BTN Review: The Diamond
I realized this April, while watching my first game of the year, that I’ve been going to games at this stadium for fifteen years. So perhaps it’s best to open up this new category with the stadium I know the best: The Diamond in Richmond, Virginia, home of the AAA International League’s Richmond Braves.
In late June 1988, as eight-year-old Josh watched the Braves of Lonnie Smith, David Justice, Jeff Blauser and Tom Glavine take on the Maine Phillies, The Diamond was the class of the minor leagues. Built on the site of old Parker Field and opened three years before I visited, it was a modern park with all the amenities one might expect — multiple concession stands on both decks, a back for every seat, and even a new invention called the “Superbox” (which we now know as the luxury box, an absolute minimum requirement for any stadium of 10,000 seats or more these days). The one curiosity was that the ballpark only had two pay phones on the premises (back when cell phones stayed in cars and cost a few thousand dollars each) — this was apparently a long-term Richmond ballpark tradition, although it seemed a rather silly one to me.
The Diamond’s biggest problem these days is that it was state-of-the-art in the late eighties, like its leaguemate Lackawanna County Stadium in northeast Pennsylvania. (The aforementioned Maine Phillies relocated to the newly-built LCS in 1989, becoming the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons.) The field is perfectly symmetrical (but at least it’s grass), the exterior is pure gray concrete, the seats are metal bleachers (but with armrests in box and reserved levels), and the concourses are closed (so you can’t see the game while getting concessions, although a few TV monitors have been added to help there). It’s a legacy of the utilitarian days of baseball stadium construction, where the game on the field was considered sufficient to attract the fans. That attitude, in turn, resulted from the majors’ multipurpose stadium binge of the ’60s and ’70s, which made bland, boring stadiums the norm.
I have no problem with focusing on the game, but the pendulum swung too far the wrong way. Corrections didn’t begin until 1992, when Oriole Park at Camden Yards began a rush of retro-themed ballparks. Of course, some places went overboard with that too, but the overarching goal of that movement appears to have been making the fans feel comfortable and happy to be at the ballpark. That’s what’s missing from The Diamond. It’s perfectly functional, and you can see the game just fine from most seats (although a steeper angle on the box seats would be helpful), it’s just not exciting.
You’ve got Interstate 64/95 over the left-field wall, and some nondescript office buildings out past right. Inside are 12,000 nearly identical cold metal seats and a cookie-cutter baseball field with an outfield wall full of ads. In 1985 that was enough, but in 2003 fans want more.
26 August 2003 / 2 Comments / Tags: review, baseball, richmond