Ballpark Bucket List: Must-Visit Baseball Stadiums for True Fans

Baseball is America’s Pastime, the Grand Old Game, the eternal playground of the Boys of Summer, or, if you’re a Mets fan, exactly half a year of having your heart ripped out and handed to you for breakfast.

Baseball is also a sport that lends itself to travel, because there are just. So. Many. Games. One person’s eagerness to just get on with the playoffs already is another person’s opportunity to travel the country and enjoy the game at venues that range from the merely classic to the downright spectacular.

Here are some of the highlights of a prospective Ballpark Tour of the U.S., in a sort of rough geographical order.

Of course you have to start at a classic ballpark, and it doesn’t get classier than Fenway.

(Wrigley Field gave up that title when they put in lights and the announcers stopped calling games shirtless from the bleachers.)

Fenway is not the nicest ballpark out there by a long shot. Many of the seats seem to have been made for consumptives, escapees from Devil’s Island, and other preternaturally skinny-bottomed types.

It’s also unfortunate that one of the teams playing will more than likely be the Red Sox, who accumulate and dis-accumulate players in inexplicable ways and then have trouble fitting all the best ones on the field together at the same time. (Though: Masataka Yoshida rocks.)

However, Fenway is baseball history in the flesh.

Best food: Fenway doesn’t exactly cater to the gourmet, so how about a New England maple-bacon burger at the Truly Terrace and Home Plate Grill? Beats stale popcorn.

The park that ushered in the Modern Ballpark Renaissance is still one of the best.

There have been flashier ballparks since (Great American Ballpark comes to mind). There have been parks in more scenic locations. Texas has gone through three ballparks since. But there hasn’t been a park that feels as right as Camden Yards.

Even when the Orioles play like the team that wandered in from St. Louis in 1953 or management sees fit to futz with the outfield dimensions, Camden Yards never disappoints. It’s always a good time in a great place.

Food: It’s Baltimore, baby, so naturally the jumbo lump crab cakes from Harris Creek Oyster and Lobster Hut are perfect for the occasion.

Actually, the best place to begin your Pittsburgh odyssey is in a little patch of green adjacent to Schenley Park, the Carnegie Library and the University of Pittsburgh in the Oakland district. A piece of the Forbes Field wall was left standing, and when you see where it is, you’ll be gobsmacked that they fit an entire ballpark there.

That’s how it was in those days, and that’s not how it is at the new PNC.

The ballpark sits along the Allegheny River, one of the three rivers that gave the in-between stadium (neither missed nor lamented) its name. Across the river is the Pittsburgh skyline, which is just fine as skylines go.

The combination of skyline, water, Pittsburgh’s hilly geography, and the stadium’s tidy design makes for an incredibly pleasant place to watch a ballgame.

The park concentrates that feeling, in part through its intimate dimensions. It only seats about 39,000, which can be seen as either a conscious decision to keep things close or a practical decision based on the quality of the on-field product over the last three decades.

Either way, PNC Park is a worthy stop on your cross-country odyssey.

Food: A pulled-pork pierogi from Familee BBQ will do nicely.

Prior to getting a field of their own, the Twins shared stadiums with the football Vikings, with mixed results.

The first, Metropolitan Stadium, was built on a windswept farm field that has since devolved into the Mall of America. It was wonderfully pleasant on an August evening, less so on a December afternoon.

The second, the Metrodome, was like playing baseball inside of a snare drum – sketchy lighting, bouncy surfaces, and skull-shattering noise levels. That a hearing-aid store was never set up next door was one of the great missed business opportunities of our time.

Thankfully, the Twins have a venue of their own now, and it’s a jewel box of a ballpark neatly tucked into its space. It doesn’t have a river for sluggers to mash balls into, but everything else about it is perfect.

The Twins are good, too.

Food: Shrimp po’ boy at Townball Tavern. Or, if it’s on, stop at the Minnesota State Fair and get a cheese-curd-stuffed deep-fried dill-pickle taco. You know you want one.

Is it still Pacific Bell Park, or did a financial-services company usurp that name, too?

Ugh. It’s Oracle Park – not a financial-services company, but worse: the software behind the financial-services company.

Never mind. The ballpark’s bayside location is the best in baseball. The park itself is as near perfect as a ballpark can get, and the climate swings are nowhere near as severe as they were back at the Stick – Candlestick Park, the team’s chain-link-fenced former home.

(Still: bring a jacket.)

From the ball-fishers out in the bay to the helmet nachos inside the stadium (you going to wear that helmet after it’s had those nachos in it?), everything about *deep sigh* Oracle Park is just what you want it to be.

Food: Besides the nachos? Since it’s San Francisco you expect the winner to be something like Cracker Jack sushi, but supposedly the Chicago dog is quite good.

Did you know that Dodger Stadium is baseball’s third-oldest ballpark, behind Chicago and Boston?

Like so many things in Hollywood, it hides its age well.

Dodger Stadium is just so California, and so Dodgers. Sandy Koufax’s fastball still pops the catcher’s mitt. Vin Scully’s voice still reverberates through the stands. Kirk Gibson still limps around the bases, chugging his arms.

It’s all pastels and ‘60s shopping-center chic, but so what? It’s a pristine reminder of a time when baseball ruled the airwaves, where kids played ball all summer in the vacant lot, and the reward for being America’s heroes was a guest shot on The Brady Bunch.

Food: Dodger Dogs are iconic, too.

There’s another baseball reality we have to talk about. Baseball was segregated until 1946. It wasn’t fully integrated until many years after that.

While white people played in the big stadiums, the Negro Leagues played in venues like Rickwood Field – definitely minor-league, separate but unequal.

Some great players stepped on Rickwood’s grass, from white major-league barnstormers to young up-and-comers like Willie Mays, who was the Birmingham Black Barons’ centerfielder as a 16-year-old in 1948.

Today Rickwood is a venue for events, tours, and the occasional game. (An MLB game will be played there in 2024.) It’s also a powerful reminder of all the things baseball was, and the game it can be.

A baseball stadium tour is every bit a bucket-list trip as a round-the-world cruise – and all those tickets and prepaid expenses need to be protected with travel insurance and assistance services from Generali Global Assistance.

We help protect dream vacations. Get a quote to help protect yours.

B007972404