Hopefully this website has helped you with some decent Guaranteed Rate Field tips…I would have liked to know about that Comiskey Burger. But here are a few extras things you might like to check out while you’re at the “Rate” (sigh).

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Because when you think youth baseball, you think Xfinity.

Extra Guaranteed Rate Field Tips, #1: The Fundamentals Kids Zone. The Comcast FUNdamentals area is located in the left field corner…kids can play on a wiffle ball field, and learn all kinds of baseball skills completely free of charge. It’s really impressive, as if the White Sox were attempting to make up for not having a kids zone for years.

It is also accessible from the upper level, so you don’t have to spend for a lower level seat just to bring the kids to happy zone. Nearby is a “Rookie’s Club” selling kid-sized portions of food.

Before all those big buildings were there, you could see Wrigley from here.

Extra Guaranteed Rate Field Tips, #2: The View From The Upper Level. As mentioned before, if you have an upper level seat you aren’t allowed in the lower sections. But it’s not all bad, since the ramps are on the northern side of the ballpark, and at the top on a clear day you can have a fine view of the Chicago skyline. This is even worth the trip if you’re sitting in the lower level to begin with.

When they put lockers in for towels, it’s gonna rock.

Extra Guaranteed Rate Field Tips, #3: The Rain Room. The Rain Room in the large outfield concourse area is a throwback to the days of late White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who never ran out of ways to improve the baseball experience for fans. It is a small area where fans can duck out of the heat and have a cool mist sprayed on them. The original shower was brought over from the old Comiskey, but is only on display now as an ad for some plumbing outfit. If you want to get some odd looks, head for the Rain Room during an April night game.

There are also the player statues in the outfield, the tailgating scene before the game, and the humorous special promotions the White Sox feature, like 80s Mullet Night (OK, my past mullet isn’t something I’d admit to…not for upper level tickets, anyway). All good stuff. But these are three of my favorite Guaranteed Rate Field tips.

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I have great respect for White Sox fans. It can’t be easy. For all of the romanticizing of the 86-year championship drought endured by Red Sox fans and the continuing looking to next year that Cubs fans endured, White Sox fans never seemed to garner any sympathy for the 88 seasons that they pulled for the Pale Hose without seeing a championship.

Surely, thousands of fans attended games through their entire lives without ever once seeing their heroes on top of the baseball world.

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2001 was year 84 of the drought.

In the years from 1919 to 2005 after the Black Sox, the White Sox had four playoff appearances, losing in the first round of each one…the World Series of 1959, the American League Championship Series of 1983 and 1993, and the League Division Series of 2000. They had experienced almost every bit the level of futility as the Red Sox or Cubs, if not the devastating near misses. Yet the White Sox seemed to garner nowhere near the compassion.

One possible reason is, of course, the so-called Curse of the Black Sox. Bambino and Billy Goat curses are easier for fans to pour their heart into…after all, what did Ted Williams or Carl Yastrzemski or Ernie Banks or Ryne Sandberg do to deserve to never win a title in their careers? But it seems more just for the baseball gods to punish a team that desecrated the sanctity of the World Series.

To this day the biggest names associated with the White Sox to most fans are Charles Comiskey, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver and Eddie Cicotte…names that are just as well known (thanks partly to Eliot Asinof and Hollywood) as Frank Thomas, Luke Appling, Harold Baines or owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who paid for the 2005 championship drought-ending team. Even if you are sympathetic to Shoeless Joe, as many fans are, that can’t be an easy legacy to champion.

I’ve asked some White Sox fans what they think is the reason the Sox’s drought gets dismissed in comparison. The consensus is generally that while the Black Sox may have something to do with it, there are some other possible reasons too.

For one, White Sox never seemed to suffer the colossal near misses that the Red Sox did.

They probably figured they’d be putting up another banner well before 2004.

The Red Sox made four World Series in their 86-year drought; each one went seven games and ended in a Red Sox loss. In 1986 the Red Sox blew a two-run lead in the tenth inning of Game 6, coming within one strike of winning the Series before a ground ball trickled through Bill Buckner’s legs.

The Curse of the Bambino was by far the easiest of all to really believe in, given the crushing defeats that always seemed to befall the Red Sox. Until the NLCS of 2003 and the infamous Bartman game, the Cubs seemed to simply suffer from a usually incompetent roster more than a black cloud waiting to unceremoniously deflate fragile hopes.

Another reason a White Sox fan suggested to me is the lack of a well-known rivalry with a team whose success on the field has been the opposite of futility. The Red Sox have, of course, the fierce rivalry with the Yankees that has lasted ever since the sale of Babe Ruth to the Bronx. The Yankees are the most successful team in major sports history, with 27 World Series championships.

In second place in World Series titles is the St. Louis Cardinals…who scored a miraculous 11th in 2011, and who were for many years the Cubs’ biggest rival. While interleague play has turned Cubs and White Sox fans into snarling crosstown enemies, the Cubs fans rivalry with Cards fans is still going pretty strong.

Don’t worry, we’ll get another star pitcher when Feller retires.

