The evolution of a ballpark – masslive.com – MassLive.com

Janet Marie Smith smiled when she heard the word designated hitter.

I know what story youre telling, said Smith, the architect behind Polar Park, as she interrupted Charles Steinberg ,the president of the Worcester Red Sox.

Thirty-two years ago this December, Smith walked into the office of Larry Lucchino, then-president of the Baltimore Orioles, to discuss plans to build Camden Yards.

Lucchino greeted her with a question.

I say with some embarrassment looking back on it, the first question I said to Janet as she was walking into my office was, Which league has the designated hitter? Lucchino said.

Smith responded, Im offended by the question.

Thats fantastic, sit down, lets talk, Lucchino said.

The exchange represents the intersection of two future baseball Hall of Famers whose collaboration created Camden Yards in Baltimore. Since then, each left their fingerprints on about a dozen baseball cathedrals such as Fenway Park, Petco Park in San Diego and Turner Field in Atlanta.

Polar Park is next on the list but holds a special significance. Its the first project since Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, that the two have built from start to finish.

Youre looking at John Lennon and Ringo Starr, Lucchino said with a smile looking at Steinberg, who is a big Beatles fan. We wouldnt have done a ballpark without Janet and Charles being a part of it. I wouldnt have. I dont remember how it happened, but the minute we bought the team, I talked to Janet and Charles about being involved.

Lucchino is quick to point out that no two cities or ballparks are identical, but direct lines can be drawn from Camden Yards in 1992 to even some of the most unique features at Polar Park in 2021. Other aspects derive from Lucchinos history around the game of baseball.

Worcester in a sense is the beneficiary of a lot of experience in other places.

Larry Lucchino

Still, aspects from the location down to specific items like smiley faces on the foul poles originate from successes at Camden Yards.

Worcester in a sense is the beneficiary of a lot of experience in other places, Lucchino said.

Lucchino pitched Camden Yards as the new centerpiece of Baltimores inner harbor, which experienced its renaissance before with a convention center and aquarium among other things. On a smaller scale, Worcesters Canal District fits within the Lucchinos ballpark lineup.

From Birchtree Bread Co. to the Locke 50 and The Queens Cups, the Canal District was booming with some of Worcesters finest eateries years before Lucchino thought of moving the Pawtucket Red Sox out of Rhode Island.

The redevelopment of the Crompton Building injected retail into the area. The Worcester Public Market acted as fuel to the economic fire burning in the neighborhood.

Worcester sells itself in that regard, Smith said. Wed love to present ourselves as geniuses. But when you see a city thats rich in and history and with that kind of opportunity laid out in front of you, when you combine that with some of our previous experiences, it just seemed like a natural fit.

Worcester Red Sox chairman Larry Lucchino (left) and ballpark designer Janet Marie Smith look around in Polar Park early during construction.

Lucchino grew up with the idea of an urban ballpark in his backyard in Pittsburgh with Forbes Field. The home of the Pirates was nestled, as Lucchino described it, a long home run from Carnegie Library. A short walk could take fans from the YMCA to the ballpark.

It was a place you could spend your entire day, Lucchino said. And I did many times, spend my entire day there going from one of those buildings to another.

Lucchinos account of Pittsburgh in the 50s and 60s describes the plans for Polar Park in the 2020s.

The Worcester Public Library and YWCA sit about a block from the scoreboard in left field of Polar Park. Across the diamond in right field, Summit Street acts as a border between the Worcester Wall seating and the Canal District.

Smith, Lucchino and Steinberg envision the corridor as a next-generation Eutaw Street in Baltimore or Jersey Street at Fenway Park - locations where fans gather before, during and after games.

Both are trying to animate the area just outside the ballpark itself, Lucchino said. Its an area not generally animated at a ballpark.

The former mayor of Baltimore Kurt Schmoke initially resisted the idea of an urban ballpark downtown. After touring other suburban ballparks, he altered his thinking.

Schmoke said the city instantly benefited economically from the creation of Camden Yards. Baltimore saw visitors from other Major League cities, specifically Boston and New York, drive to Camden Yards for a game. Schmoke also highlighted hosting the 1993 All-Star Game as an event the city reaped rewards from years down the road.

While out-of-town visitors are far less likely in Triple-A baseball, the WooSox have already floated the idea of hosting an International League All-Star game.

Economically, Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said the stadium coinciding with the arrival of the WooSox has already directly led to investors showing interest in New Englands second-largest city.

Ill tell you, the ballpark, which some people love to hate, Augustus said, I think the ballpark if you talk to a lot of developers, most of them that have come have cited the team relocating to Worcester as one of the reasons they took another look at Worcester.

