FFenway -Intimacy & Obstruction

Ballpark Intimacy and Obstructed Views

by Philip Bess

Upper deck seats in the traditional urban ballpark were much closer to the playing field than are the upper deck seats in stadiums of today; and today's stadiums are much more expensive in part because the design of their upper deck seating and their vertical circulation gives modern stadiums bigger footprints and greater height than their early twentieth century predecessors.

This can be seen in the accompanying sectional diagrams of Chicago's old and new Comiskey Parks. Note that, in spite of the new and old parks having virtually the same seating capacity, the last row of upper deck seats in old Comiskey were closer to the playing field than the first row of seats in new Comiskey. Note also the greater depth and height of new Comiskey in comparison to old Comiskey, a difference which would translate into many more dollars to build new Comiskey were the two ballparks to be built from scratch today.

Future Fenway Design Symposium

The sectional diagrams to the right dramatically illustrate the difference in "intimacy" (fan proximity to the field) between Chicago's old and new Comiskey Parks. In spite of the new and old parks having virtually the same seating capacity, the last row of upper deck seats in old Comiskey were closer to the playing field than the first row of seats in new Comiskey. Note also the greater depth and height of new Comiskey in comparison to old Comiskey,

The seating arrangements of modern stadiums exist for several reasons. The most important is the accommodation of luxury seating, the skyboxes and club seats that occupy the "middle zone" of new stadium seating between the typically good lower deck seats and the typically horrible upper deck seats. This is the primary reason why new stadiums are being built. But another reason is team owner aversion to "obstructed view" seats; and what is usually meant by this is column-obstructed views. Nobody wants to have his or her view of the game blocked by a post.

If you look at the diagram of old Comiskey Park, it is immediately apparent that the reason the upper deck seats can be so much closer to the field than the upper deck seats of new Comiskey is because the old Comiskey's upper deck is located above the lower deck, rather than above and behind the lower deck as in the new Comiskey. And this is possible only because there are columns in the lower deck seating bowl. So if you want to have ballpark "intimacy" (by which I mean the proximity of fans--and especially upper deck fans--to the action), the simplest and most inexpensive way to achieve this is to have columns in the lower deck seating bowl, as all of the early twentieth century ballparks did.

But what about those obstructed views?

First, there don't need to be that many column obstructed views. Many of the older parks had columns located 25 feet apart; but it would be no less economical to locate them today a minimum of 40' apart, and perhaps even 60' apart. In such a ballpark, the number of truly problematic seats would run to somewhere between 1/2% and 1% of the total number of seats; and these seats need never even be sold, or at least not sold except on the occasion of sellouts. The few bad seats in this kind of park would be well worth the gain of the many very good seats in the upper deck that those few bad seats make possible. And such a park would contrast well with those new stadiums that condemn 30-40% of the fans to second class citizenship in upper deck seats from where the players on the field look like ants.

Second, the real obstructed view problem in the old urban ballparks was not so much with column-obstructed views of the field as with upper deck-obstructed views of the sky (see old Comiskey Park). This is a problem that must indeed be carefully considered by stadium architects. The solution involves creating a minimum angle of vision from the last row of seats in the lower deck, an angle that allows fans in the last row of seats to follow the flight of a fly ball after it leaves the bat.

Wouldn't it be nice for a change to have architects and owners concerned about the visual experience of that fan in that last row of seats, and about fans in the upper deck?

Cross Sections: Fenway vs. Coors

Grandstand Reconstruction Proposal

Ballpark Preservation Proposal