By contrast, the White Sox have never had a team in their division racking up titles and bringing crowing fans into Comiskey/U.S. Cellular/Guaranteed Rate from out of town.

There’s a rivalry of sorts with the Indians, but the Tribe has been enduring a pretty long championship drought of its own—64 years as of this writing and probably counting. White Sox fans don’t care much for Tigers fans, but the Tigers have only put four titles on the board, just one more than the Sox.

Then there’s the characterization of the teams’ fan bases.

Two directions…two entirely different baseball worlds.

Wrigley Field and Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago are separated only by a half-hour train ride on the CTA Red Line. But they might as well be in different countries. At Wrigley a baseball game is a celebration that engulfs the entire neighborhood, from the rooftops of nearby houses to the drinking establishments where the party often continues, win or lose.

At Guaranteed Rate, fans are there to see a game, and the only partying is in the parking lots—although there is a considerable amount of happy times there. There is almost no ballpark neighborhood to speak of, and the South Side has a reputation for being a place people don’t want to be at night, so if you’re not interested in baseball, you’re less likely to enjoy yourself at a White Sox game. But at least won’t be surrounded by mai-tai drinking cell phone users, and you can better follow what’s going down on the field.

Sure, what the Cubs endured was rough, and being a Red Sox fan for those 86 years could have made normal people suicidal. That aside, it’s not like White Sox fans haven’t had to endure more than their share of heartache.

They won 99 games in 1983, only to lose an ALCS to a seemingly destined Orioles club. They had to face a well-funded Blue Jays team in 1993 and hung tough until a six-game ALCS loss. The 2000 Sox won 95 games, the best in the American League, but fell to the Mariners in four games of the ALDS.

For 40 years, Sox fans had to live with their team corrupted into a loss in their last appearance in the World Series. The 1959 World Series loss to the Dodgers had to be tough too…Sox fans knew very well by then how long it could be before their team could make it back to the Big Show, and indeed the White Sox wouldn’t be back again for another 46 years.

So what’s a measly 88 years?

That the Sox swept the Astros in four games in the 2005 Series probably saved the hearts of some older Sox fans, who would have had enough without a nail-biter seven-game Series.

To grow up in the city of Wrigley Field and the Cubs and become a White Sox fan, one must acquire or already possess a nonconformist nature. It could be argued that White Sox fans are more dedicated than most in baseball, even if the White Sox aren’t among league leaders in attendance. Not only did they go 88 years without a title, they did it without soulful books and poetic tributes from sportswriters about a suspected hex that had been placed on their team.

So here’s to the White Sox fans…and all their loyal dedication to the Sox without forming support groups.

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Most baseball fans will tell you that the demolition of their old home ballpark was a very sad day in their lives, and Old Comiskey Park was no slouch in its historical value. As an Orioles fan I still feel that way about Memorial Stadium. But time moves on, and the job of an author is to capture what was.

My friend Floyd Sullivan, author of “Waiting for the Cubs”, has done an outstanding job of just that, with his collection of essays from writers, players and fans about the old ballpark on the South Side of Chicago. The full title of the tome is “Old Comiskey Park: Essays and Memories of the Historic Home of the Chicago White Sox, 1910-1991“.

Old Comiskey Park, by Floyd Sullivan of the Waiting For The Cubs blog.

If you are an older Sox fan especially, this book should be your Bible when it comes to their beloved former home.

The book begins with a terrific piece from Carl Rinder, describing the early history of the area and the three neighborhoods bordering Comiskey: Bridgeport, Douglas, and Chinatown. This is followed by Richard Smiley’s essay of the construction of the new ballpark in 1910, replacing the then state of the art Sox Park.

From there the book details the history of events that took place at Comiskey…like the first ever All-Star Game, with the two teams led by the heavyweight managers of the day–John McGraw and Connie Mack; the Negro League games played by the American Giants of Chicago and the popular East-West games that were often played there; the 1919 “Black Sox” World Series, the 1959 World Series, the 1983 ALCS, and three other All-Star Games.

Sullivan himself contributes a section dedicated to other events held at Comiskey. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Cinderella Man”, you know that Joe Louis claimed James Braddock was the toughest fighter he ever fought. That fight took place at Comiskey. There were legendary wrestling matches, it was the home of the Chicago football Cardinals, even roller derby events. And of course, the Beatles played Comiskey Park.

My personal favorite parts of the book are the bits about the inimitable Bill Veeck, who owned the Sox for a spell and was known for his imaginative promotions.

Dan Helpingtine contributes a great bit about Veeck…including, of course, the story behind “Disco Demolition Night”. It wasn’t Veeck’s finest hour.

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Veeck as in wreck.

But Veeck’s contributions to the game are often underappreciated…such as the home run celebration, extremely common today but unusual when the scoreboard first exploded at Comiskey. That was not a popular celebration among other teams…which was precisely why it stayed.

And I didn’t know this: the tradition of Harry Caray singing ”Take Me Out To The Ballgame” started at Comiskey. Caray was the White Sox announcer, and Bill Veeck urged him to lead the crowd, knowing that everyone in the stands could sing it better than he could and wouldn’t be afraid to join in. If that doesn’t cement Veeck as a promotional genius, I don’t know what does.

