Homerdome: a House That Ruth Built

The 1987 World Series was unique from a number of standpoints but none more so than this one:

We may have been looking at the first World Series in which the philosophical differences between the two leagues were totally reflected in the playing surfaces and conditions themselves.

Years ago, when the mighty New York Yankees were in an annual World Series, they were playing in a ballpark uniquely suited to their particular talents and predilections. Never mind the House That Ruth Built. It was more like the House That Was Built for Ruth.

The joker was, so were the National League parks. The vintage turn-of-the-century stadia--the Polo Grounds in New York, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the old Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, Crosley and Wrigley Fields in Cincinnati and Chicago, Baker Bowl in Philadelphia--were all just as bandboxy as the American League parks, if not more so.

They were about as suitable for stopping the Yankees as a pup tent stopping a tornado, or a pail holding off a flood. When the Yankees got into the Polo Grounds, they won games by 18-4, 13-5. For the Nationals, it was like getting in a cage with a lion.

You see, Ruth and the American League pioneered a new style of playing baseball, the hit-a-home-run and wait-for-the-big-inning school of baseball strategy. They scorned the small skills, one run at a time, hit and run, bunt and steal, the game favored by John McGraw and the other old-timers who refined the game.

The Philadelphia Athletics, who played their game in a hatbox called Shibe Park, once had a 10 -run inning. They spotted the poor Chicago Cubs an 8-0 lead into the seventh inning and still slammed them up against a wall.

It was discouraging. Or should have been. But municipalities weren’t building ballparks for private enterprise in those days.

The arrival of the great, fleet black players and the emergence of the round, dual-purpose, community-built stadiums reversed the tide to an extent in the postwar era. It was interesting that almost all the old-style, cozy-cornered ballparks--Fenway, Comiskey, Tiger Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Baltimore Memorial--are in the American League. The National League got the coffee cans.

Base-stealing made a dramatic comeback. One hundred stolen bases a year became almost commonplace. The bunt, the line drive behind the runner came back. The running game was brought into sharp relief. Fast outfielders became important because fly balls stayed in these parks.

But not even in the heyday of these dichotomous rivalries did you see teams win all of their games at home.

This year, you did. Because, if you sat up nights, you could not design stadiums and conditions more suited to the idiosyncrasies of the teams playing in them.

The bottom line is that Babe Ruth won again. The St. Louis Cardinals, the run-and-shoot, scratch-for-runs team was undone by architecture and geometry as much as by the curve or the two-out single.

Big-inning baseball counted them out. A seven-run inning, the fourth in Game 1; a six-run inning, the fourth in Game 2, and four-run fifth and sixth innings in Game 6 sealed St. Louis’ blues.

As if shortened ballparks and drafting of big, strong homer hitters weren’t enough, the American League came up with another refinement, a bit of overkill known as the designated hitter.

Had the home field advantagecome up differently, would the outcome of this year’s World Series been different? Very probably. The Minnesota Twins could hardly win in any ballpark on the road--9 road wins since the All-Star break and 25 losses--much less one in which the outfield seats were in the suburbs.

What is the solution? Play games at a neutral site, one with neutral dimensions?

Bah! Variables are what make baseball fun. The slide-rule set always wants to design these perfectly symmetrical, climate-controlled, antiseptic ballparks with instant replay cameras every five feet. They want to take all the fun out of the game. Listen to them and what will you have? A complicated pool table is what.

The essence of sport in this country is competition and controversy. Technicians would like perfectly designed edifices with identical foul lines, power alleys, no wind or cold or eccentric fencing to contend with.

That’s OK for operating rooms. But take the Green Monster out of Fenway? Take the wind out of Candlestick? Take the ivy, and the wind, out of Wrigley?

Let the Minnesota Twins have their Homerdome. Let the Cardinals have their speedway. That’s what makes baseball the fun it is. It’s like playing cards with a 48-card deck and you don’t know which ones are missing. You’ll never get bored.

As for the Homerdome, that looks to me like a House That Ruth Built, too. And that, I have to say, is better than a House That IBM Built.