Portland Architecture

Notes on two baseball stadiums (or: Portland is a major-league city)

 

This past weekend I traveled to Seattle to cash in on a birthday present received last May: tickets to see my lifelong favorite baseball team, the New York Yankees, play against the Mariners at Safeco Field. It wasn't my first trip to Safeco, but just as with the Mariners/Orioles game I watched two years ago (all these pics are from that game), I marveled at what a truly great stadium Safeco is.

I'm no expert when it comes to major-league baseball stadiums. Besides Safeco, the only ones I've been to are Yankee Stadium (the old one where the team played its final season last year), Shea Stadium in Queens/NYC, Comiskey Park in Chicago (the bland new one built in the early 1990s), and the now-gone Kingdome in Seattle. But aside from the history that Yankee Stadium offered, I've never been to a ballpark as nice as Safeco.

Even when you're standing on the concourse fetching a beer or hot dog (or sushi, or pasta, or wine), the view onto the field is still expansive. Driving up to Seattle on Friday afternoon, there were cloudy skies and the threat of rain, but we didn't have to worry about cancellation because Safeco has a retractible roof. And the stadium, along with Qwest Field next door, is ideally located at the southern edge of downtown (as it gives way to an industrial zone), right next door to the train station.

 

More than just the stadium, though, there was Major League Baseball being played. I haven't been to a Portland Beavers game in years, even though PGE Park is in walking distance of my house. And you know what? I wouldn't even accept free tickets. I know some people enjoy minor league baseball, but my interest personally is zero. Hell, it's less than zero. It's some kind of negative integer. But seeing future Hall of Fame players like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Ichiro Suzuki and Ken Griffey Jr was a major treat. (Alex Rodriguez took our game off.)

As it happens, Oregonian columnist David Sarasohn had a op-ed piece in Sunday's paper lamenting how willing Portland seems to be to let its minor-league Beavers baseball team move to Beaverton or otherwise leave town. He writes:

"The Portland Beavers have been in the Pacific Coast League since 1903, just before the city started remodeling the Transit Mall, and last year the team sold almost 400,000 tickets, a considerable number in a place where summer activities tend to be limited to beer festivals and wondering when the rain will return. But the city is treating the Beavers like out-of-town guests whose departure will just air out the place."

Nevermind that Sarasohn's column was filled out largely with quotes from city commissioner Randy Leonard (lamenting the Beavers' departure despite his lone heroic efforts, it implies). Let's take Sarasohn and Leonard at face value. There may have been almost 400,000 tickets sold, but with a 72-game season that translates to an average of 5,555 per game. In a greater Portland metropolitan area with over 2 million 1 million people, getting five to six thousand people per event is not very impressive. The Mariners-Yankees game I attended had an announced attendance of well over 36,000 and the stadium wasn't even sold out.

 

Why are Portlanders staying away en masse from Portland Beavers games? I think it's because Portland has graduated to the level of major-league city. The Portland Beavers? Let them go to Beaverton. Let them go to Salem, or Medford. These are ideal minor-league baseball towns.

Back when Leonard, Mayor Sam Adams, and Beavers/Timbers owner Merritt Paulson were campaigning to build a minor-league baseball stadium on the Memorial Coliseum site, my attention was devoted exclusively to saving Memorial Coliseum. But even aside from the Coliseum preservation issue, it would have been ridiculous to build a brand new multimillion dollar minor league stadium on the Rose Quarter site that wouldn't have the room for future expansion into a major-league park.

If the city of Portland would have been more able to locate the stadium on a larger site available for expansion of the stadium, such as the Portland Public Schools site just across NE Broadway from the Rose Quarter, that would have been much more of a plausible scenario we could get behind. But investing in the future of minor-league baseball in Portland is folly. Would we accept a NBA Developmental League team as good enough if the Blazers left town?

