Touring the SkyDome/Rogers Centre

Those that know me know that I am a baseball fanatic. I have a hope to one day visit each and every stadium in Major League Baseball. Of the 30 current stadiums, I’ve seen nine of them, as well as three now-demolished ones.

Anyway, my wife and I went to Toronto this past Monday to see the Blue Jays play the Red Sox. We were outside the stadium a few hours before game time and thinking about what we could do to pass the time. We thought that we’d go up the CN Tower since neither of us had been up to the observation deck in quite a while. As I was taking a couple photos of the tower and Amy was checking out the prices, we heard a guy hollering about last call for Rogers Centre tours. We thought we’d check it out instead since it was half the cost of what the tower was. The tour was pretty informative and it was fun to walk around an almost completely empty stadium (a new dream of mine: photograph every stadium, empty). I knew a few things about the dome because I did my grade 7 speech on it, but learned quite a few new things. Our tour guide was probably the most enthusiastic tour guide that I’ve ever experienced. He knew his stuff and you could tell he loved his job.

As a baseball fan, I find the stadium to be kind of stale and boring, especially when comparing it to the other ones in the league; it’s not the greatest place in the world to see a ball game. Places like PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Camden Yards in Baltimore have really set the bar pretty high. The SkyDome (renamed Rogers Centre in 2005) was built at the wrong time in my opinion. It opened in 1989, three years before Camden Yards opened which more or less set the standard for how baseball stadiums were designed and built from that point forward. The engineering behind the retractable dome is astonishing and while inside on the tour we actually got to see it open.

With Toronto’s climate, a dome/retractable roof is a necessity and there are a number of current stadiums that employ the same feature, including Seattle, Arizona, Milwaukee, Miami, and Houston. The SkyDome does look a little dated in comparison to the others, but it still gets the job done. To me, what sets ballparks apart from other sports venues is that the dimensions, save for the infield, are different with each place so they’re all unique in their own little way. Many stadiums have quirky and uneven distances to the outfield walls, but the SkyDome is perfectly symmetrical all the way around which, frankly, I find kind of dull. I feel there’s too much concrete which gives it a bit of a cold feeling, but what hurts this place more than anything is the turf.

Artificial turf is used by only two stadiums; here and Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay. However, Toronto still only has patches of dirt around the bases and not the entire infield like every other stadium, including Tampa Bay. The turf is harder on the players which I think really works against the Blue Jays in terms of trying to lure top names to come play for them. There’s something about astroturf that screams 1980’s. It was kind of cool and revolutionary in a way when it was invented, but it doesn’t fit well anymore on a baseball diamond.

I really don’t like to put the place down because as a kid I remember thinking it was the greatest place I’d ever been to. Times change of course and while I still wish Toronto’s stadium would’ve been part of the retro craze in the mid-90’s, I’ll still go and see games there. They’re the closest thing I’ve got to a Major League team, although Detroit isn’t too far of a drive in the other direction.