A consumer’s guide to the best and...

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: “Ballparks” website

Address: www.ballparks.com

Available: Virtual stadium tours of every major league baseball, NFL, NBA and NHL facility in use today, plus old buildings long since demolished, plus new buildings not yet finished, plus Canadian Football League and big-time college football stadiums across the land.

That’s a tall order, but “Ballparks” delivers, and then some.

Click on the postage-stamp photo of “Chavez Ravine” and you’re instantly presented with an in-depth history (printed in Dodger blue) of Dodger Stadium, complete with full-color aerial and interior photographs, outfield dimensions, ticket prices and such trivia tidbits as:

--”When foul poles were installed in 1962, it was discovered that they were positioned completely foul. A special dispensation was received from the National League so that they were recognized as fair, but the next year, the plate was moved so the poles are now actually fair.”

--”When Walter O’Malley was negotiating with the city of Los Angeles in 1957 [to move the Dodgers from Brooklyn], he and a county supervisor took a helicopter ride over L.A. to look for potential stadium sites. When they flew over the empty 300-acre lot at Chavez Ravine, O’Malley is said to have pointed and asked, ‘Can I have that one?’ The supervisor replied, ‘No problem.’ ”

Links are provided to the Dodgers’ other home fields, the Los Angeles Coliseum and Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, which are given the same photo-text-and-trivia treatment. Did you know, for instance, that the wrecking ball that helped demolish Ebbets Field was used four years later on the Polo Grounds?

The old parks are the best part of the visit--Forbes Field, Jarry Park, Crosley Field, Kezar and Metropolitan stadiums, all brought back to life via 1990s technology.

“Future Ballparks?” That’s what the icon promises; click on and you’ll see artists’ renderings of Bank One Ballpark, future home of the Arizona Diamondbacks; Tropicana Field, future home of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays; and reconfigured Anaheim Stadium, complete with grassy knoll and water fountain beyond the center-field fence.

Ivor Wynne Stadium is also here. Yes, the longtime home of the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats, in case you need to know, and “Ballparks” presumes you do.