Guaranteed Rate Field does indeed have the shower.

Another excellent piece comes from Greg Prince, author of the popular Mets blog “Faith and Fear in Flushing”. Prince tells his story of being in Chicago on business and wanting to visit Wrigley, but with the Cubs out of town he decides reluctantly to visit Comiskey instead…and while there he is shocked by what a true gem Comiskey turned out to be as a home of baseball, and to this day favors it to Camden Yards and PNC Park.

Towards the end are the somber reflections of players, personnel and fans as they share their memories and the emotion of losing their childhood second home. Interestingly, there is a consensus that it needed to be replaced among most, very unlike the angry fan reaction to the demise of Tiger Stadium. But this isn’t of much comfort to fans. There are quite a few tearjerker moments, something older Tigers and Orioles fans can certainly understand.

“Old Comiskey Park” is a large volume, and it works best as a coffee table book that you can open to any page and read a story about something that happened at Comiskey…like the first All-Star Game, the East-West Negro League games, or Disco Demolition Night. Or the great White Sox teams, like the Go-Go Sox or the South Side Hitmen, or the personalities like Charles Comiskey, Al Simmons or Bill Veeck.

For anyone who loved the old park, it’s an absolute must have…and for any White Sox fan or student of baseball history, it’s a great read. Check it out.

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Wrigley Field prepaid parking is a necessity for anyone willing to try driving to Wrigley Field. But as the guys at CubParking can tell you, you can do okay so long as you book beforehand.

Recently Nick Napoli of CubParking contacted me and educated me about ways people park their cars at Wrigley Field…and why they should order parking in advance. I was impressed enough with the Cub Parking service to interview him, and he graciously agreed to answer my questions.

Here is the exchange below…thanks Nick! And Click here to check out CubParking and land a fine Wrigley Field prepaid parking spot for your next Cubs game…

(Need more Wrigley Field help? Ballpark E-Guides has your back! Read how to find a great seat here, check this out for using public transit to Wrigley, check out this complete primer for saving money on tickets, and check this post out for all the great food at Wrigley…more coming!)

Awww…isn’t he a cute little fella? Yes, let’s park here.

I recommend to my readers not to drive to Wrigley, since parking is expensive and scarce by comparison to other ballparks. You offer a solution to that. How did you get started doing it, and what was the response early on? I know you guys are all Cubs fans, did you finally get fed up with parking hassles at Wrigley?

Well for starters that’s good advice. It’s always best to take the CTA to a Cubs game. The Red Line drops you off a block from Wrigley Field, it’s perfect. And you’re right, official Wrigley Field parking is scarce.

For people who choose to drive in, the locals here have been offering up their private parking spots since long before I was born. It’s tradition here, we have neighbors in their 70s out there parking and they’ve been doing it 50 years. They’ll tell you some stories man.

I started parking cars with my friends and neighbors when I was very young, maybe 8 or 9 years old. The neighbors would occasionally let me sell their spots too, it was a whole show. My kid brother who struggles with autism would set up a cooler of cold drinks and make tips. He didn’t mess around, Kurt. We don’t mess around at CubParking (laughs).

We should try to get a little closer.

You are, I’m sure, more familiar with the driving and parking experience at Wrigley than I am. Can you contrast the difference between booking your spot beforehand and searching when you arrive? I expect the difference is massive!

Yes, customers who book Wrigley Field parking in advance don’t even realize the difference until after they arrive in the neighborhood and experience the pandemonium for themselves. Online reservations aren’t scrambling to buy a spot off a stranger, they have an address, a place to go and a reservation.

And over the years we’ve seen everything, or so we think. Those who wing it are often left frustrated. They end up buying a street spot off some weirdo, which is illegal. Or they park with a random bad guy who parks you in a random spot and then people get towed. Or people return to their car to find it’s blocked in. Just so many variables and things that can go wrong and ruin your game day experience. And unfortunately it happens every game.

When customers book with us, there is literally none of that. We’re the good guys. We meet customers at their parking spot when they arrive, get them checked in and on their way. We live in the neighborhood too, so we’re around after the game too in case they need us. So you’re right again Kurt, the difference is massive.

I notice you offer “all night” parking…a very nice option in Wrigleyville. Is this mostly because you want to offer people a way to party without having to drive? Where do people spend the night?

Glad you asked! We started offering it because people would ask for it. Customers often want to come grab their car in the morning, we have spots for that. As people arrive for the game, we can usually tell who is staying out late and who is leaving in the 7th inning, but now we offer overnight and extend time parking to everyone just in case.

And I’m not sure where people sleep but we have had folks ask to sleep in their cars. If it has to come to that, we don’t mind. I think we all agree it’s better than driving drunk. So hey, sleep one off in our garage if you have to. We all appreciate it.

How does Cub Parking turn a profit?

We split all money with residents 50/50. Everyone’s happy, it really works great.

No, you can’t leave your car there for the weekend.

