
"We're not the other teams' farm system." - Andy MacPhail
yah, what duck said!
Sliced bread is the best thing since Matt Wieters.
Crabcakes and The Ravens that's what Baltimore does, hon!
by BaltimoreSportsFan on Jul 11, 2009 11:17 AM EDT up reply actions
Your beef is with University of Maryland Medicine.
The original design called for an elegant tower. The flight path of the Medivac forced the change into the hulking wall that is the Hilton.
That said, just because they couldn’t have a tower doesn’t mean they had to clad the upper half in that plastic-looking grey-silver stuff. The street level of the hotel actually looks quite nice. It’s that upper part that looks stupid.
From the Land of Pleasant Living...
I stil blame zoning
I mean, the Hilton is gonna build whatever you let them. But the zoning department was the one that could have required a design that met the needs of UM Medicine and not destroyed the best vista in sports.
I mean, you could be in Columbus, Ohio at OPaCY now, if Columbus had a big ol’ warehouse. You get no sense of the city at large from OPaCY now, and you used to. That building is a monstrosity and an affront to fans of the Orioles and architecture.
"We're not the other teams' farm system." - Andy MacPhail
Ehhh, I have to disagree on the orientation aspect.
Looking at before & after pictures, we’re missing the Bromo Seltzer Tower (unless you’re in RF) which is a loss. Other than that, we can’t see the parking lot that allowed us a view of 5-story buildings on Pratt Street. You can’t see the condos atop Redwood – which are newish anyway & not a landmark in any sense. You can’t see the amazingly outdated Holiday Inn. (A silver lining?)
You can still see Camden Station, you can still see the taller buildings on Pratt. The Zenith peeks over the LF light tower. You can still see the old Legg Mason building, Schaefer tower, BoA building…
I get the lament about the Bromo, that’s iconic Baltimore right there. But really, the limited view that we had out CF was of a section of downtown Baltimore that isn’t really part of the skyline, but below it. From seats in the upper deck behind home plate, the hotel only extends as much as an additional section of seats would.
I think it seems more intrusive because it’s not very attractive. The majority of that wall is behind the LF seating section & doesn’t affect the vista CF view at all.
From the Land of Pleasant Living...
i wish you could still see the maryland national bank building
but i don’t think it exists anymore, right?
the light colors of the “mn” used to be weather forecasts.
June 30, 2009 — Birdland Day
It's a beautiful building from the street.
Suckes ass when you’re sitting in the lower bowl at OPaCY and looking out.
"We're not the other teams' farm system." - Andy MacPhail
awesome 22 comments!
That’s a high for for me!
(and counting)
Sliced bread is the best thing since Matt Wieters.
Crabcakes and The Ravens that's what Baltimore does, hon!
by BaltimoreSportsFan on Jul 11, 2009 11:14 AM EDT reply actions
I love tech...
now as for tech in architectural design… while I actually very much like the look of it, I do agree that it’ll look outdated before the end of the world (Dec 2012, if you believe that an ancient civilization who couldn’t adapt to their own changing surroundings can predict what will happen some 400-500 years later). As for the actual tech… I totally dig being able to order from my phone and watching replay’s whenever I feel like it on my phone… TOTALLY dig it. The more tech the better, I always say.
Jioe Flaacco, Hon!!! "He’s like a live JUGS machine."
It blows my mind every time...
i remember that OPACY is 17 years old. 17!!!
1933 was a bad year
by Senatorrosewater on Jul 12, 2009 1:33 AM EDT reply actions
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