Blog post

January 26, 2011 [LINK / comment]

Exhibition Stadium update

As the east coast gets hit by yet another massive snow storm, it is perhaps appropriate to pay tribute to the stadium in which the first-ever baseball game (in 1977) was almost snowed out. Yes, sports fans, we are talking about old Exhibition Stadium, the original home of the Toronto Blue Jays. By modern standards, it was hopelessly dull and featureless, as well as being grossly oversized for baseball games (it also served as a football stadium), but for fans in Canada it provided many happy memories. The single-decked behemoth on the windy shores of Lake Ontario was finally demolished in 1999, ten years after the Blue Jays moved out.

The diagram revisions turned out to be more extensive than I originally planned. The covered grandstand that stood beyond left and center fields (which predated the uncovered grandstand built for baseball in 1977) was curved inward more than I had estimated previously, and the two wings of the latter grandstand were slightly shorter. Another big change is that the fence in left field and right field angled outward slightly, whereas the previous versions of the diagrams depicted them as being perpendicular to the foul lines. As a result, the curvature of the fence in center field is broader than in the previous versions, and is not much different from that of the Blue Jays' subsequent home, the Skydome (a.k.a. Rogers Centre). The portable bandshell near the scoreboard is now included, and the extent of the artificial turf is now represented more accurately. Finally, the football gridrion was angled about two degrees clockwise of what it had been before, with the southeast corner extending to within 10-15 feet of the pitchers mound. As always with such diagram revisions, the profile is rendered more accurately (with a second profile for the covered grandstand), and the light towers are shown.

Note that I eliminated the alternate "sideways" diagram version, replacing it with a new "full view" version that shows the entire stadium with center field toward the top. Also note that the football diagram visible when you roll the mouse over the thumbnail image above is truncated, unlike the full-view football diagram version shown on that page.

And fear not, more diagram updates are on the way...