Would you say that Cub Parking is the most affordable option for fans? The Cubs offer free parking with a shuttle from near DeVry University. Does CubParking have better options than that?

Yes, we’re not only the most affordable option but we’re the best value too. That shuttle you mentioned isn’t a bad deal though. And you can’t compete with “free parking” either.

However, people who drive in often come in traffic from a long ways away. So the idea of finally getting out of the car and then waiting to pile on a crowded bus is not attractive. People want to get out of the car and just be there. Not to mention after the game you have to line up to shuttle all the way back.

For $20 or so you can park a block or two away from the park, leave early or stay late until traffic dies down. It’s money well spent, considering how expensive everything else is on game day. CubParking is the best money you will spend all day.

Do you have your favorite spots, say, for easy exit or for location close to hot spots in Wrigleyville? And if so, why?

Well, all of our spots are EZ Out, customers keep their keys and are free to leave whenever they want because they’re never blocked in. We have spots just steps from Wrigley Field and others that are up to 2 blocks away. There’s often a premium for the really close spots. But we also keep a few open for our regulars and seniors.

Are there plans for expansion, say for parking for other big city ballparks like Detroit?

Not really, no. We love the Cubs, and parking for Wrigley Field. It’s something we want to expand locally here in Wrigleyville. We’d like the whole neighborhood to use us. We put cash in our neighbor’s pockets, park responsibly, and even have spots for neighbors coming home that can’t find parking on game day.

We look out for our people. This is our neighborhood and we look forward to growing with it in the coming years.

(CubParking logo courtesy of CubParking.)

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(Note: this review and this book were written before the glorious Cubs triumph of 2016. Eamus Catuli!)

Sometimes I think that if the Cubs won the World Series, it would be a gigantic letdown.

When the Red Sox finally broke their 86-year jinx in 2004, it was made much sweeter by the way it happened…an unprecedented comeback from a 3-0 deficit to defeat the hated Yankees in the ALCS. That would have been memorable even without a curse, but it lived up to how sweet a long-awaited World Series victory could truly be for Red Sox fans.

What could the Cubs do to match that, especially given that their futility has reached (and now passed) a full century? The White Sox went longer than the Red Sox did without a championship—a full 88 years—but the baseball world outside of Chicago almost yawned when they breezed past the Astros in the 2005 World Series.

No Longer Waiting.

There hardly seems any way an end to the Cubs drought could match the buildup. Floyd Sullivan, author of “Waiting For The Cubs: The 2008 Season, the Hundred-Year Slump and One Fan’s Lifelong Vigil”, doesn’t seem overly worried about the possibility.

Most people appreciate that it’s tough being—or more correctly staying—a Cubs fan. But until one reads Sullivan’s account of the 2008 season, one doesn’t really feel the effect of a lifetime of devotion without a payoff and with no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

A blue W. For “Victory”.

Throughout the book, despite that the Cubs have one of their best seasons in years, Sullivan—and his equally devoted Cubs fan family—are always expecting the other shoe to drop, always waiting for the imminent disaster to befall their heroes.

One could hardly blame them, especially after the 2003 NLCS, when Steve Bartman’s unfortunate blunder sparked a legendary collapse. Despite that a writer of Sullivan’s skill could have easily put a few gratuitously heart-wrenching pages in his book about the incident, he almost skims over the subject, informing the reader that “if you’re interested in reliving it, Google Steve Bartman.”

Sullivan writes from a personal angle, but the book never feels like someone telling his own story. Instead he shares the pain and occasional euphoria of being a Cubs fan, something his family and friends, and certainly any fan, can relate to. At one point he humorously shares the possible double meaning of what his children get written on their Wrigley brick dedication, which reads simply, “Thanks, Dad”.

His family has moved from Chicago to York, Pennsylvania; and while this precludes frequent trips to the Friendly Confines each year, it does enable him and his family to see the visiting club in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which they do frequently, with a trip to Washington thrown in. His description of Nationals Park, which opened in 2008, is spot-on accurate.

His tales of trips to Pittsburgh are hilariously fraught with the dangers of the western PA Turnpike (with which I can definitely identify), but also a couple of weather miscalculations…one trip ends with a game postponed in what he believed was hardly a downpour, as a result he cancelled a later trip on his own due to torrential rain and missed a full nine innings of Cubs baseball at PNC Park.

It did.

The book mainly focuses on the story of the Cubs’ 2008 season, with some side tales of Cubs fan agony. It’s the centennial of the team’s last World Series championship (yes, that was in 1908), but it’s also a season where fans believe the team has the best chance to break the curse that befalls them, with pitchers like Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster and Carlos Marmol, and position players like Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez and Kosuke Fukudome.

Despite that the Cubs won 97 games and the NL Central Division in 2008, though, Sullivan never seems to believe that the Cubs will achieve the ultimate glory—indeed he almost predicts an easy victory for the Dodgers, the Cubs NLDS opponent. It bears out, with the Dodgers whitewashing the Cubs 3-0 in the series. Another Cubs season, as he puts it, ending with a loss.

But it’s not all bad…the family actually meets Ryan Dempster over the winter.

