|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Then and NowIn the year 2000
Though the MLBTrip2000 team officially hates the Giants, we acknowledge that they were, in part, responsible for inspiring us to make this trip happen. The new stadium in San Francisco, which opened in 2000, was another domino to fall across the stadium landscape. Candlestick, the stadium where the giants played before 2000, was a terrible place to watch a game, even if you liked the giants. And when Pacific Bell Park opened in 2000, Mike and Tim were both living near San Francisco defending the charm of our beloved home team’s grounds – Dodger Stadium – against all the annoying giants fans we encountered daily at our schools in Northern California. We knew San Francisco and it was clear already after only a few months that they were right. The new stadium would revitalize an abandoned area of the city and give San Francisco baseball fans what was missing at our home stadium in Los Angeles – a connection to the city itself and a new love for baseball.
San Francisco was an example at our doorstep of the trend started by the city of Baltimore, which revitalized the area and its relationship to baseball with the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992, which replaced Memorial Stadium. Cities and teams across the league started rethinking the core purpose of the stadium model, shifting focus to baseball-specific facilities and better integration into the cities themselves so that people could experience the game rather than just drive in and drive out.
Ever since Camden Yards opened, stadiums started dropping like flies and we didn’t want to miss out on the classic fields we saw on TV. Had our trip been in 1994, we would have experienced seven different stadiums: Pac Bell Park opened in 2000, Seattle replaced the Kingdome in 1999, Denver gave the Rockies Coors Field in 1995, Cleveland opened Jacobs Field in 1994, Detroit replaced Tiger Stadium in 2000, Houston replaced the Astrodome in 2000, and Phoenix opened Bank One Ball Park in 1998. Change was happening. And we wanted to see it.
It turned out, 2000 was a pretty good year to see the transition up close. Three out of the first four stadiums on the tour – Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, Safeco Field in Seattle, and Coors Field in Denver – were new and while on the road, we witnessed construction of new ballparks in Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. And after seeing the handful of cities including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati still clinging on to the multi-purpose concrete monstrosities of old, MLBTrip2000 officially fell in love with the new. Well, except in a few locations. Time to get back on the roadSince the summer of 2000, when the MLBTrip2000 team watched a game in all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums, the ball park landscape has once again turned over. There are 14 new stadiums. Mostly the new stadiums are in the same city as in 2000, however, the “Montreal Expos” are now the “Washington Nationals” and the “Oakland Athletics” are transitioning to a new ball park in Las Vegas but currently in Sacramento. On the map above, the red line is the general route we took in 2000 and the Blue Checks show the stadiums we have visted. The Red crosses indicate the ones we have not seen. The green checks (only one as of 2026) indicate the new stadiums that we have seen since 2000. The table below links to new game updates and and indicates which ones we have already done and which are “coming soon”, which means the MLBTrip2000 Team is due for a visit.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
