June 26, 2004 [LINK]
How far?
In Wednesday's Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher pointed out the hypocrisy that Orioles owner Peter Angelos is seeking to purchase the Rosecroft Raceway in Prince George's County, even though Major League Baseball forbids ANY relationship with gambling! (Remember Pete Rose?) 
An article in the Post that same day compared the long distance from the Dulles Airport stadium site to downtown D.C. (21 miles) to stadiums built in the last ten years. At present, the stadium built farthest away from downtown is Ameriquest Field in Arlington (Texas), which is 16 miles from the center of Dallas, but it's somewhat closer to Fort Worth. Intrigued by this question, I took it upon myself to estimate such distances for all current and past baseball stadiums. The results are shown on the Stadiums by class page. Some of my estimates, which were based mainly on the DeLorme Street Atlas USA program, differ slightly from The Post's. Here is a summary of the four major stadium classes:
| Stadium class |
Number |
Average distance
from downtown |
| Early 20th century |
14 |
2.5 miles |
| Modern 20th century |
12 |
3.3 miles |
| "Doughnut clones" |
16 |
3.4 miles |
| Neoclassical |
15 |
1.6 miles |