“Waiting For The Cubs” concludes with the story behind the Fred Merkle boner that cost the Giants the 1908 pennant…seemingly the last time that the baseball gods smiled on the Chicago Cubs…and Sullivan does a better job than most at clearing up what really happened that day at the Polo Grounds.

Many books have been written about the Chicago Cubs and their futility, but few of them capture the mind of the Cubs fan. Sullivan does it perfectly, making the story both personal and universal. No Cubs fan reading this book would disagree.

Nor, in fact, would any baseball fan. Highly recommended, whether you’re a fan of the Cubs, White Sox or Cardinals.

You can still hear Harry saying it.

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If you’re looking for a cool or romantic way to get to Fenway Park, try those fun guys at Boston Pedicab.

As you may know, only rookies drive their car to Fenway Park, or anywhere in Boston, for that matter. Narrow streets and world-class congestion make the public transportation system pretty popular in Beantown.

But public transit has its drawbacks, especially for those using it to get to a ballgame. I can tell you from the experience of nearly having my face pressed against a window for entire Green Line rides. Trains coming to and leaving games at Fenway Park get mercilessly jammed with Red Sox fans.

So now we have rickshaws as an option…

The perfect size vehicles for Boston streets.

Boston Pedicabs is a local outfit that employs college students, who pedal bicycles attached to rickshaws around the city. There are plenty of them available near Fenway, but the gentleman I e-mailed asking where best to find them (forgive me for losing the e-mail with his name) informed me that the Prudential Center garage some blocks east of Fenway is a good spot.

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The Pru lot is much cheaper than the lots closest to Fenway, and the Center is basically a mall with quite a few good pregame dining options.

The fellows riding the bicycles are friendly and will have a conversation with you as they’re pedaling you through murderous traffic to the park, and you can look around at the city rather than waiting for the driver in front of you to finally move.

Best of all, they’re free. But not really. The Boston Pedicab drivers subsist entirely on tips, so don’t be stiffing them.

That’s just one cool way to get to Fenway…but you should really know every way to get there, because Fenway is a challenge.

Boston Pedicabs website: www.bostonpedicab.com

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The Red Sox have upped their food game of late, with adding such fancy items like fluffernutter fries and Mings Bings, but the Fenway Frank is still essential sustenance at Boston’s venerable ballpark. Keeping it simple is why Fenway Park has lasted so long.

The white bread bun. Only at Fenway.

I don’t understand why it’s so rare to see a hot dog in a mushy white bread bun, but it’s part of what makes this baseball hot dog so distinctive – that gooeyness around the classic baseball flavor.

The Fenway Frank is made by Kayem Foods, who added some garlic and smoke to the flavor when they took it over in 2009. Incidentally, Kayem also makes the dogs sold at Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, but they claim it’s a different style of dog. I would hope so.

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Is that “mmmmmm” that they’re spelling with the mustard?

You can also get a Monster Dog, which is an elevated Fenway Frank – and is quite large at ten inches. Save some room for that.

Regarding the franks sold in the stands, by the way, they are boiled in water as opposed to grilled on rollers like at the concession stands. I like my dogs boiled, but I think I’m in the minority on that. Either way, the Fenway Frank is the essential “Fenway Park food thing.”

Incidentally, the Red Sox and Kayem celebrate National Hot Dog Day in July. People submit their variations to be chosen as the Next Fenway Frank, and that creation gets sold at the ballpark the rest of the season.

In 2017 it was a North End Frank: topped with pesto, arugula, roasted red pepper, sun-dried tomato and fresh mozzarella. Now that’s a hot dog.

But the same could be said about the simple classic Fenway Frank.

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In his excellent book “Ballpark: Camden Yards and the Building of an American Dream”, author Peter Richmond briefly discusses the emotional passing of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. He sums up the attachment Orioles fans had to 33rd Street by saying “it was what happened on the field that made Memorial Stadium special”.

I’ve seen this sentiment echoed in other places, and in remembrance of a great ballpark, I respectfully disagree.

(Pssst…interested in knowing everything about Oriole Park? Check out my complete guide to Camden Yards here!)

Without being critical of Richmond, he somewhat implies that Memorial Stadium wasn’t a great place to see a ballgame. And while his statement about the events on the field was true to an extent, as any O’s fan would acknowledge, it wasn’t the whole truth. A true Memorial Stadium tribute deservedly praises what was a great place for a night of baseball.

To fully appreciate how great Memorial was, consider the period that it lived in.

Are you SURE we’re going to a baseball game?

The Orioles played on 33rd Street from 1954 through 1991. 30 miles south, the Washington Senators began playing in cavernous D.C. Stadium (now RFK) in 1962, and played there through 1971 before moving to Texas and becoming the Rangers. Meanwhile, about 90 miles north in Philadelphia, the Phillies moved into Veterans Stadium in 1971—another venue designed more for football than baseball.

The multipurpose donuts that baseball fans sneered at for years were actually fairly popular when they first burst on the scene. With Busch in St. Louis, Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, Riverfront in Cincinnati, and many others, cities and teams went the route of football stadiums that could be tweaked for baseball, with easy to maintain carpeted fields and locations near an airport.