The diamond at Polar Park looks like a baseball field with grass in the outfield, three bases, a pitchers mound and home plate.

Small business owners in the Canal District including OneZo, a bubble tea cafe and Suzette Creperie & Cafe each cited the WooSox arriving in the city as catalysts for investing in the city. A.J. Stephens, cited the WooSox as a reason why he selected Worcester as the location for his American Basketball Association franchise.

The WooSox, thats why we decided [on Worcester], because the baseball team thats coming to Kelley Square in this area, owner of OneZo James Ta said. We love this area and hopefully its a great location to expand our business.

Schmoke said economic arguments can be built upon figures favoring both supporters and detractors of ballparks. Something not up for debate, Schmoke said, is the pride the Orioles new home installed in the city.

Were kind of a tale of two cities. We have some wonderful things going on but we also have challenges of heavy concentration of poverty and areas of high crime. [Camden Yards] was always an entity that brought and uplifted our spirits and boosted the morale of the community, Schmoke said. Even the years when the Orioles werent doing well, Camden Yards was a real source of pride for residents of Baltimore.

A week before Camden Yards hosted opening day, the ballclub allowed people to enjoy a brown-bag lunch sitting at the ballpark.

Schmoke estimated 1,000 people attended the event. As the former mayor and Lucchino walked down the first baseline, a man shouted at the mayor, Glad to see government can do something right.

It brought diverse neighborhoods together, Schmoke said. People who might not interact at other times during the week, found common ground, both physically and literally at Camden Yards. The rich and the poor, all races, men and women all enjoyed the experience.

Lucchino planted the idea of an urban ballpark in Baltimore in the ear of Steinberg during the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. (The same series, coincidentally, where Worcester native and WooSox hitting coach Rich Gedman played in.)

At the time, Memorial Stadium acted as a multi-purpose facility in Baltimore that hosted baseball in the summer and football in the winter.

Lucchino envisioned one old-time ballpark for baseball and another stadium for other purposes.

It was such a foreign concept in 1986, Steinberg said. He said were going to build two stadiums. I said, Two? Theres not even an appetite to build one.

Lucchino held a belief that a ballpark differed from a stadium. During the planning and construction of Camden Yards, Lucchino even implemented $5 fines to employees who used the term stadium to describe the project.

The hunger for two stadiums reached a fever pitch in May of 1988 when the organization announced plans for a new home for the Baltimore Orioles.

At about the same time, construction was nearing completion in Toronto on SkyDome, a $570 million (Canadian dollars) project which included a retractable roof and artificial grass.

When discussing the project with then Blue Jays president Paul Beeston, Lucchino downplayed the magnitude behind Camden Yards.

I said, Paul, The difference is you guys are building the eighth wonder of the world. Were trying to build a nice little ballpark, Lucchino said. In many ways getting back to basics was an important part of what we brought about.

In 1988, the idea of an open-air nice little ballpark with a natural grass surface was considered outside the box.

Photographers cover the game in an empty stadium during fourth-inning intrasquad baseball game action in Toronto, Friday, July 17, 2020. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

SkyDome represented the trend. It evolved out of symmetrical multi-purpose artificial turf stadiums like Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Kingdome in Seattle, the Astrodome in Houston and Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.

All followed circular, symmetrical shapes footprints, with cookie-cutter seating bowls. Lucchinos envisioned resurrecting asymmetrical dimensions, fitting the ballpark into the landscape.

Grounds crew members work on pulling a tarp off the field during a rain delay of a baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Three decades later, Lucchinos out-of-the-box ideas, like keeping the warehouse on Eutaw Street in Baltimore as a backstop to a corridor in right field, are now etched into the vernacular of ballpark design.

At the time, though, the thought of integrating the warehouse into the ballpark drew criticism. Lucchino remembered a sports editor in Baltimore criticizing him for wanting to keep a rat-infested building.

Janet Marie was very clear that it would be something distinctive in a positive way as opposed to a negative way, Schmoke said. Initially the consensus among elected officials was that we doubted the wisdom of [integrating] that building. Obviously, she was right. We were wrong.

Keeping the warehouse forced Smith and Lucchino to construct the park around its surroundings. Polar Park is no different with a severe grade differential in right field on Summit Street and a railroad track along the third baseline.

A look at the Worcester Wall in right field at Polar Park.

As an organization under the Boston Red Sox, it made sense in terms of development to install a Green Monster-like structure.

Listening to the landscape, it was obvious where the Worcester Wall would stand.

