December 31, 2012 [LINK / comment]
The Washington Redskins closed out the 2012 regular season with a "Big Bang" yesterday, beating the Dallas Cowboys in what had to be the most crucial and dramatic football game in (or near) Washington over the past two decades. It may be the first time in the history of the universe that two teams from Washington made it to the the playoffs in their respective sports. As I wrote on Facebook, the Redskins must have "Natitude"!
It occurred to me that there are six current NFL stadiums which have been used for baseball in the past, although one of them (the Superdome) never actually hosted a major league team. I redid one of them earlier this month (Metrodome), and three others are now updated as well. (See below.) Whew!
The following updates to stadiums used for baseball and football concentrate mainly on the entry portals and profile views. In two of those three cases, it involved considerable re-working of the diagrams themselves.
The new Candlestick Park diagram for 1972 and before illustrate a peculiarity of that stadium: It originally had two levels of entry portals in the upper deck. At some point in the 1980s more or less, they decided they needed more seats, so they gradully closed the lower set of entry portals. The diagrams themselves (last updated about a year ago) are virtually the same as they were before otherwise.
NOTE: The Washington Redskins might play the 49ers in Candlestick Park, if they beat the Seattle Seahawks next Sunday in FedEx Field. The Redskins and 49ers were the dominant teams of the 1980s.
Redoing the Kingdome diagrams with entry portals helped me resolve a conunundrum about the relative position of the upper decks beyond left field. They are actually about 20 feet farther back than I had originally estimated. Note that the red sections in the rear of the lower deck are what I assume to be some kind of luxury suites, based on photos I have seen, but I can't be sure. Also, note that there is a new "opaque roof" version diagram, as is the case for Marlins Park. Other domed stadium diagrams will have something similar eventually.
I thought redoing Jack Murphy Stadium with entry portals was going to be a relative cinch, as it was with Chase Field, but along the way I discovered to my horror that certain basic estimates were off base. The vital clue was the position of the foul pole relative to the seating sections, which the entry portals delineate. It was off by an entire section! Somehow I had the movable portion of the lower deck about 15 feet deeper than it really is, and the overall diameter of the stadium was ten feet two big. Making the initial size adjustment wasn't too hard, but then getting all the details to fit once again proved to be very time consuming. But it was worth it, don't you agree!?
Don't worry, I'm not about to get started on doing football stadium diagrams such as FedEx Field, a.k.a. "The Incredible Shrinking Stadium." The Football use page has also been updated with minor corrections. Because that page is primarily a chronology, I'm think of adding a new page related to football/baseball stadiums with more useful information.
Joe Van Winkle informed me that some of the links on the Yankee Stadium page were broken, so I removed them for the time being. He is eager to see entry portals included on those diagrams, and so am I!