New parks, old problem - the Reds' Great American Ball Park

You no longer can build a ballpark and say, "They will come," the way you could with Camden Yards, Jacobs Field and Coors Field. They will come, to be sure, but they won't come back unless he team lives up to its surroundings.

The Reds could be the latest club to learn that when they open Great American Ball Park this season. After the Phillies and Padres move into new parks in 2004, the majors will have opened 15 new stadiums since the first season of Camden Yards in 1992. In the most recent examples of this unabated retromania, attendance went up for only one season. In Year 2, as the teams dropped in the standings, attendance fell, too.

"A new ballpark is no longer a panacea for righting a franchise or increasing attendance," says Marty Brennaman, the Reds' play-by-play man for 29 years at Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field. "Unless you are in the middle of a pennant race, the days of a new park like The Jake selling out a record number of consecutive games are over."

Circumstances surrounding parks that opened a the early- to mid-1990s were different than today. John McHale Jr., now working in the commissioner's office, was the Tigers' president when Tiger Stadium gave way to Comerica Park in 2000, and before that helped bring the big leagues and Coors Field to Denver. "It was never just the park," McHale says. "Coors was developed in the midst of enormous excitement over major league baseball coming there. The Indians hit it about as perfectly as you could hit it (with the opening of Jacobs Field). It was a long planning process, and hey executed it perfectly on the business side and the player-development side.

"If there is any case in which the building may Lave been the dominant draw, it would have been Baltimore."

Camden Yards, the oldest of the retro parks, was an immediate hit with fans and players. It drew more than 3 million fans every season until 2002, the first year of life after Cal Ripken Jr. Though attendance started dropping five years ago, an Orioles spokesman says the club still hears from fans who say, "I want to see Camden Yards--the ballpark that started it all."

The appeal of a new ballpark didn't last long in Detroit, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, where--not coincidentally--the teams haven't had a winning season since the early '90s. None of the three clubs finished higher than 19th in attendance last season as the turnstile numbers dropped sharply from the first seasons of their new ballparks.

Great American Ball Park is sure to have the same first-year success. It has the charm of other retro parks, with a view of the Ohio River from behind home plate. Hitters will like the lack of foul territory as well as the dimensions--325 feet to right, 328 to left and 404 to center. Maybe that will mean more homers for Ken Griffey Jr., who needs a healthy resurgence if the Reds are to improve on last year's 78 victories. To keep fans coming back, it will be all about the Great American Ball Players.

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