Unlike Johnny Cash, I have not been everywhere.
I haven’t even been everywhere that baseball is played, though I’m trying.
Over the past two years, I’ve been to five ballparks outside of the United States, each of them unique in their own way. Three of them are ballparks in the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol: Parque La Junta in Nuevo Laredo, Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu in Mexico City, and Parque Kukulkan Alamo in Merida. The other two are the Tokyo Dome, home of Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yomiuri Giants, and the Kyocera Dome Osaka, home of the Orix Buffaloes.
That brings my foreign ballpark count to eight, as I’ve also been to three ballparks in Canada – Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Rogers Centre in Toronto, and Ottawa Stadium, the former home of the Triple-A Ottawa Lynx.
How would I rate them against each other? Read on.
8. Ottawa Stadium – Built in 1993 for the Triple-A Ottawa Lynx, Ottawa Stadium hosted the International League club for 15 seasons before the franchise was sold and relocated to Allentown, Pa. With a capacity of about 10,500, the ballpark is a rather generic minor league ballpark built during the boom period that stretched from the late-1980s to the mid-1990s, when zany logos and marketing lent greater identity to the teams than the ballparks they played in.
Best thing I saw at Ottawa Stadium – In 2001, a college buddy and I drove up to the ballpark to see Deion Sanders play for the Syracuse SkyChiefs, who were then the Triple-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays. Late in the game, with Sanders playing left field and Ottawa at bat, a fan ran onto the field towards Sanders. Syracuse shortstop Cole Liniak took the fan down – HARD. Sadly, this was in the days before everyone had a video camera in their pocket, because the video would have gone viral.
7. Rogers Centre – I’ve only been to Rogers Centre, which opened in 1989 as the SkyDome, twice, and never was the roof open. Both my visits were before the massive renovation that took place, so I’d like to visit again. Sitting in the upper deck with the roof closed and looking down on a turf field, Rogers Center is a reminder of the brutalist stadium architecture of the 1970s and 80s that was left behind when Rogers Centre was completed, as the next new MLB ballpark to open, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, changed the way everyone thought of modern ballparks. That said, to play baseball in Toronto, you either need a retractable roof or a high tolerance for the cold. Major League Baseball greatly prefers the latter.
Best thing I saw at Rogers Centre – In 2010, while I was in my first year of law school, I was watching the Toronto Argonauts play the Montreal Alouettes on tv, and saw this absolutely absurd ending to a football game that is only possible in the Canadian Football League:
6. Parque Kukulkan Alamo – In late September 2023, I visited Merida, the capital of the Mexican state of Yucatan, for the WBSC’s Baseball Champions League Americas, an event that pitted the champions of the Serie Nacional de Cuba, Liga Mexicana de Beisbol, American Association, and Liga Beisbol Profesional Colombia against each other. Parque Kukulcan Alamo, the home of the Leones de Yucatan, who represented the LMB in the event, was showing its age. Built in 1982, the 14,000-seat concrete park has since undergone a major renovation that improved the seating areas, concessions, and restrooms, all of which were desperately needed. The Leones will return to Parque Kukulkan Alamo for the 2025 season, and I look forward to seeing the refreshed ballpark.
Best thing I saw at Parque Kukulkan Alamo – Along with about 35 other people, I saw the first game between a team from the Serie Nacional and a U.S. professional team when the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks faced the Alazanes de Granma.
5. Kyocera Dome Osaka – The home of the Orix Buffaloes of NPB is a unique domed ballpark, in that even in the upper deck, the seats are close to the field. A massive steel roof keeps the rain out, while the field itself bears some resemblance to the Rogers Centre before the most recent renovation. As far as indoor stadiums go, it’s ok – the kind of ballpark at which you should go to a game if you happen to be in Osaka, but I wouldn’t fly halfway around the world just to go see a game at the Kyocera Dome.
Best thing I saw at the Kyocera Dome – I had gone 40 years as a baseball fan without seeing a no-hitter in person before I saw Angel Padron throw a no-no for the Tiburones de La Guaira at the 2024 Caribbean Series in Miami. Exactly a month later, I was in Osaka for the Carnext Samurai Japan Series, and saw six pitchers for Japan combine to throw a perfect game against Team All-Europe. In addition to the perfect game, Chihiro Sumida threw an immaculate inning in the sixth.
