Facts you don’t know about your favorite ballpark

Even those who are not true baseball fans can still be caught up in the mania every time baseball season comes around. Once you choose to join the fans in their excitement over the sport, you can no longer turn back. While the games are exhilarating, you’ll also find the traditions and quirks of the game very engaging. For example, are you aware that the ground rules in Major League Baseball vary based on the ballpark where a game is being played? Thanks to distinct features and dimensions, even the best ballparks in baseball have their singular qualities.

Nonetheless, it’s because of these ballpark peculiarities that watching a game live at the venue is extra fun. The following are some of baseball’s most interesting venues:

• The old Milwaukee Country Stadium preceded Miller Park. In the old venue, Bernie, the Brewers’ mascot, would slide down into a giant mug after every home run. At Miller Park, Bernie slides down onto a platform, which in recent years has been converted into the Kalahari Splash Zone. Fans in the vicinity get sprayed with water the second Bernie reaches the bottom of the slide.
• Tropicana Field, also known as “The Trop”, has a dome supported by those infamous catwalks, which often cause an obstruction. Rules have to be applied to consider how they affect the game.
• The Metrodome was known for its white, Teflon roof. Baseball’s were easily lost during routine pop-fly’s causing baseball games to be lost by both the Twins and away teams.
• Shea Stadium had an apple that popped up after every homerun. When the NY Mets moved to Citi Field, they had to say goodbye to the old apple and replace it with a new version. Met fans miss the Shea Stadium apple, but the tradition is being upheld: a homerun still makes an apple pop up.

We haven’t even included the swimming pool at Chase Field, the hillock at Minute Maid Park, the infamous Pesky’s Pole at Fenway Park, or McCovey Cove at AT&T. What is clear though is that baseball has many points of interest to offer besides the game itself.