Favorite Baseball Links

Fans' Personal Web Pages Devoted to Baseball Parks

I don't claim to run the only site devoted to the stadiums where pro baseball is played.  Here are my favorites:

• modernerabaseball.com -- Few people know more about ballparks -- and I don't mean just in the U.S. -- than Joe Connor.  He has traveled extensively checking out the parks and their surroundings for his popular "travel guides."  You purchase these guides in an electronic form (they're PDF files), so it's easy for him to keep them updated.  His current crop of guides include:  A Fan's Guide To The Ultimate Spring Training Experience; A Fan's Guide To The Ultimate Ballpark Tour: Fully Loaded; The Ultimate Japanese Ballpark Experience and A Fan's Guide To The Ultimate Dominican Baseball Experience.  His site tells you about Joe and his travels -- and how you can buy his guides.

• Baseball Pilgrimages -- A very devoted baseball fan, and quite a ballpark expert, named Graham Knight has chronicled his baseball travels. You'll find wonderful photos and very useful information about the parks he's seen.

• www.geocities.com/meg_minard/  -- Meg Minard is a meticulous writer, and her experiences at ballparks around North America form the basis for this fascinating and useful site.  Carefully researched park info and links to other activities in the host cities make her web endeavor immensely helpful.

• mysite.verizon.net/charliesballparks/stadiums.htm -- Dubbed Charlie's Big Baseball Park Page, this is an impressive "fan" page.  Hey, I have to take my hat off to anyone who has been to more baseball stadiums than I have -- and he has carefully documented the dates and how many times he has visited the (now zooming past 300) pro parks he's seen in his life.  Charlie is serious about this stuff, and his observations and rankings are right on the money.

• ballparkreviews.com -- A very nice guy named Brian Merzbach has created a fun site with photos and descriptions of all of the professional ballparks he's ever visited -- and he's another one who has been to even more than I have.  I've simply got to find a way to catch up! 

• minorleagueballparks.com -- Gary Jarvis of Iowa City is a frequent visitor to BASEBALLPARKS.COM, and his insight about ballparks is always welcomed!  If you care anything at all about Minor League stadiums, you definitely have to visit his site.  It's wonderfully done!

• small-parks.com -- Another ballpark addict is Jeff LeCrone, and his site is a great compilation of reviews and photos of a number of minor-league parks.  Check out his photos -- Jeff has a real eye for nice angles at ballparks.  There are also some great video shots of ballparks!

• fieldsofdreams.com -- Another enjoyable site, dubbed Fields Of Dreams, belongs to Mike Castro.  The design (including the photos) is absolutely gorgeous, and I like his commentary on the parks.  By the way, some of Mike's pictures are for sale in the "Photos" store at the Grand Slam Mall.

• franksballparks.tripod.com -- Frank Albanese has also been to quite a few parks, and his site has some wonderful photos.

• digitalballparks.com -- Staten Island residents Wendy and Eric Pastore have developed a beautiful site devoted to the ballparks they've visited.  Some of the images have large file sizes, and consequently, they are gorgeous.  They also aren't afraid to try new wrinkles on their site, such as a chat room.  This site is a lot of fun, and it's one to return to often to see what new features they've added.

• www.geocities.com/rabid_orangutan/ -- This is Scott Larson's Summer Cathedrals site, an enjoyable tour of the parks he's seen.  I especially like the photos of Wrigley. 

• www.geocities.com/bigghoti/stadiums.htm -- Here's an entry called Paul's Major League Baseball Stadium Pages, and I think it's going to develop into a wonderful site.  Best of all, Paul Hamann of the Pacific Northwest has started applying his writing and photographic skills to Minor League parks.  Good move!

Great Resources

In writing or working on a Web site about ballparks, I have to do a lot of research.  Here are the places I turn to the most:

• www.minorleaguebaseball.com -- Without a doubt, there is no site anywhere on the Internet that is more useful to me than this one.  Here I can obtain detailed info on every AAA, AA, A and Rookie League team in North America, including their schedule, address, phone number . . . and even directions to their park. 

• www.minorleaguenews.com -- A great place to read about all minor league sports, not just baseball. By the way, each spring some especially brilliant writing appears in Minor League News. OK, I admit it: I'm saying that because I'm the author of an article that appears in April each year!

• baseball-almanac.com -- As I said in my book, I couldn't have written it without the incredible volume of useful information on this site.  The Baseball Almanac blows away anything else on the Majors I've seen.  It has so much interesting baseball information that a fan could lose oneself for hours reading the thousands of pages of content.  The info, lots of it historical (and attractively organized!), is categorized into over two dozen headings.  A "must" visit!

• RealSportsNetwork -- A vast listing of links for all manner of sports. Here's a connection to their baseball listings.

