A new stadium in St. Louis, new seats in Boston, a deeper and higher fence in Philadelphia and discounts at Tampa Bay are among the changes fans will notice this season.
The new Busch Stadium in St. Louis, a US$365 million ballpark with an eventual capacity of 46,861 and views of the Gateway Arch, will be on display when the Cardinals play their home opener on April 10 against the Milwaukee Brewers.
The old Busch Stadium, which was demolished late last year, was 40 years old and one of the multipurpose stadiums built during the 1960s and 1970s. The football Cardinals and Rams also played there. It was where Bob Gibson struck out a World Series-record 17 Detroit Tigers in 1968, where Lou Brock broke the single-season stolen-base record in 1974 and where Mark McGwire surpassed Roger Maris with his 62nd homer in 1998.
PHOTO: AP
At Fenway Park in Boston, the inducements include additional seats, the upgrading of some seating areas and a new sound system. Chicago's Wrigley Field has gotten bigger, too, with the addition of 1,800 bleacher seats. And at Dodger Stadium, every seat has been replaced.
"The common theme in all this is creating new premium seats out of old space," said Kevin Reichard, the editor of ballparkdigest.com, a Web site that compiles news and reviews about major and minor league stadiums. "The Cubs will be charging US$60 for the new bleacher seats, which will be in their own little section. At Fenway and with the Red Sox, it's another case of creating new premium seats out of old space. Same thing at Dodger Stadium."
Committed to playing at Fenway well into the future, the Red Sox have continually tinkered with their 94-year-old ballpark in recent years, trying to modernize and enlarge it while maintaining the sense of history that has made it an icon.
This season, Fenway's capacity will increase by 2,507, to 38,805. Eight rows of seats have been added to rooftop boxes, and the former .406 Club, a glass-enclosed seating area behind home plate, has been reconfigured. The area has been divided into two levels, and the large window that had been in front of the seats has been removed. The lower level of the section will include heated seats.
"We are constantly looking into areas where Fenway might fall short of major league standards," said Janet Marie Smith, the Red Sox' senior vice president for planning and development. "In so many qualitative measures, we are far above standards and those are the things we want to preserve. We want to improve Fenway Park but make sure the magic doesn't wear off."
At Wrigley Field, which opened in 1914, the additional bleacher seats will increase the capacity to 41,118. Because the new seats extend outward from the field, the team was forced to buy sidewalk from the city of Chicago to ensure that the seats remained on the team's property.
At Dodger Stadium, 50,000 seats have been replaced. The seats are again yellow, blue, light orange and turquoise, their colors when the stadium opened in 1962. And the box-seat area has been modernized and widened and will include tables, while a picnic area has been built on the loge level.
Bigger may not necessarily mean better at every ballpark, however, though fan comfort still seems to be the goal.
In Oakland, a spokesman for the Athletics said the team would like to make McAfee Coliseum more intimate. Capacity has been reduced to 34,077 -- the smallest in the majors -- from 44,073. The third deck of the stadium has been closed and covered with a tarp. The Athletics used the third level only 19 times last season, when they drew an average of 26,040.
"Our goal is to create a more intimate ballpark atmosphere," a team spokesman, Jim Young, said. "We've had a cavernous stadium setting. We want to offer fans better seating alternatives at comparable prices. From surveys we've conducted and from feedback we've received, the views from those seats was among the worst in baseball. The demand for those seats didn't justify making them available anymore."
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays also play in a cavernous stadium, the domed Tropicana Field. They drew a major league-low 14,052 fans a game there last season. Without the luxury of being able to sell quality seats with expensive price tags, the management of the Devil Rays has decided to make a day at the ballpark more affordable for the team's fans.
Stadium parking, which cost US$10 last season, will be free, the team said, and ticket and concession prices have undergone modest reductions. The menus have also been changed to appeal to health-conscious fans, with apples, fruit cups and milk added to the traditional ballpark fare.
"This was done to make a statement that we are going to do things differently here," said the Devil Rays' president, Matthew Silverman. "We wanted to get the attention of the community and let them know that the Rays are under new ownership and are heading in a new direction."
There will be changes in other cities as well. In Philadelphia, fans may see fewer homers at hitter-friendly Citizens Bank Park, where the left-field fence was moved 5 feet farther from the plate and made 30 inches taller.
In San Francisco and in Arizona, existing ballparks have new names. The Giants will now play in AT&T Park, which is the former SBC Park. The Diamondbacks will play in Chase Field, formerly known as Bank One Ballpark.
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