Advertisement

A guide to improving Rogers Centre as a ballpark

There is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to Rogers Centre. (Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)
There is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to Rogers Centre. (Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Rogers Centre is generally considered — by MLB standards — to be a below-average ballpark.

That notion was backed up on Monday when it was ranked 22nd in Forbes’ stadium rankings. There’s plenty to quibble with in the black-box methodology of the ultimately-subjective rankings, mind you, but they don’t seem far off. Beyond the monstrosities of Tropicana Field, O. Co Coliseum, and Marlins Park, there are very few parks you can confidently say are worse than Toronto’s multi-purpose dome.

So, what could be done to make Rogers Centre a better ballpark? The first suggestion that is often bandied about is bringing real grass in. The problem with that is it seriously hampers the facility’s ability to hold other events — the most important of which is obviously Monster Jam. If you alter a stadium in a way that makes it less likely to host monster truck events you have not improved it. That means grass is out.

Here are some suggestions to enhance the ballpark mined from the dark reaches of my mind with virtually no consideration for practicality:

Always leave the damn roof open

Baseball at Rogers Centre with the roof open is immeasurably better than when it’s closed. That really isn’t up for debate. There are certainly concerns about weather and game cancellations, but they are hardly fatal to the product.

Ballparks in Cleveland, Detroit and Minnesota don’t have roofs and those franchises haven’t folded yet. Sure, you’d have to accept a couple of rainouts, but it would be worst the sacrifice. In terms of the temperature, if Packer fans came be coaxed to Lambeau Field in the dead of winter, Torontonians can be made to bundle up for April baseball.

Canadians are supposed to be good at dealing with the cold — that’s one of our things.

A fan of the Blue Jays watches from behind the loosely hanging mesh rectangles that pass as foul poles in Toronto. (Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
A fan of the Blue Jays watches from behind the loosely hanging mesh rectangles that pass as foul poles in Toronto. (Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

Get some more dramatic foul poles

One of the great joys of baseball is its sounds. The collision of the bat and ball. The overzealous umpire calling strike three. The way a line-drive double smacks off the wall. Even a good fastball popping a glove.

An underrated sound in this catalogue is the “doink” of the ball hitting the foul pole on a home run that no one was quite sure about. Fans in Toronto are robbed of that by the sad, loosely-hanging mesh rectangles Rogers Centre has for foul poles. There is no dramatic “ping,” “clang” or “doink” on home runs that rarely make the cut, but rather just a brief sag in the pole followed by an anti-climatic fall for the ball.

The Blue Jays could take a foul-pole renovation to the next level by building them out whatever gongs are made of, which I’m going to assume is brass. That’s how you go from zero to 60.

Put some kink in the gaps

One of Rogers Centre’s biggest issues is an outfield that is exceedingly uniform, and as a result, fails to excite. Last season the Blue Jays rather famously hit only five triples. That is sort of what you get when you field a righty-dominant lineup full of over-30 hitters, but Rogers Centre played a big role too.

There simply aren’t any nooks and crannies for the ball to find it’s way into the way the stadium is currently set up. All it would take is a little wall shifting to create a more irregular outfield that would play better and be more interesting to look it.

Maybe you push back the wall in right-centre a bit to build yourself a triples alley, and bring it in a touch in left to compensate and not affect change the hitter-pitcher balance too much.

Make the walls asymmetrical in height

Similar to the previous idea, but dealing with a different dimension. Having one high wall and another shorter one is another way to give a bland outfield some flavour.

You wouldn’t need to create something Green Monster-esque to make a noticeable impact. Maybe on one side the wall rises up to the the 200 level, for instance. That would be enough for some sizzle.

Would that wipe out a section or two of wildly profitable and beloved seating section? Yes, absolutely. But it would be rather fun and therefore worth doing.

Put the 200 Level pads in all the seats

One of the odd quirks of Rogers Centre is that one level of the stadium has better seats than all the others. Perhaps this is some kid of effort to drum up enthusiasm for the 200 level which is neither closest to the action nor the cheapest option.

Even if they are trying to cultivate a luxury vibe up there, it’s better to just spread the wealth and bring the butt padding to the people. Baseball is a long game with a lot of sitting required of its patrons. Their posteriors deserve to be taken care of regardless of which ticket they purchased.