What Camden Yards Taught Us About Ballpark Architecture

Baseball is sacred to me. The sport itself is beautiful -- peaceful and paced in a way I enjoy. It's history is perfectly long, winding it's way through many significant pieces of Americana. Any conversation about the evolution of civil rights, the understanding of labor relations, or the expansion of Americans across America -- from cities to suburbs, from one coast to another --would be missing something if baseball were left in the margins. You could certainly argue that baseball is, actually, one of this country's most defining creations.

This podcast touches on a different piece of baseball's reach -- architecture -- while connecting it to something else that the sport executes brilliantly: a profound reverence to its own history. Better, it explores how something brand new -- a ballpark built in the early 90s -- was designed specifically to pay homage to the past. I grew up going to Camden Yards in Baltimore, staring out at the old warehouse in right field, and it's current stature in baseball is second only to the oldest ballparks (in Boston and Chicago). 

This episode made me understand why.