February 5, 2005 [LINK]
Super Bowl 2005!??
Baseball fans are probably lucky that the climax of their season doesn't escalate to such absurd proportions of glitter and hoopla as the Super Bowl. No $100 million TV ads or "wardrobe malfunctions" allowed in Our National Pastime! Which made me wonder, In how many past and present MLB stadiums has the Super Bowl been played?
- Memorial Coliseum (L.A.): 1967, 1973
- San Diego / Jack Murphy / QualComm Stadium: 1988, 1998, 2003
- Joe Robbie / Pro Player / Dolphins Stadium: 1989, 1995, 1999
- Metrodome: 1992
I'm tempted to exclude the first one because it wasn't a baseball stadium at all, and I'm tempted to include the Superdome, which hosted six Super Bowls as well as quite a few MLB pre-season exhibition games over the years. It was the only doughnut / cookie-cutter stadium of the '60s and '70s that was home to an NFL team but never home to a major league baseball team. (I don't think that the Silverdome or the more recent football domes with an oblong layout really belong in that category, but the same could be said of the Metrodome, which doesn't fit in any of the other baseball stadium categories.) The Superdome could have become a real baseball stadium if there were enough fan support in New Orleans. To mark the recent successes of the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, the Fenway Park page has been updated with a new football version. That was the Boston Patriots' home from 1963 until 1968. Will Boston (broadly defined) manage to do what Pittsburgh did in 1979-1980 -- win two consecutive Super Bowls with a World Series title in between?