Sitting in Safeco last Friday night, I was reminded of the special role that sports and sports stadia can provide. Surrounding us were people of all walks of life, and from all over the region. A couple next to us had driven down from Vancouver, BC to see the game. On the other side of our seats was another couple from Oregon. That makes six people in a row who drove to Seattle from outside the state to see major league baseball. We all spent money on hotels, local restaurants and shops. We were good to Seattle's local economy, and beyond just the tickets or game. Who in their right mind, unless their son was playing on the team, would travel from out of town or out of state to see the Portland Beavers?

 

I'm sure plenty of people reading and commenting on this post will talk about how they're not sports fans and don't care about major league baseball, or they're sports fans but don't want to see millions of dollars subsidized to billionaire owners so they can build sports palaces here when plenty of Portlanders are destitute, unemployed, and in desperate need of social assistance our government can't afford to provide. Or maybe you're just one of the many, many Yankee haters out there. (Go ahead, I can take it.) But that doesn't take away from the fact that a major-league sports team and a good stadium/arena offer the chance for both locals and people from all over the region to come together.

The Beaverton Beavers? That's great. But how about Timbuktu?

Elvis, Pele and Willie Stargell: a short history of PGE Park

Aaron Fentress has a fun piece in the Sports section of today's Oregonian (the section I always read first): a timeline of major events, both sports and non-sports related, held at PGE Park.

Events were first held on the grounds here in 1893, but it was more officially christened as a stadium, Multnomah Stadium, in 1926, from a design by renowned Portland architect A.E. Doyle. In the 1930s, it was a popular spot for greyhound racing. In the 1950s, the Portland Beavers moved there from their stadium on Vaughn Street. And that's just the start, my friends.

Here is Fentress's timeline for the stadium, with a few parenthetical notes of my own:

1908: Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College (later Oregon State) meet in a football game on the field for the first time. (Brian's note: OAC was unofficially known as "Moo U.")

1909: Steel grandstands are built and President William H. Taft visits with 20,000 school children. (Brian's note: Taft, history's fattest US president, reportedly takes up an entire row of seats.)

1923: Years after more seating is added, President Warren G. Harding appears for a speech. (Brian's note: this was on the heels of Harding's "Teapot Dome" scandal. The Sam Adams of his time?)

1930: The University of Oregon football team beats Washington 7-0 before a record crowd of 35,266. (Brian's note: Go Ducks! And as my dad often says, Huck the Fuskies!) 

1931: Former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey spars with four opponents in a series of two-round exhibitions. (Brian's note: Randy Leonard was not involved.)

1935: First NFL exhibition game is played at the stadium between the New York Giants and the Chicago Cardinals. (Brian's note: It's a little known fact the Cardinals have been based in 34 different cities.)

1948: A crowd of 8,000 turns out for a show featuring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. (Brian's note: The show undoubtedly must have been called "The Road to Portland" - and sponsored by Texaco.)

1955: During an exhibition, the Los Angeles Rams defeat the New York Giants 23-17 in first NFL overtime game. (Brian's note: the Rams were led by former Oregon Ducks quarterback and future Hall of Famer Norm Van Brocklin.)

1957: Elvis Presley performs a concert in the infield before 14,600. (Brian's note: It's somehow fitting, although in a way I can't pinpoint, that The Beatles played Memorial Coliseum and Elvis played the stadium.)

1958: Willie Mays leads the San Francisco Giants against the Beavers in an exhibition game. (Brian's note: Say hey!)

1974: The Portland Storm in the first year, the Portland Thunder the next, bring the World Football League to the stadium. (Brian's note: where can I get a Portland Thunder t-shirt?)

1977: In soccer star Pele's last professional game, the New York Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1 in front of 35,548 in the North American Soccer League's championship game. (Brian's note: the annoying tradition of single-named Brazilian soccer players began soon after.) The photo below was provided by reader Stephen Himes, whose father snapped the picture of Pele playing at the actual Civic Stadium game.