• baseballindex.org -- This site bills itself as "the first base of baseball research."  If anything, that slogan doesn't come close to doing justice to the breadth of the baseball information in The Baseball Index!  It is a product of the Bibliography Committee of the Society for Baseball Research (SABR -- see below), and it provides bibliographic references to over 200,000 documents!

• BaseballGuru.com -- Craig Tomarkin is the " Baseball Guru," and he has established an extremely fun, diverse baseball site with information, charts and articles on a variety of subjects.  In addition, Craig has lined up some noteworthy experts to act as the "gurus" for specific baseball topics.  These gurus provide special articles, links and insight -- and are available to receive inquiries from visitors to that site.  And Craig showed the good sense to ask me to be the guru for ballparks!

• mlbcenter.com -- An interesting assortment of topical articles, downloads and forums, the MLBCenter site is a lot of fun.

• www.thediamondangle.com -- The Diamond Angle is a magazine devoted to our National Pastime.  Its website is much more than just the text of the mag posted on the World Wide Web.  Here you will find many, many in-depth (and well-written) reviews of baseball books, lots of amazing photos, fascinating interviews, insightful columns, even their own version of the Hall of Fame, where they describe the "Stars In Their Time" who just might deserve to be in Cooperstown, but aren't.

• www.sabr.org -- Hey, if I'm going to be a member of this organization, I should at least provide a link to their site!  The Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) is where hard-core baseball fans interact.  Even if you're not all that "hard core," you'll enjoy the variety of resources and publications you can check into here.

• www.savefenwaypark.org -- The Save Fenway Park! organization is hard at work to keep the Red Sox and the governmental entities from destroying a true American landmark.  As you might know, some factions want to tear down Fenway Park and build a new home for the Red Sox elsewhere.  What a tragedy that would be!

• www.baseball-links.com -- Wow!  This one is overwhelming.  John Skilton's Baseball Links site bills itself as the "Web's most comprehensive collection of links to baseball resources."  And I think it's true!  There are links to over 6,500 sites about baseball (including one to BASEBALLPARKS.COM, of course!).

• www.allstarlinks.com -- This one is a little like Skilton's "links" site, but it is just getting off the ground, and it is about all sports, not just baseball.  But the design is very nice and you'll probably enjoy poking around in it.

• www.suite101.com/links.cfm/baseball -- And while we're talking about listings of "links," Suite 101 is a nice, professional site.  This is their list of baseball sites -- which is pretty comprehensive (and which offers some "screening," meaning that a site has to meet certain quality standards before it can be listed).

• www.stats.com -- Stats, Inc. calls itself "the nation's leading independent sports information and statistical analysis company."  It stands to reason that their CEO is an actuary!  Their Web site gives you the ability to order their excellent books (including the fantastic Ballpark Sourcebook).  By the way . . . have you ever looked at the Sunday sports section of a couple of different big-city newspapers and noticed that their baseball beat writers have columns which usually seem to quote the same offbeat statistics that week?  Hmm, I wonder what source all those writers used to get exactly the same stats . . .

Baseball Tours

We get asked for this a lot -- so much so that we decided to find a way to really help our visitors with an incredibly professional service.

Here are other reputable folks who run tours for baseball fans:

• www.diamondbaseballtours.com -- A big fan of ballparks, Dan Lindsey, operates a wonderful business of organizing baseball excursions.

• www.springtrainingtours.com -- The name of this site tells you all you need to know about what they do (oh, I guess you should know they organize tours only in Arizona, not Florida -- although in 2001, they claim that they will begin arranging trips to games in the Grapefruit League, too!).

• www.jaybuckley.com -- Jay Buckley's Baseball Tours has been doing this for years.  They put together some super baseball trips, including the ever-popular Spring Training circuits.

Slick, Professional Sites

And here are some other well-done sites with baseball info:

• www.totalbaseball.com -- While this doesn't provide as much info as their record books or CD-ROMs, this is a fascinating place to read profiles of famous players and look up some records.  There is a fair amount of up-to-date baseball news, too.

• www.sportingnews.com -- You had to know that I would include the "bible of baseball."  Here you'll find current scores and interesting features, but not as much of an "archive" as I'd like.

• www.fastball.com -- Interesting mix of Major League info and team-specific news.  There's even a neat feature where you can E-mail an article you like to a friend.

• www.ballparks.com -- This very professional site covers the facilities of all major pro sports.  I especially like the space devoted to Ray Bergman's travels (he wrote the book Around The Majors In 60 Days) to visit all of the baseball parks in the Majors.  Yes, he loved Wrigley Field (like me), but he also thought Jacobs Field and Camden Yards were better than Coors Field and The Ballpark In Arlington.  I disagree with him on those.