We expected a version of the Fenway Green Monster, a wall in the outfield, for a whole host of reasons, Lucchino said. There was no way Janet was going to read the terrain to suggest there was a need for a wall in left field. The place where there was a need for a wall was right field.

In construction Camden Yards, after the decision to keep the warehouse, Steinberg questioned the idea of creating Eutaw Street as a place for congregating and moving throughout the game.

When they were designing Camden Yards and talking about the Eutaw Street corridor, I thought, thats going to be empty during the ball game because 40,000 people are going to be in their seats, Steinberg said. Its going to be animated before the game, but its going to be a concrete desert during the game.

I think what Larry has challenged us to do at Polar Park is really to take whats defined as a seat to another level and one that responds to how fans watch baseball today.

Janet Marie Smith

Lucchino and Smith built it in Baltimore and people came. Polar Park challenges the notion even more as with a capacity of 9,508, but only about 6,000 seats.

I think what Larry has challenged us to do at Polar Park is really to take whats defined as a seat to another level and one that responds to how fans watch baseball today, Smith said.

From nearly every vantage point, Polar Park offers a perspective for the nomadic fan. A family can start with a picnic in the left-center field berm, then move across the outfield to the Worcester Wall in right field for the third or fourth inning. By the seventh-inning stretch, they may have caught a perspective on the bridge along the right field line and behind home plate before closing out the game in left field.

Each vantage point offers a view not only of the playing field but of scoreboards packed with more information than ever -- from Boston Red Sox updates, to pitch velocity and diving deeper into analytics. The scoreboard also will allow for an interactive experience for fans, which the team has yet to release.

Twenty years from now youre going to see how so much of this information and interaction between fans and the ball game has become par for the course, Lucchino said. And no one would want to go back and be without that information.

The largest videoboard will be located in left field measuring 40 feet by 70 feet. It will focus on the batter and lineups during the games.

The final piece to constructing Camden Yards is also apparent in Polar Park. Smith not only created a ballpark, but the place uniquely home to the Baltimore Orioles.

It was shoehorned into the culture and history of the city, Schmoker said.

With Camden Yards it started with the name. The team agreed to call it Oriole Park at Camden Yards, to honor the original home of the ballclub in Baltimore in the 19th century.

It continued by marking each home run that landed on Eutaw Street with a bronze marker with the distance and hitter. The organization also unveiled the Flag Court, located between the right-field scoreboard and Eutaw Street. Each American League team has a flag that is flown in order of the divisional standings.

Those things arent so much about history as they are saying this is a place that will have a history and how can we start that storytelling from the first pitch, Smith said. Polar Park will offer some of those same kinds of opportunities, maybe even more because its Triple-A.

Four months before Polar Park is set to open, its saturated in characteristics tying it to Worcester.

The diamond at Polar Park looks like a baseball field with grass in the outfield, three bases, a pitchers mound and home plate.

The outfield lights will be shaped like hearts. Smiley faces will appear atop the foul poles. The capacity, 9,508, pays tribute to Worcesters area code. Informational signage and kiosks will appear throughout the concourse educating fans about Worcesters industrial and social history as well as its threads that tie it to the fabric of baseball history.

Construction workers, city officials and the Worcester Red Sox celebrated the laying the final steel beam on Polar Park. The final beam was covered in signatures from those involved in the project.

Much of Polar Parks history begins with a baseball game at the stadium Camden Yards replaced. Smith overheard a fan discussing a possible new stadium. The idea fermented for months. During Thanksgiving dinner with her parents in Jackson, Mississippi, she experienced a eureka moment that prompted her to pen a letter to Lucchino about her ideas for Camden Yards.

She wrote the letter on her birthday, December 13, 1988. The letter was nearly dismissed by the Orioles, but caught the attention of Lucchino, who then invited her in to talk ballparks and urban planning.

I read the one from Janet, and I said my goodness, Im up to my eyeballs in Camden Yards, Lucchino said. This woman has an architectural background, an urban planning background, she would be perfect.

More than three decades later, some of the most beloved ballparks in America have Smith and Lucchino to thank from Fenway Park and Camden Yards on the East Coast to Petco Park or Dodgers Stadium on the West Coast.

The next line on their respective resumes and accomplishments will include Worcester and Polar Park.

The remarkable chemistry between Larry and Janet Marie is going to propel both of them to the Hall of Fame, Steinberg said. Theyll be enshrined because they not only changed ballparks for the better, theyve not only changed baseball for the better, but theyve also changed the social and cultural history of American cities. And thats quite an accomplishment.

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