Everyone has a favorite team, sure. But what about the places those teams call home? With football season kicking off and the MLB playoffs less than a month away, Post Opinions writers share which sports stadium they think is best.
James Hohmann
I have a soft spot for historic stadiums, and none is more iconic than Lambeau Field. Especially a playoff game in the snow. Green Bay, Wisconsin, is the smallest major league sports market in North America, and the Packers are the only NFL team owned by the fans. That creates a unique sense of community. (I’ve been a shareholder since 1997.)
Players leap into the stands to celebrate touchdowns. Neighbors who own modest homes across the street open them for tailgating. The aluminum bleachers get cold as the temperatures fall below zero, but thick jackets make it easy for Badgers to sneak in plastic flasks of liquor to help warm up.
The stadium brims with history: Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak in the 1967 Ice Bowl. Brett Favre’s five touchdowns with a sprained ankle in 1995. Aaron Rodgers’s 48-yard touchdown pass on 4th-and-8 to win the NFC North title in 2013.
I’ve attended games at all 30 MLB stadiums and 14 of 30 NFL stadiums. Most feel corporate nowadays. Lambeau feels like a pilgrimage.
Michael Larabee
Have I visited enough stadiums to have an informed answer? Not close. These days, I am a one-sport guy. A one-team guy, actually, which makes me a one-stadium guy, and that stadium can be found, as Hall of Fame broadcaster Tom Hamilton notes after each first pitch, at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.
Why is Cleveland’s Progressive Field the best? Not because it’s a textbook example of the reinvigorating “retro-classic” ballpark trend, though it is. Not because of its tremendous views of the Cleveland skyline, though it has those. Not because the organization puts such effort into creating a welcoming and joyful fan experience, though it clearly does.
The reason Progressive Field is best — corny as it may be — is that my baseball team, the Cleveland Guardians, plays there, and walking through the gates feels like coming home to a house full of family. Maybe you have a stadium like that, too.
Carine Hajjar
After the Boston Red Sox’ 2004 World Series victory, it was impossible to grow up in New England in the early 2000s without having at least a mild obsession with Fenway Park. For me, it represents the genesis of what I would consider a well-earned sense of hometown supremacy.
The New England Patriots’ Super Bowl win earlier that year didn’t hurt, either. But the Red Sox’ victory was triumphant. It wasn’t just the euphoria of breaking an 86-year curse in a 4-0 series win against the St. Louis Cardinals; it was the fact that the victory was cinched with a historic comeback against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. And like the rest of the Boston-area 6-year-olds, I was well educated in reasons for which “Yankees suck!” — even if I wasn’t allowed to articulate the notion.
And from 2004 on, the timeline of my childhood seemed to be demarcated by Boston championships and the subsequent parades I observed from my perch on my dad’s shoulders. High school didn’t disappoint, either, with plenty of Ws to choose from thanks to Tom Brady’s steady hand. The Pats’ overtime victory in 2017 my senior year led to a memorable day of playing hooky to watch the team parade through Boston.
But the best celebration will always be 2004 outside Fenway Park with my dad, watching the duck boats roll by. It was the first World Series win for both of us.
Will Leitch
Here’s the thing about seeing the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden: Every game feels the same. Obviously, some matter more than others. (You may remember a few important ones en route to the team’s first NBA title in 53 years last season.) But as someone who has been to hundreds of Knicks games — mostly during seasons in which an NBA championship was as fantastical as Marv Albert riding a gorgon through the rafters — I know that the great thing about the Garden is that every seat will always be filled with a Knicks fan losing their mind.
One of the best parts of their title in June was that it was for everybody: bandwagon jumpers (hey, Taylor) and ham-and-egger lifers alike. Knicks fans swarmed MSG for the title game the same way they did during the team’s 23-59 season in 2008 and its 17-65 season in 2015. A room with 20,000 people who love the same thing as you, as much as you do, no matter what happens, feels a lot like home. It makes me want to live there forever. Though, considering the facial recognition software Knicks owner Jim Dolan has installed, I suppose I kind of do.
James Desio
As a Yankees fan, I hate giving this compliment to a division rival (if you can call the Baltimore Orioles a rival … ), but Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore is a near-perfect ballpark. It was the first “retro-classic” to open its gates — modern stadiums built in the image of legendary 20th-century arenas, nestled in a city’s downtown instead of deep suburbia.
Camden Yards is just a few blocks away from the Inner Harbor. There’s a great pregame bar, Pickles Pub, where you can grab a Natty Boh before heading into the stadium. The iconic B&O Warehouse serves as a brick backdrop for right field. Eutaw Street, a pedestrian walkway sandwiched between the right field fence and the warehouse, is one of baseball’s best ballpark features. Hitting a long home run onto the street is a career achievement for lefty sluggers. Batters have hit 137 home runs onto Eutaw Street since Camden Yards opened in 1992, and the landing spot of every single one is immortalized in concrete. (With three, former Yankee Jason Giambi holds the opposing-team record.) I can’t wait for my next opportunity to enjoy a Baltimore Dawg and watch the Bronx Bombers roll.
Dominic Pino
Stadiums have become enormous public expenditures in many places, as wealthy team owners and corporatist politicians pass along costs needlessly to state and local taxpayers. But the best stadiums don’t cost taxpayers anything. One of the only bright spots when it comes to building sports facilities with private money in recent years has been California.
The Golden State Warriors built the Chase Center in 2019 with no government money. The Los Angeles Clippers’ Intuit Dome, the NBA’s newest arena, was financed entirely by the team’s owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. SoFi Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, hosted the Super Bowl in 2022 and will again next year, and it did not take any public funding for its construction (though the owner is now seeking money from the municipal government through a lawsuit).
I haven’t been to any of these stadiums, but that’s something I have in common with many California taxpayers, so it’s a good thing they aren’t on the hook for paying for their construction.
Thomas McKenna
Municipal Stadium in Hagerstown, Maryland, was built in six weeks, on a plot the city leased for $1 per year — for 99 years. A good deal, even in 1930. It’s where Willie Mays played his first baseball game as a minor leaguer. It’s where George H.W. Bush became the first president to attend a minor league game, when he popped in to see four innings on a Friday night before leaving early for Camp David.
It’s also where I watched Bryce Harper play before he broke into the majors. I was 7, but Harper was only 11 years older. That same year, Washington Nationals flamethrower Stephen Strasburg made a rehab start. I saw him hush a packed crowd with a warmup pitch that must have hit 98.
Watching the Hagerstown Suns at that field — with metal bleachers and a manual scoreboard — is how I learned to love the game. The city tore the ballpark down in 2022 and built a new stadium with an all-turf field and a digital scoreboard. Sitting at decked-out major league stadiums today, I miss that historic field, where there was nothing but baseball.
The post ‘Feels like coming home’: Seven writers pick the best sports stadiums appeared first on Washington Post.