Nowadays, ask most baseball fans what the worst venues are, and two names pop up frequently: Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay with its carpet and roof, and O.Co Coliseum in Oakland with its “Mount Davis” grandstand tactlessly tacked on for Raiders fans. During its tenure as home of the Florida Marlins, Sun Life Stadium usually ranked pretty high too.

Memorial Stadium, on the other hand, seemed to be designed more as a venue for baseball than football. Fans would tell you it wasn’t great for football, even as it earned the nickname “The World’s Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum” during the Colts’ glory years. This became even more pronounced when the Colts moved out of town, and the Memorial Stadium baseball field was no longer stained by the yard lines of a lesser sport in Septembers.

The “water fountain” dedication.

As a young baseball fan growing up in the Philadelphia area, the two-hour trip to Baltimore and an Orioles game was light years ahead of seeing a game at the concrete donut in Philly on the happiness meter. From top to bottom, everything seemed more special in Memorial.

It was smaller and humbler. It had a much more attractive brick façade on the outside, with a stunning and poignant dedication to World War II soldiers that I never neglected to read as we waited in line to get in.

It was in a residential neighborhood, which made parking difficult but was much easier to look at. The light towers stood majestically over the field, the first element of the ballpark to come into view after a seemingly endless ride on Loch Raven Boulevard.

Inside, the field was smellable grass, the seating almost everywhere featuring a pleasant background of the houses beyond center field. The hot dogs weren’t just hot dogs—they were Esskay Superdogs…what happened to them? (I’ll put the Esskay Superdog up against the Fenway Frank or Dodger Dog any day of the week, but that’s a biased O’s fan talking.)

The classic cartoon Oriole.

Sure, what happened there was baseball greatness. Part of what made being an Orioles fan special was a great team full of lovable characters. Of course Birds fans loved Brooks Robinson’s superhuman reflexes at third base, Jim Palmer’s perfectly graceful windup, and Earl Weaver’s manic fury with umpires.

The team was full of unsung heroes too in my youth—like steady outfielder Al Bumbry, the classic platoon of Gary Roenicke and John Lowenstein, goaltender and team leader Rick Dempsey, and solid relief pitchers like Tippy Martinez and Don “Fullpack” Stanhouse (so nicknamed for the amount of cigarettes Weaver would smoke when he was on the mound).

There was nothing like Orioles Magic and teams that won so frequently with late-inning heroics. Being an Orioles fan was special, something you felt no other team’s fans had, not even Yankees fans.

But all of that was a huge bonus. Memorial Stadium was distinguished as a venue too, and just as much so when the Orioles faltered in the 1980s. It sat on 33rd Street, not being flashy, not going along with all of the modern, economically friendly and equally sterile venues of the 70s and 80s that treated baseball as a secondary sport. Had it lasted as long as Tiger Stadium or Comiskey Park, it may have been just as revered.

It was grass. It was open. It was bricks. It was all of the things teams eventually realized that they had forgotten in their concrete and plastic new homes. For a ballgame, few places were better than Memorial Stadium in its day. Of all of the stadiums back then, it was one of the few that actually didn’t need replacing, at least on baseball-friendliness grounds.

When Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, it was a spectacular triumph and instantly won over baseball fans everywhere. It is still today one of baseball’s best venues.

But it had to be. Orioles fans my age remember the shoes it had to fill.

Rick Dempsey’s poem dedicated to the pile of bricks on 33rd Street.

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Still the best Orioles manager ever.

On June 23, 1979, at the age of 11, I experienced what is still today my most memorable night at a ballpark.

It was a time when teams still held two games in a day for the price of one on occasion, and a time when the Orioles drew just over a million fans in good seasons—about 15,000 a game. That day, or more correctly that afternoon and night, the Orioles were taking on the Tigers in a twi-nighter.

My father had a connection at Memorial Stadium, who often would have great seats for us, but this night we weren’t so lucky, and we ended up in the upper level seats in left field. But it turned out to be a great spot to watch the flight of Eddie Murray’s walk-off home run ball in the first game, to the earthshaking delight of the crowd of 45,814 – a record for a Baltimore night doubleheader at the time. I still remember that announcement on the scoreboard, and enough beer splashing on me after Murray’s swing that I thought it started raining.

The Orioles had been down 6-2 in that first game and won 8-6. In the second game, the O’s would again overcome a 5-3 deficit with two runs in the seventh and one in the eighth to win 6-5. You can imagine the impression two dramatic come-from-behind wins made on an 11-year-old. My first game at the Vet in Philly was a great one, but it didn’t top this.

The 1979 Orioles especially were known for dramatic comeback wins, with a disproportionately large number of their 102 wins coming in the 8th inning or later. “Orioles Magic”, it was called, and it was attributed to both a dedicated fan base and the mood lift caused by “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” being played during the 7th-inning stretch at Memorial Stadium. With all due respect to O’s fans and John Denver, the Orioles late-inning heroics were probably more attributable to the amazing tactician in the dugout.