1980: The 1979 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates play an exhibition game against the Beavers, drawing 26,912, a year after Pirates slugger Willie Stargell slammed a ball onto the balcony of the Multnomah Athletic Club during a home run contest before an exhibition game. (Brian's note: Aaron - why not just note the 1979 Stargell homer game instead of the 1980 game?)

1985: Another short-lived professional football league, the United States Football League with the Portland Breakers, calls the stadium home and draws crowds approaching 20,000. But, alas, the league lasts only one season. (Brian's note: Go Marcus Dupree! The only Oklahoma Sooner I ever liked. And the Breakers' best jhery curl.)

1992: Evangelist Billy Graham holds a five-day event that draws nearly a quarter-million people.

1997: In the first of a series of matches related to the World Cup, the U.S. men's soccer team defeats Costa Rica 1-0 in front of 27,396.

1999: The U.S. women's soccer team beats Canada 4-2 in front of 23,325 in its final game before the World Cup. 

2002: San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners play an exhibition game in front of 19,778. (Brian's note: fans expecting to see future Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson are disappointed. But at least it's the major leagues.)

2003: Three doubleheaders are held during the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup.

I also remember attending another somewhat historic baseball game Fentress didn't mention. In 1983, fresh off winning the World Series against Baltimore, the Philadelphia Phillies played an exhibition against the Beavers. I remember excitedly watching the team's two Hall of Fame stars, Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose, competing for the Phillies. (Yes, I know Rose is not technically in the Hall, but obviously if not for the gambling he'd have been in Cooperstown on the first ballot.) But my greatest excitement was reserved for relief pitcher Tug McGraw, he of the sparkle-covered cleats. However, if I'd known he'd be responsible for country music star Tim McGraw, my allegiances might have been different.

In the controversy over MLS coming to Portland and necessitating a Beavers move to another stadium, with Memorial Coliseum becoming threatened along the way, we may have lost sight of the architecture of PGE Park and how it will change. Although the stadium has lots of history, it's never been an esteemed work of architecture. Portland Timbers and Beavers owner Merritt Paulson has the chance to bring the stadium a great design. And while I think that will be achieved when it comes to fan amenities and experiences -- seats close to the field, more luxurious concourses -- I'm not sure if there's anything about the design itself that will excite people. (Initial plans have been drawn up by Kansas City-based Ellerbe Becket, one of the nation's largest and most prolific stadium designers. They also did the Autzen Stadium expansion.) But there's still time for that to change.

Oden Prefers Portland To 'Burbs

Granted this is not a hugely significant news item, but in an Oregonian article about Greg Oden last week they happened to mention at the end that he plans to get rid of his suburban place near the Blazers' practice facility and move into a condo in either the Pearl District or South Waterfront. Apparently fellow Blazer Channing Frye already has a condo in SoWa, as does New Orleans Hornets' forward Desmond Mason (whose wife is from here). Fye, in fact, said he plans to live in his Portland SoWa condo regardless of whether he goes to another NBA team down the road.

Obviously NBA players are not like the rest of us, but it's interesting to see how sometimes their choices about anything from fashion to entertainment to housing can act as somewhat of a bellwether case.

Neither Oden, Frye or Mason is any kind of urbanist per se. But Blazer players have usually lived in either the suburbs (be it banal Tigard or tony Dunthorpe/Lake Oswego) or the West Hills. What does it say that Blazers are buying in, both figuratively and literally, to the changing face of urban Portland?

Most of us aren't millionaires like NBA players, but being rich, young, and coming from places all around the country, it's interesting to see what parts of Portland they gravitate too. I remember when I was growing up in the 1980s hearing that Oregon's beauty and Portland's niceness were an asset in attracting and retaining talent. Other times, it seemed like most players felt Portland was too much of a backwater burg -- and too white -- to feel like a home. Has the pendulum shifted again?

Oh, and Greg: maybe they'll put a jeweler in the ground floor of one of those condos - a place where you can get your championship ring(s) adjusted without even walking out into the rain.