A Ballpark Pattern Language

Abandoning the questions of style, designer, team, wall dimensions and heights, site plan, financing, and the myriad other factors that complicate the situation, there are simple requirements that a new baseball park must meet in the early 21st century. To borrow a phrase from one of Christopher Alexander’s brilliant books, this is a simple “pattern language” for ballpark design.

Within this section, I am ignoring the limitless variations possible when it comes to design, and largely ignores the amenities and aesthetics which makes each park unique. There are many different ways I would approach solving these issues, but everything must begin with solving those fundamental problems that have plagued stadiums for decades.

Requirements:
First, we should consider those who spend the greatest amount of time viewing the park itself: that is the fan at home. When watching a game at the Metrodome, the viewer sees a high wall with a cutout window and an air vent. This immediately creates a separation between the ballpark and the person at home, as we cannot subconsciously picture ourselves at the game. Thus, seating must be located at or slightly above field level behind the plate.

Conversely, in the outfield, many older ballparks (The circle clones, Kingdome, Metrodome, etc) had retractable seating, necessitating large, high walls that both distanced fans from the action and created an unsightly dead space in a highly visible area of the park. One of the benefits of the recent stadium boom was the return of reasonable wall heights, after years of awkward retracted seats. Fans can sense the temporary nature of this arrangement, and it only serves to lessen the appeal of the park. Any high wall must be offset by an aesthetic or functional element, such as a permanent scoreboard, or high walls should be abandoned altogether. This also includes a creative solution for the batter’s eye, instead of simply blocking off seating.

This segues nicely into the seating questions themselves. There are two main arrangements for foul ground seating: The Angel Stadium arrangement where seats extend in a straight line from the backstop to the foul pole, and the HoK method of highly angling the entire seating structure, most notably in The Ballpark at Arlington. There are benefits and disadvantages to each, but sightlines must be considered.

If you design the former, the seating bowl towards the foul pole will be facing center field instead of home plate. In this case, seats must be individually angled towards the plate to enhance the comfort of the guests. For the HoK method, the seating bowl cannot be angled too highly towards the infield, as fans miss out on an entire section of the ballpark deep into the corners. The right field at Arlington is so high that anyone sitting in the infield simply cannot see the corner, while it is unsightly to see a giant wall casting shadows over that corner of the park.

Seating sections, particularly those in the upper deck, must be able to view at least 90% of the field. Yankee Stadium’s upper deck provides the most telling example, as the corners are “pinched” in the corners, thus blocking a sizable portion of the field. The Green Monster seats, by necessity, also block out the majority of left field due to the wall’s height, a problem that should not arise in any new purpose-built ballpark.

For individual seating sections themselves, there are questions of egress and comfort. Rows should not be longer than 60’, roughly 20 seats, as it is uncomfortable for everyone to climb back into the row after a trip to the concourses. In reaching the concourses, there should be multiple access and exit points, so guests are not forced to all head the same way after the conclusion of a game. This goes both for a section-by-section case and for the park itself, as there must be multiple ways to reach the concourses, and then multiple ways to exit the venue itself.

Concourses, clearly, must all be wide enough to comfortably handle the attendance, and the same goes for concessions and bathroom capacity. Additionally, concessions should be as evenly distributed across the park as possible. Guests should not have to trek from their upper deck seat in left field down to a specific stand deep in the right field corner for a specific type of food. This economically benefits the clubs, as the increased access better entices potential buyers.

All ballparks should offer complete access to all public areas. Until the purchase by the new owners, fans in the bleachers at Fenway could not walk around the rest of the park. Yankee Stadium bleacher tickets do not include Monument Park, and are barred from the remainder of the stadium. Fans should be able to walk completely around the park, unless there is a specific logistical obstruction. Apart from Fenway Park’s Green Monster, there should be no reason fans cannot walk 360º around the field, so as to better appreciate the park from all angles, and so fans may better orient themselves to their surroundings.

The design should provide ample space away from individual seats for fans to visit during the game. HoK has done a good job of ringing the seating bowls with standing sections where you can eat while watching the game, as this greatly enhances the feeling of freedom while in the park.

Scoreboards must be visible from every seat in the park, and must include every necessary piece of information. At certain parks, like US Cellular Field, the pitch count is only located in one place, making it impossible to view from certain sections. Likewise, important details such as OBP and SLG should be routinely shown around the park, not simply on the largest scoreboard.

These are but simple, basic requirements for a contemporary ballpark. The variations, and my own specifications on what each part should instead of must have, are where the design truly becomes interesting. This is not a comprehensive list, but it should act as a good base for future installments. In the end, hopefully we can have a park that addresses everyone’s needs better than that of the current crop of ballparks.