Earl Weaver certainly had the best overall talent in baseball from 1969-1971, when the Orioles went to three straight World Series with Brooks and Frank Robinson, Boog Powell, Paul Blair and the pitching tandem of Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar. The team won over 100 games in each of those seasons, winning 217 in 1969 and 1970.

But name some of the players in the later 1970s and early 1980s teams that were always in the thick of a pennant race in the toughest division in baseball. There was Jim Palmer and Eddie Murray, and…who? Longtime O’s fans remember the likes of Dempsey, MacGregor, Flanagan, Bumbry and Dauer, and possibly the best outfield platoon in history of Lowenstein and Roenicke, but if you weren’t an O’s fan, you likely wouldn’t know all their first names.

The Orioles challenged the Yankees and Red Sox, and the Tigers and Brewers, for the AL East crown every year with players that were never among the league leaders in any stat. But Weaver knew exactly when and how to use them. He kept records on everything, batting averages against certain pitchers, pitching success against certain batters. AL umpire Ron Luciano, with whom Earl had classic feuds, once said that “in a late inning situation, Earl would send up the batboy to hit. Everyone in the ballpark knew it was a ridiculous move. And the batboy would get a hit.”

I have a friend who understood me enough to get me tickets for a game at Camden Yards for my birthday in 1996. In the second row. As what I now consider great fortune would have it, that was the day the Orioles were celebrating Earl Weaver’s induction into the Hall of Fame. Part of the ceremony was Earl being driven around the field in a convertible sitting on the back of the car.

So Earl Weaver passed right by me, just a few feet away. I cheered extra enthusiastically as he went by, and he smiled and shook his fist a little for me.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the car was driven by Marty Springstead, another umpire with whom Earl frequently feuded. Presumably his appearance would suggest that their spats were behind them, but Springstead later said he was tempted to slam on the brakes and send Weaver flying.

No, umpires did not like Weaver. It was one of the funnier themes that ran through Luciano’s hilarious books. Luciano not only shared his own classic stories about Weaver, like ejecting Weaver in both ends of a doubleheader in the minors, but several other umpires’ stories as well.

In his book “Strike Two”, Luciano wrote about how managers get ejected and said that Weaver “can be used as an example of everything a manager should not do, except manage. For someone who spent much of his career in the clubhouse, he won a lot of ballgames.”

With baseball’s new replay system, the current generation of fans may never appreciate what an entertaining part of the game arguing with umpires could be. Weaver was one of the best.

And he had a reason for his fury with umpires. He was fully aware that his own ejection would not hurt the team. He could manage from the runway. But if Eddie Murray or Frank Robinson got ejected over a bad call, it would hurt the team. Luciano even admitted that Earl had his own way of making an umpire forget his problems with an Oriole player.

His players—like Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, who wrote the hilarious book “Together We Were Eleven Foot Nine” about his often stormy relationship with Weaver—were also well aware of Weaver’s almost psychotic dedication to winning. Once he pulled Rick Dempsey from a game after a fundamental mistake, and then hounded him all the way into the shower screaming at him, until Dempsey turned on the water—and then turned on the cold water until a soaked Earl finally left.

And there was Don Stanhouse, a pitcher O’s fans my age remember well, whose style was unheard of even to this day: he would simply walk guys until he got to someone he could get out. It worked. And you can imagine how Earl would handle it. One time he walked the bases loaded with the Orioles ahead in the ninth; Earl screamed at pitching coach Ray Miller to “get out there and tell him to throw strikes!” Miller went out to the mound to a grinning Stanhouse and told him his fly was open. Stanhouse told him to tell Earl not to worry. On the next pitch the batter grounded into a double play to end the game.

Stanhouse’s nickname was “Fullpack”, as in the number of cigarettes Earl would smoke when he was on the mound.

Mike Flanagan once got into a jam with the bases loaded. Earl came out to the mound and told him: “Don’t let them hit it on the ground or in the air.” Great advice. The next batter hit a line drive double play to end the inning. Flanagan returned to the dugout, greeted by Weaver: “Am I a f***in’ genius, or what?”

Yes, in the dugout, he was.

For all of the legendary bouts with umpires and the fiery berating of players, Earl Weaver was unquestionably one of the best managers in the history of the game. I remember reading baseball publications when he managed, and in his era it was rarely disputed that he was the best in the game…an era of Billy Martin, Sparky Anderson, Whitey Herzog and Tommy Lasorda.

My favorite story of Weaver’s skill came from Elrod Hendricks. It’s in the book “From 33rd Street to Camden Yards”, an excellent collection of quotes from key figures in Orioles history. It was Weaver vs. Tony LaRussa, when LaRussa was a new manager.

“When I’d just started coaching and Tony LaRussa was the hot new thing managing, he’d come in and make all sorts of moves, and Earl would just sit back with his arms crossed. And LaRussa is looking over at Earl like he’s getting him, you know. And then it’s the eighth inning, and LaRussa is out of bullets, and here comes Earl with Jim Dwyer and Terry Crowley and that bullpen. Earl just hammers him. And you go ‘Boy, that’s good. That’s as good as it gets, right there.’”