• www.baseballamerica.com -- If you're a baseball fan, you don't need me to tell you how wonderful the content is in Baseball America's magazine.  Well, a lot of very useful content can also be found on their Web site.  For instance, their coverage of Minor League baseball is second to none.

• www.majorleaguemodels.com -- For a change of pace, see what these guys are up to!  They make scale models, in incredible detail, of baseball parks.  Check out what they've done with Wrigley Field!

Baseball Park Architects

These are the all stars when it comes to designing America's best ballparks:

• www.hok.com/sport -- These guys do a better job of spending public funds than any other outfit in America -- thereby rattling the cage of the Field Of Schemes people (see site info below)!  Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum's office in Kansas City contains the architectural brains behind ballparks like PNC Park, Coors Field and Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and they designed the renovations at Edison International Field in Anaheim and Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

• www.ellerbebecket.com -- And HOK's main competition comes from Ellerbe Becket, whose sports-facility design team is also in Kansas City.  Ellerbe's MLB claims to fame are Turner Field and Bank One Ballpark.

• sports.hntb.com -- If HOK and Ellerbe are the two heavy-weights in the Major League weight class, then the Sports Group of the HNTB architectural firm are the champs in the Minors.  And would you like to guess where their international HQ are located?  You guessed it:  Kansas City.

• www.hksinc.com/portfolio/sports.htm -- And another excellent designer of sports facilities is HKS, headquartered in Dallas.  They worked on The Ballpark In Arlington, Miller Park in Milwaukee and the two gems of the Texas League, The Dell Diamond in Round Rock and Dr Pepper/Seven Up Ballpark in Frisco.

Ballpark Shopping

Another common request we receive is "Where can I buy such-and-such about baseball parks?"  These folks will be happy to help you:

• www.grandslammall.com -- Obviously, I would be stupid if I didn't mention my own e-commerce site.  The Grand Slam Mall is 100% baseball, and it features art, prints and posters of wonderful baseball scenes, including the work of Rob Arra and Bill Goff.  You'll also find baseball maps, unique apparel -- including shirts and caps with the BASEBALLPARKS.COM logo -- and music CDs full of great baseball songs.

• www.hungryformusic.com -- This non-profit organization compiles baseball songs and poetry on CDs.  The result is the Diamond Cuts collection of audio CDs, and I really love the music on every one of them.  And the money raised goes to wonderful causes, like providing musical instruments for inner city children, and putting on concerts at hospitals and retirement homes. 

• www.kingoftheroadmusic.com -- This site promotes a CD with baseball songs.  The CD is called Baseball Songs, Sports Heroes, and what it includes aren't just any baseball songs, mind you, but heartfelt songs with carefully researched lyrics and pleasant melodies about hating the Yankees, lamenting the curse that haunts the Red Sox, the Native American multi-sport star Louis Sockalexis, Negro League fireballer Smokey Joe Williams, and more.

• www.catalogquest.com -- Classic American ballparks spring to life in a series of limited-edition, signed-and-numbered lithographs made from Michael Kuyper's original oil paintings.

• www.ballparkseats.com -- So you want a seat from old Crosley Field, Shibe Park or the Polo Grounds?  The stadiums themselves might be gone, but you can still buy seats from these old parks by contacting BallParkSeats.com.  Wouldn't one look nice in your family room?

• www.ericenders.com/scoreBooks.asp -- A resourceful baseball fan named Eric Enders had been disappointed with the baseball score-keeping books available on the market, so he created his own.  He did such a good job designing it that other baseball fans urged him to market it.  If you like to keep score at baseball games, you might just find this scorebook to be the easiest-to-use and flexible one anywhere.

• www.sfo.com/~csuppes/Mall/misc/index.asp -- This set of Web pages provides the opportunity to look at (and, Ballparks.com hopes, buy) miniature sculptures of ballparks, aerial photos of stadiums and more.  I've found some of their links to be bad, though.

• www.sandlotlegends.com -- This site is devoted to now-demolished ballparks, including the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field and Crosley Field.  For each park, there is an interesting essay.  There's also a way to purchase prints of the stadiums and pennants of the teams that played there.

• www.mickeysplace.com -- I love baseball autographs, and Mickey's Place, located across the street from the Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown, is as nice a store -- and Web site -- as there is.

Out-of-the-ordinary, Downright-fun Sites

Kind of a catch-all category about all things baseball!

• www.roxhead.com/page12.html -- This is actually a portion of a larger site (roxhead.com). This section is devoted to a variety of thoughts about the Major's highest-altitude ballpark, Coors Field.

• padresfan44.tripod.com -- Lots of interesting information about obtaining players' autographs.

