Fenway Park Ranked 21st in MLB by Red Sox Fans
Sports Illustrated released their rankings of the 30 ballparks around Major League Baseball. After polling thousands of fans of each franchise, the folks at SI have arrived at a comprehensive list of what they feel is "a measure of how satisfied fans are with their hometown ballpark experience." Seems reasonable enough. The top five? In order: Cleveland's Progressive Field, Milwaukee's Miller Park, Pittsburgh's PNC Park, Detroit's Comerica Park and St. Louis' Busch Stadium III. Fenway's not in the top five?... I guess that's alright. After all, those rigid wooden seats in the grandstands are pretty uncomfortable, and you typically have just as good a chance of having a slice of pizza hurled at your neck as you do of catching a foul ball. Moving on - Six through ten? Seattle's Safeco Field, Colorado's Coors Field, Chicago's US Cellular Field, Anaheim's Angel Stadium of Anaheim and Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park. Still no Fenway. And no Yankee Stadium or Wrigley Field, for that matter.
So where exactly does the Red Sox's stomping grounds rank?
21st.
Unacceptable. I get that each of the ten categories was weighed equally for the purposes of the survey, but shouldn't things like "Tradition" and "Team Quality" automatically and uniformly count more than junk like "Promotions" and "Traffic?" Uh, yes, they should. I don't care that this method would instantly put teams like the Marlins and Rays at a disadvantage because they were created in the 1990s and are historically bad franchises (the two teams have a combined 21 sub-.500 seasons, although the Marlins do have two World Series victories in their 15 full seasons). When you decide to go to the park (or in the vernacular, "paaahk"), what's more important in your decision to do so: the quality of the food and length of your commute, or the fact that the Sox play in one of the most historic sports-related landmarks of the past century and trot out a lineup containing a future Hall of Famer, an outgoing powerhouse of a DH and a handful of the most exciting young players in the game? Following this overall line of reasoning, there's no way that ballparks like Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field should be outside of the top ten. Ever. Milwaukee's Miller Park ranked second overall? Give me a break. Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium comes in at 12? I don't think so. We may have an overwhelming tendency to favor our hometown park because of our bias as Boston sports fans (in spite of the fact that it's unnecessarily expensive to go to games and the ideal patron height for just about every seat in the park is around 5-6), but I'll trust my own experience, which tells me that Fenway should be toward the top of the list, as opposed to relying on a severely flawed survey conducted by a group of folks that in all likelihood have never even been there.
So where exactly does the Red Sox's stomping grounds rank?
21st.
Unacceptable. I get that each of the ten categories was weighed equally for the purposes of the survey, but shouldn't things like "Tradition" and "Team Quality" automatically and uniformly count more than junk like "Promotions" and "Traffic?" Uh, yes, they should. I don't care that this method would instantly put teams like the Marlins and Rays at a disadvantage because they were created in the 1990s and are historically bad franchises (the two teams have a combined 21 sub-.500 seasons, although the Marlins do have two World Series victories in their 15 full seasons). When you decide to go to the park (or in the vernacular, "paaahk"), what's more important in your decision to do so: the quality of the food and length of your commute, or the fact that the Sox play in one of the most historic sports-related landmarks of the past century and trot out a lineup containing a future Hall of Famer, an outgoing powerhouse of a DH and a handful of the most exciting young players in the game? Following this overall line of reasoning, there's no way that ballparks like Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field should be outside of the top ten. Ever. Milwaukee's Miller Park ranked second overall? Give me a break. Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium comes in at 12? I don't think so. We may have an overwhelming tendency to favor our hometown park because of our bias as Boston sports fans (in spite of the fact that it's unnecessarily expensive to go to games and the ideal patron height for just about every seat in the park is around 5-6), but I'll trust my own experience, which tells me that Fenway should be toward the top of the list, as opposed to relying on a severely flawed survey conducted by a group of folks that in all likelihood have never even been there.
Comments