Rogers Centre
One Blue Jays Way
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Capacity: 49,282
Indoors/outdoors: (Sloooooow)
Retractable Roof
Selected Game Attended:
Twins v. Blue Jays; April 4, 2006
Along with death and taxes, I can offer up another precious
guarantee in life: whoever designed the
Rogers Centre in Toronto was not a member of the United States Navy. Sound weird?
There is logic behind my supposition.
Look no further than the now-famous acronym “K.I.S.S.” For those not familiar with this term it
stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid” and was apparently coined by an engineer
whose company built spy planes for the Navy in the 1960s. What does this have to do with the Rogers Centre? Well, in short, this monstrosity of a
ballpark located north of the border is about the furthest thing from “simple”
that you could imagine, and whoever designed it certainly either had never
heard of the K.I.S.S. adage or decidedly rejected it in favor of trying to jam
as much “stuff” into one place as technology (and money) would allow.
We all probably know about the retractable roof (the first
of its kind) and I’m sure a few folks are also aware of the hotel and
restaurant that grace the center field façade and that the building, when fully
enclosed, looks more like an exhibit at Epcot Center than a place where Major
League Baseball games are played. I have
often wondered if simplicity is the way to go when designing ballparks – most parks
that were built in the 1990s tried to mimic the olden days, when parks were
little more than a field, scoreboard and grandstand. While I like a little pizzazz as much as the
next guy, the Rogers Centre is concrete proof that overdoing a stadium simply
for the sake of overdoing it does not work.
Perhaps when it opened in 1989 there was a different sort of reaction (“a
hotel INSIDE the stadium! Holy
smokes! Turn up the ‘New Edition’ tape!”)
and I can only imagine the hype surrounding this place at the time, but these
reviews take place in the present day, and in the present day, unfortunately,
this place looks and feels as dated as any other park in baseball, which is why
it comes in at #29 on the list.
Despite all the “bells” and “whistles” that Rogers Centre
(formerly called SkyDome, with a pretty cool logo) offers, the park still gives
you an overwhelming sense of “blah” when you walk inside, much like its
bottom-feeding companion, Tropicana Field.
It shouldn’t surprise you that this stadium shares many of the characteristics
that the home of the Rays does: dull,
lifeless, empty, depressing. The one
striking difference is how huge this place truly looks and feels when you enter
the seating area; a never-ending sea of empty blue seats as far as the eye can see seem to reach the roof itself all the way to the outfield. I can’t imagine those seats have actually
been filled since the 1993 World Series and that amount of emptiness adds to
the already dreary prospect of having to watch a game here. At least in The Trop there is no real discernible
“upper level” in the outfield so there is a slight bit of added coziness there
that Rogers Centre simply cannot offer.
There are other features that resound as definite negatives. The roof takes 20 minutes or so to open or
close and the field remains the only one in major league baseball to have “sliding pits” instead of a complete dirt infield (The Trop LOLs at your measly sliding
pits, Rogers Centre!). In addition, the
ground may as well be made of rubber as a hard hit ball in this place does
things that no ball should. Toronto
chop, indeed!
All of that being said, I have not even begun to touch on
the really awful aspect of this park.
Take a look at a map of New York City.
Here is one of Los Angeles. Finally,
Chicago. Now, take a look at a map of Toronto. What do you notice? Unlike the three largest cities in the United
States, in Toronto it’s seemingly one road in, one road out. The traffic getting to this place can be a
complete nightmare, especially for 7:00 starts on weeknights when you are
dealing with rush hour. The Gardiner
Expressway serves as the main entrance into and out of the southern part of the
city and, no exaggeration, has been positively jammed every time I have driven to a game here. It’s been a while (I
haven’t attended a game here since 2007), so maybe they’ve eased up on the
congestion, but you would do well to find alternate means of
transportation. I attended law school at
SUNY Buffalo (a mere 90 or so miles from Toronto) which afforded me several opportunities
over those three years to skip Tort Law and go see my beloved Orioles. Over time, I learned that the best bet is to
make your way up the Queen Elizabeth Way (which turns into the Gardiner) and
get off about 30 miles before you reach the city. From there you can hop on a “GO” train (the
city’s main rail line) and take it all the way to Union Station. From there, it’s a short walk to the
park.
But, like the Trop, Rogers Centre isn’t all that bad. When the roof is open, and you’re sitting in
the right section, you can get a really nice view of the CN Tower (I think in
all my games at Rogers Centre, the roof was only open once or twice) also,
Toronto is an incredible city with great things to do and sights to see. Rogers Centre is situated in the heart of
downtown so finding activities to do before and after the game (or making a weekend
of it) should not be too hard. It is
this feature that slightly pushes the home of the Jays ahead of the home of the
Rays.
Finally, a brief anecdote.
On opening night 2006, a buddy and I decided to go to Rogers Centre to
watch a great pitching matchup, Johan Santana of the Twins against Roy Halladay
of the Blue Jays. We left Buffalo at a
reasonable hour, hit traffic and a snowstorm or two (I did mention that Rogers
Centre has a retractable roof, right?) and were terribly behind schedule. We finally arrived at the park at about the
fourth inning only to be told that the game was sold out. Despondent and about to try to bribe the
16-year-old kid working the entrance gate to let us in, an angel dressed in
khakis appeared. This man had overheard
our plight and, working for ESPN (the network showing the game tonight) offered
us two free tickets which happened to be about 10 rows behind home plate. Which brings up another adage, it’s always
darkest before the dawn.
And that’s all she wrote about Rogers Centre. Not a great start for the American League
East, but I have a feeling it will get better.
I wonder how much of the current feeling on Rogers Centre (damn Canucks and their British spelling) has to do with the name change? If it had originally been Ontariodome or Torontodome or Queendome, that would have been relatively generic. But SkyDome, with the retractable roof, invoked something different: actually being able to enjoy the Toronto weather (often gorgeous) while also being protected from, well, the Toronto weather (often atrocious).
ReplyDeleteRogers Centre, on the other hand, doesn't do that. It makes the building sound like the AHL arena in Hamilton. Not the home of two major-league (for Canada) teams and the major venue in one of the largest cities on the continent.
The retractable roof there has always interested me because it is so massive. It's not like the roofs over other, newer buildings, which at least appear to be less a roof and more an umbrella. The original plan was to have the dome open unless it needed to be closed; now I understand that they really keep it closed unless it needs to be open.
That will make the proposal to add grass--in two years, once the lease with the Argonauts ends and the CFL team moves out to BMO Field (a.k.a. the renovated Exhibition Stadium, the home of the Blue Jays prior to SkyDome)--interesting. They will need to keep the dome open much more often for that to work.