Colorado Rockies: Where Coors Field ranks among MLB’s gimmicky parks

DENVER — I write this from Coors Field, which many will tell you is the most gimmicky park in baseball. Even opposing managers have come in to Colorado and called this place “pinball baseball.”

While the effects have calmed since the Colorado Rockies introduced a humidor in the early 2000s and perfected it later on in the decade, it’s still clearly irregular. The numbers show it’s probably more in people’s heads than impact on the game — besides singles — as Coors Field is not the No. 1 home run park.

What this story aims to do is to provide some semi-scientific story that ranks the most gimmicky parks in the game.

There are five categories that should well describe the stadiums and they have been put on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the weirdest and 1 being the norm. For example, Fenway’s Monster will pull it closer to a 5 than Kansas City’s unremarkable walls.

Here’s how that breaks down given the factors that were used:

Notes, Standouts:

It’s important to note that gimmicky doesn’t necessarily mean bad. Many of the recently built parks are purposely quirky to given them a jewel box feel.

About the list, having a dome automatically inflated some parks … but domes are weird. Just think about it: How many times as a kid did you play baseball in a dome? You didn’t. It’s not natural and it’s really weird and weird things sometimes happen, like losing a ball.

The names near the top or bottom aren’t surprising. However, where they rank may be.

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The top five has Chase Field No. 1. The place is like an airplane hangar if you’ve ever seen baseball there. The main entrance to the field is also where third base is and home plate is in the middle of a city block rather than the corner. That’s just the outside of the playing surface which, by the way, includes a pool. Inside there is, for some reason, a 20-foot wall in center field, some sort of Pesky’s-like poles down the lines and, of course, there’s the dryness that caused them to use a humidor that may or may not of been in place last year … and we’re not really sure. Also their carpet grass sometimes just eats players and balls. Fantastic stuff.

Coors Field is just as gimmicky to be honest, but not for the home runs and that’s the common mistake. It’s because the outfield is the size of a ranch you’d see on the side of I-70 whilst driving to Kansas.

Minute Maid Park would probably be No. 1 if it still had a literal hill … but they don’t. However, they still do have the Crawford boxes, some crazy outfield barriers and a dome.

Fenway Park is self explanatory whereas Tropicana Field is best described as sometimes home runs a hit a roof and sometimes white balls get lost in the white roof and sometimes fielders have to run over bullpen mounds which are still on the field there despite it not being built in 1920.

At the bottom of the list is Busch Stadium, which is super straight. It plays very straight up and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Baseball is cool that way, right?

So what do you think? Is the altitude in Denver more or less gimmicky than the short fences in right field at Yankee Stadium? Let us know in the comments section below.