As a long suffering Pirate fan, I was pleased to note that ESPN rated PNC Park as the best ballpark in major league baseball.
I agree 100%. Granted, I have only seen games in PNC, Wrigley, Fenway and Three Rivers Stadium (I’ve seen the outside of Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium, Jacobs Field, Comiskey Park, Riverfront Stadium and The Vet, but that doesn’t count), as well as minor league parks including Johnstown’s Point Stadium, Blair County Ballpark (Altoona Curve) and the old home of the Durham Bulls, so my basis for comparison isn’t as solid as others’. Still, PNC is a magnificent ballpark. Everything but the home team on the field is first rate.
What does this have to do with Pitt Football? Good question.
Really, I just wanted to spread the love for Pittsburgh. But now that I’ve thought about it, this article reminds me of how disappointed I am in Heinz Field. (Rant coming about now…)
The Rooneys (who own the Steelers, for those of you living on Mars for the last 60 years) had just as good an opportunity to build a palace of a football stadium as the Pirates did with PNC Park. But NO! Clearly, Heinz Field was built for one reason – luxury and club boxes, and the high ticket prices that come with them.
Sure, compared to Three Rivers, there are more seats on the sidelines and fewer in the endzones, and the seats are generally closer to the field (except for the upper upper deck). The seats are bigger, and there are more bathrooms, and let’s not forget the Coca-Cola great hall. (Naturally, these things are all improvements over Pitt Stadium as well, but that is another rant entirely).
For the regular fan, though, Heinz Field could have been so much better. Ingress and egress is actually worse – three gates instead of four, and only two escalators for the peasantry. Getting to the 500 level at Heinz Field is worse than climbing up Cardiac Hill.
The scoreboard? They forgot to put the score on the board! They have to insert a graphic into the instant replay. There is no out of town scoreboard, and the mini-boards that hang on each sideline just above the club seats have such small lettering you can barely read them.
Far fewer seats are under cover – not as big a deal for baseball, since games are cancelled for bad weather, but for a winter sport like football, Three Rivers did have some [rotection.
And the cup holders? The don’t hold any beverage holding device that is sold in that stadium.
Not bottles, not paper cups with pop, or plastic beer cups (Steeler games only). They might as well not have bothered – we would have a little more room for our feet without them.
The whole design of the stadium – with the 500 level being so high – is to accomidate the big money seats at mid level.
So, was tearing down Three Rivers necessary? Hell no. Sure, the Pirates needed PNC Park. Without it, I’m sure they would be losing real money instead of pretending to lose money.
The Steelers didn’t need it at all. They only added 6,000 more seats (Three Rivers capacity was 59,000). The Rooneys needed an excuse to charge fans more money, so they figured the only way to justify it was to build a new stadium. If they had doubled the price for luxury boxes at Three Rivers, people and businesses here would have paid. All they had to do was declare a certain section “preferred” seating and people would have paid – that’s how much Pittsburgh fans love the Steelers. But they couldn’t let the Pirates have something without getting it themselves. They had to have their new stadium. And the irony of it is – they could have done it so much better (without even costing that much more).
Sure, maybe the Rooneys were right to be cheap – they knew that Steeler fans would still come no matter how the stadium was, and they would pay an arm and a leg to do so. But wouldn’t it be nice to have two great stadiums? Especially after all we had to pay in taxes to get them? Especially since we (meaning Pitt) had to sacrifice our on-campus stadium.
Sure, there were a lot of problems with Pitt Stadium, but at least it was Pitt’s. Someday, Pitt will be home again…
But I digress.