I share this Earl Weaver tribute because the Orioles were part of my life, and they are so because Orioles games at Memorial Stadium are my fondest memory of childhood. And they were fond memories because the Orioles won, often in an unforgettably thrilling way. And that, very often, was because of Earl Weaver.

So although the closest I ever got to meeting him was cheering him while he rode by me in a car, I still feel today the impact Earl Weaver had, on millions, and on me as an Orioles fan who reaped in excitement the reward of his excellence.

You will be missed, Earl, but you will be fondly remembered.

(Note: this article contains affiliate links through Amazon. Ballpark E-Guides earns a commission on sales of books through this site. Thanks for your support.)

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I live in South Jersey, about a 15-minute drive from Citizens Bank Park. Recently a few of my wife’s relatives visited from North Carolina, and they asked me about going to a game, since none of them had yet seen the “new” Philly ballpark.

I get nervous about things like this, since I have something of a reputation to keep. But we did fairly well.

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Where’s the concrete?

There were five of us, and I saved us $11 each on the face price of tickets with SeatGeek ($55 total), and found them a parking spot that was $6 cheaper than the Phillies lots (and closer to the ballpark than some of them).

On the way to the game we stopped at a produce shop for a $3 bag of peanuts that was enough for everyone, so that probably saved about $9 if we had bought peanuts inside. I saved $4.50 myself on a free soda.

“Now if you squint really hard here, you can see the Bull.”

Inside the ballpark I was something of a tour guide, answering all of their food questions…Wayback burgers, Tony Luke’s, the Schmitter, Federal Donuts, etc. There were two young ones with us that enjoyed the explanation of the neon Liberty Bell in right field.

We had great seats, in the 12th row just behind first base, and they got to try the classic cheesesteaks: the Tony Luke’s with provolone and the Campo’s “Heater”.

Now you know you’re in Philly.

A great time was had by all, followed by a very easy exit out of the parking lot back onto the highway. All for about $75 less than it normally would cost.

I’m not trying to brag here. Well okay, I am a little bit. I was pleased enough with the accomplishment that I literally considered hiring myself out as a Baseball Fan Consultant. <grin>

But think about what it costs to gather a group for a ballgame…the tickets, the parking, the food, souvenirs etc. You’re probably going to do that sometime in the future, or at least be part of such a group, right? Now imagine shaving $75 off of that total cost.

What could you do with that $75 while you’re in town? Get a nice souvenir, like a jersey? Enjoy a nice meal in Center City? Or even get yourself some gray sweats for the authentic “Rocky running up the Art Museum steps” experience?

True Philly genius.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

That’s just one case study…I will be including more in the future. But needless to say, I’m here to help.

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So you have no problem taking a 4-5 hour trip to see your favorite team in another ballpark, right?

For fans whose home ballparks are outrageously expensive to visit, like Cubs and Red Sox fans, it’s a popular thing. Much of downtown Baltimore’s hospitality industry is dependent on Red Sox and Yankees fans that visit Camden Yards 21 times a year.

If you want to save a boatload of money on such trips, try a Megabus.

Just saying, when they’re in service they’re great.

Megabus is a luxury bus service available now in about 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada (and in the U.K. even, but anywhere they don’t play baseball doesn’t matter). They have single and double decker buses, all of which have Wi-Fi and free plug-ins. And they do it all for a ridiculous price, sometimes as low as $1. You have to book such deals well ahead of time, but that’s worth the trouble.

Megabus operates from popular transportation hubs in large cities, so your only part of it is getting to the transportation center. In my home town of Philadelphia, that would be the 30th Street Amtrak station. With most ballparks in downtown areas these days and easily reachable by public transit, you should be able to leave the car at home and save a ton.

I’ve used Megabus a few times with great results, but my favorite example is when I used one from NYC to Boston…for just $2.50 round trip. I found a couple of $1 fares and the fee was just 50 cents.

Between gas and tolls, driving that distance would cost at least $50—assuming you are using your own car. And that’s not figuring in the aggravation of the traffic, which is always bad in Connecticut and usually bad near New York and Philadelphia. Not dealing with that is certainly worth a few extra bucks. Did I mention the price of parking in Boston?

Four hours is a long time to ride on a bus, but Megabuses are clean, air-conditioned and comfortable, with free Wi-Fi to keep you busy. You can take care of all that other business you are too busy driving to do, or you can go onto the upper level and enjoy the panoramic view. You’re allowed one piece of luggage and a carry-on bag, which for a weekend trip should be plenty.

He may be small, but he looks friendly enough.

Megabus covers most major cities in the U.S. and Canada. In most cities (not all, but most) they’ll drop you off near a public transportation hub that will get you anywhere else in the city in short order, certainly to the local ballpark.

It isn’t perfect, according to some reviews I’ve read…sometimes buses are late (honestly…is there a bus service that’s always on time?), and a few people have complained that the Wi-Fi doesn’t always work.

But I personally have never had a problem with them, and to get from New York to Boston and back for practically nothing? I’ll take it.

www.megabus.com

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