You Just Don't See What I See...

Much has been made of the aesthetics (or lack thereof) of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. But I bet that when the Tampa Bay Rays clinched the American League pennant Sunday night, no one was thinking of how awful the domed-stadium looked.

While watching the Rays throughout the playoffs, “The Trop” looked completely different from even a month ago. Something seemed to make that place look better and sound better. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me: playoff baseball makes any stadium look great.

When a team is good, no one cares about the digs. Whenever the Minnesota Twins made the playoffs, it was safe to say that the Metrodome wasn’t exactly a place that people were dying to go for a possible World Series experience. But the Twins have won two championships the past 20 seasons and each time their dome worked to the team’s advantage keeping all of the crowd noise inside.

While there were often complaints from non-Mets fans about how Shea Stadium is a dump, no one was calling it a dump during games 6 and 7 of the 1986 World Series…or game 4 of the 1999 National League Divisional Series…or game 5 of the 1999 National League Championship Series…or games 3 and 4 of the 2000 NLDS…or game 5 of the NLCS.

Citizen’s Bank Park is a great ballpark. It’s an even better ballpark now that the Phillies are in the World Series.

In the eyes of Pittsburgh Pirates’ fans, PNC Park sucks.

For Rays fans, the big building at 1 Tropicana Drive is the Vatican right now.

This doesn’t mean that sports/baseball fanatics should squash the discussion of the majesty of just looking at a ballpark. It does mean, however, that your opinion of said ballpark could change a little bit once the team that resides in it starts to win a few games.

(By the way, PNC Park is the best stadium in baseball)