4. Olympic Stadium – The former home of the Montreal Expos wasn’t a great venue for baseball. Obviously, it was designed for the 1976 Summer Olympics, and afterward, it replaced Jarry Park as the Expos home. The “retractable roof” never worked the way the engineers intended, the stadium was too cavernous for baseball (and almost anything else, really), and the city of Montreal and province of Quebec only finished paying off the stadium’s construction financing after the Expos had been excised from the city and moved to Washington. But it was an hour’s drive from where I went to college, and you could get into an MLB game for C$5 and get a beer for even less.
Best thing I saw at Olympic Stadium – On July 17, 2001, a few friends and I went up to see the Expos play the Boston Red Sox. In the second inning, Montreal’s right fielder, Vladimir Guerrero, came to bat with one out and a runner on. When Boston starter Tim Wakefield threw a knuckleball that spun a little too much, Guerrero launched an absolute moonshot over the outfield bleachers that still hasn’t landed.
3. Tokyo Dome – As I wrote recently, the Tokyo Dome and its surrounding area feels like someone dropped the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in the middle of an amusement park and scattered American chain restaurants around it. It’s the home of the Yomiuri Giants of NPB, a franchise somewhat analogous to the New York Yankees, and it’s in the world’s most populous metropolitan area. It’s the home of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, a recurring venue for MLB games in Japan, and a venue for every World Baseball Classic. It’s an icon of Japanese baseball.
Best thing I saw at the Tokyo Dome – Japan was trailing Chinese Taipei 4-0 in the bottom of the ninth with one out in the 2024 WBSC Premier12 championship game. Cleanup hitter Shota Morishita was on first, and Ryoya Kurihara hit a knee-high screamer at Chinese Taipei first baseman Yu-Hsien Chu. Playing close to the bag, Chu snared the liner on one knee, stood up and touched first to double off Morishita, ending the game and the Premier12, leaving the Samurai Japan fans in stunned silence while Chinese Taipei celebrated on the field.
2. Parque La Junta – When you see Parque La Junta, the home of the LMB’s Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, it’s a little hard to believe that this bandbox that seats around 5,000 is a ballpark in one of the top five leagues in the world. But what it lacks in creature comforts (the seats, mostly, are concrete risers, there aren’t a lot of concession options, and few restrooms), it makes up for in intimacy and charm. You’re closer to the field than almost anywhere else you’ll ever see a game. The fans are engaged and cheering for the Tecos, and the beer is both plentiful and cold, great for fans in a place where the mercury routinely reaches the triple digits during baseball season.
Best thing I saw at Parque La Junta – The ballpark itself is the best thing I saw. Juan Alanis, the broadcaster for the Tecos, calls Parque La Junta “the Fenway Park of Mexico,” and he’s right. Like Fenway Park, La Junta is an intimate anachronism that’s not to be missed. And if you’re hungry, be sure and get the brisket nachos.
1. Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu – The home of the Diablos Rojos del Mexico is an architectural marvel that has revitalized baseball in Mexico’s capital. After Parque de Seguro Social was demolished to build a shopping center after the end of the 2000 LMB season, the Diablos Rojos became an itinerant franchise, calling the Foro Sol and Estadio Fray Nano home for 20 years, while their rivals, the Tigres Capitalinos, left for Puebla after the 2001 season, spending a few years in Puebla before landing in Cancun. Completed in 2019 and named for the owner of the Diablos Rojos, Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu is an MLB-caliber facility in everything save for seating capacity.
Best thing I saw at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu – If you’ve ever been to Mexico City, you know that the traffic is crazy and the subway is crowded. At the 2023 MLB Mexico City Series, then-San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler found out all of that by first-hand experience. Kapler explained at a press conference how he made his way to the ballpark the day before the series began, a trip that involved tacos, a detour due to subway construction, a bus, and a rather dangerous street crossing. “I had enough Spanish and enough Google translate to ask the bus driver to be gracious and let me off on a highway where I walked across several lanes and then ended up walking to the ballpark,” Kapler said to the amusement of the assembled reporters.
Laughter aside, it would have been easy for Kapler to just take the team bus from the hotel to the ballpark, which he did for the games. But give him credit, he went outside the bubble and experienced Mexico City.
