Environmental Education

GAMEON
Forever
Southpaws
HOK Sport, the Kansas City-based sports architecture firm,
has some prior experience, you might say, designing ballparks.
So it was a bit of a surprise when the firm’s preliminary
drawings for a new downtown stadium in Omaha, Neb., were
reported in the Omaha World-Herald as showing the future home
of the College World Series “facing in the wrong direction.”
Although the World-Herald story focused largely on the difference
between the new park and Omaha’s beloved Rosenblatt
Stadium, “Ballpark Takes New Direction” went on to suggest
that ballparks can face “almost any direction but west.” But
Martin DiNitto, an associate principal with HOK Sport, notes
that the three site plans presented to the NCAA by designers
in February showed a relatively narrow range of southeast,
east and northeast orientations. While the southeast orientation
— the direction that the catcher faces — represents a 90-degree
turn from the traditional northeast orientation (which Rosenblatt
has), DiNitto says that left-handed pitchers will nearly always
be accurately described as southpaws on baseball diamonds
throughout the northern hemisphere.
“A northeast orientation of home to center field points the
third-base line due north, while a southeast orientation points
the first-base line due south. You typically have the ability to
rotate it within those parameters,” DiNitto says. “There’s a
fourth position that has worked in several ballparks that have
the catcher facing due north. If you think about it, at midseason
— June 22, remember, is the summer solstice — you can stand
at the right field foul pole and the sun will align with the left
field foul pole. That’s not a very comfortable situation for
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NAMINGRIGHT
As park names go, Festival Park in
Deltona, Fla., isn’t all that creative.
Nor is it even appropriate, according
to the organizers of the city’s
biggest annual get-together.
Overshadowed by a Wal-Mart
entrance located between a state
highway and an interstate, 15-acre
Festival Park doesn’t exactly scream
community center, but it has been
the home of Deltona’s Spring Fest
— which draws about 3,500 people
— for the past decade. But limited
parking, a lack of signage and the
general difficulty newcomers have
in finding the park have caused the
organizers of this year’s festival
to move to the less jocundsounding,
though centrally
located, Dewey O. Boster Park.
“Last year we had vendors and
entertainers that couldn’t even
find Festival Park,” Deltona Parks
and Recreation Advisory Committee
chairman David McKnight told the
Daytona Beach News-Journal.
“The park and the name don’t fit.”
It could be worse, Deltonans.
Wisconsin state parks officials for
years have been replacing stolen
signs leading to the Bong Recreation
Area, which offers an array of
recreation opportunities, illicit drug
use not among them. And, presum-
24 ATHLETIC BUSINESS APRIL 2008 ATHLETICBUSINESS.COM
RENDERINGS COURTESY OF HOK SPORT
spectators sitting on the
first-base side, because
they’ll be looking into the
sun pretty much the
entire game.”
Computer modeling
the path of the sun in
10-minute increments
throughout the season is standard procedure for stadium
architects; recent improvements to such programs allow the
ability to throw shade across the field as the sun goes behind the
stadium deck. But site orientation isn’t just about keeping batters,
catchers and umpires from squinting. These days, views into and
out of stadiums toward downtown skylines, rivers and bridges
are a huge part of their appeal, and the comfort of spectators
in the stadium or watching from their living room couch is
considered nearly as important as the safety of ballplayers.
DiNitto says it’s fortunate that the Omaha site is ample enough
to allow for flexibility. “It still works for all three positions at
this point,” he says. “One of them accommodates views of as
much of the river, convention center and city skyline as possible
within the constraints of orientation. We’ll want to sit down in
the later design phases with the various stakeholders and
discuss with them at length what their preference would be,
taking into consideration the sun angles for ballplayers on the
field and fans in the stands. When it’s all said and done, we
won’t have changed the traditions in baseball.”
— A.C.
Bong
Recreation Area
EXIT 340
ably, the name of Arkansas’ Toad
Suck Park is merely a moniker,
not a popular pastime. Some
parks, however, do live up to their
name. Take the Hungry Mother
State Park, the site of the Marion
(Va.) Downtown Revitalization
Association’s annual Shuck n’
Cluck, a fund-raising Hawaiian
feast featuring fresh oysters, grilled
chicken and “all the fixings.”
— N.B.