• www.crosswinds.net/~thedeadballera/gravesitelist.html -- Here's a site with a different twist.  It lists the burial locations of now-deceased baseball players, executives and umpires.  Well, maybe this isn't a "downright fun" site, but it is interesting!

• hallowedground.org -- This site is devoted to the statues, memorials, museums and plaques dedicated to baseball players and ballparks around the country.  You can search by state, player or type of memorial.

• www.ebbets-field.com -- It almost goes without saying that one of the most "classic" ballparks of all was Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.  This site is devoted to its memory.

• www.zackhample.com -- An industrious fellow by the name of Zack Hample really knows how to snare balls at baseball games.  He has created a Website that discusses his exploits, and it also features the book he has written called "How To Snag Major League Baseballs."  If you aspire to add some baseballs obtained at Major League parks to your collection, you might as well learn from the master.

• www.baseballtour.com -- Another site spawned by a book is this one.  In 1998, two baseball nuts from California decided to attend a game at every Major League park . . . and they indeed hit all 30 stadiums in just 38 days!  Their travels became a book called "The Summer that Saved Baseball."  There are a lot of fun things in their Web site, the best of which is the interactive "map" of their journey.

• www.Baseballmailbox.com -- Now here's an interesting approach.  This site allows you to sign up for a free e-mail account, but not with a domain name like "hotmail" or "juno."  Instead, your e-mail address can be yourname@BaseballBabe.com or yourname@AlwaysBaseball.com or over three dozen other baseball-related domain names.

• www.fieldofschemes.com -- I kind of like the idea of public funds being used to build stadiums.  I think there can be a great deal of civic pride generated from a new ballpark . . . but the creators of this site definitely think otherwise.

• rateitall.com -- Computers can be used for some interesting things, and this is indeed a very clever use!  This site allows visitors to provide their own "ratings" on various topics.  By clicking on the link here, it will take you to the portion of the site where you can rate (of course!) all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums.  It's interesting to see the tabulations (and comments) of other visitors' ratings.

• www.dickiethon.com -- I love offbeat Web sites.  I love baseball Web sites.  And I love the way this one combines the two!  The creators of this popular site, which is loosely organized under the banner of being the Dickie Thon Fan Club (DTFC), provide some wonderfully irreverent baseball quotes, reviews and observations.

• www.slurve.net -- And another enjoyable site devoted to offbeat baseball news and opinions is this one, developed by Tom Rose.

• www.nlfan.com -- BASEBALLPARKS.COM doesn't attempt to cover parks outside of the NAPBL (i.e., the "affiliated" minors), which means that the very interesting Northern League gets no coverage here.  However, Bill Tyler has put together an interesting site on this league that deserves a look.

• www.geocities.com/~j_michaels -- He's part rock and he's part country . . . and he loves baseball!  Nashville musician J. Michaels has released a dynamite song about America's Pastime called Bottom Of The Fifth.  Visit his Web site to hear what this great song sounds like -- and while you're there, take note of the Spring Training dates where he sang the National Anthem.

• www.hsbaseballweb.com -- I receive a lot of e-mails which concern amateur baseball, but BASEBALLPARKS.COM isn't about amateur baseball.  I've referred a lot of e-mailers to this neat site, though, because it's full of interesting info on high-school baseball!

• www.purebaseball.com -- This is an interesting site that is geared for players in fantasy leagues.  I like the way their comments on baseball events (like trades) are sometimes snide!

• www.dmlco.com/pps -- This is the Prospects Projects & Suspects site, which "attempts to make sense of young baseball talent."  It's not an extremely professional endeavor, but the way it goes about looking at developing players is unique.

• sportcontest.homestead.com -- This site hosts a continuing set of sports trivia questions.   

• www.mytravels.com/baseball.htm -- Devoted to "my travels" (the travels of the author of that site), this page allows you to order a certificate which commemorates all of the major-league ballparks you've visited.

• www.OriolesHangout.com -- If you're an Orioles fan, you need to make a bookmark for this site.  There's a lot to it!

• www.jerkoftheweek.com -- This is really offbeat.  It purports to designate a Jerk Of The Week from the world of baseball.  And this site has a great motto:  "Where nice guys finish last."

• www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/4187/ -- A very industrious baseball fanatic named Shaun Sullivan is developing an incredibly detailed baseball simulation for the PC.  Read about his progress on this Web site.  And ask to be put on his mailing list, too!  It looks like this "sim" is going to be a winner!

• www.attheyard.com -- Baseball Weekly ran a feature article on a Web site called "At The Yard," so I had to check it out.  The site is the brainchild of former Major-League pitcher Chris Hook, and it seeks to become "THE site for minor league baseball on the Internet."  It has a little bit of everything, including links to other baseball sites.