Take Me Out to the Ballpark

Early this month Major League Baseball will christen three stadiums—Houston’s Enron Field (click here for a description, here  to see photos), San Francisco’s Pacific Bell Park (description, photos), and Detroit’s Comerica Park (description, photos). A year from now, two more ballparks will debut—Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Milwaukee’s Miller Park. All take their cue from Baltimore’s Camden Yards, a groundbreaking retro stadium with an open-air field, natural turf, and a brick-and-iron façade. (Cleveland, Seattle, and Phoenix have built similar structures.) In 1996, Slate architecture critic John Pastier gave “two cheers” for these new city-friendly, neotraditional baseball diamonds.