New ballpark, please

In my lifetime, I've seen baseball games at eleven major league ballparks.

• Atlanta Fulton County Stadium
• Turner Field
• Fenway Park
• Yankee Stadium
• Oriole Park at Camden Yards
• Wrigley Field
• "New Comiskey" Park (officially US Cellular Field)
• Safeco Field
• RFK Stadium
• Nationals Park
• Busch Stadium (the new one)

Two of those are no longer used by MLB teams, RFK and Atlanta Fulton County. Next year, Yankee Stadium will be decommissioned, too. In fact, next season, the following will represent the distribution of major league ballparks by age:

1910's: 2 (Fenway, Wrigley)
1960's: 3 (Dodgers, Angels, Oakland - representing the rise of California baseball in that decade; note that Oakland plans to move into a new stadium in Fremont by 2012)
1970's: 1 (Kansas City)
1980's: 3 (Twins, Marlins, Blue Jays - the former two with new stadiums in the works to open in 2010-2011)
1990's and beyond: 19 (all the rest)

Essentially, by 2012, no baseball teams will play in a concrete bowl, cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadium. At that point, the distribution will be even further skewed, with only 6 teams playing in stadiums that predate 1990. Has the rash of new stadiums been worth it? There's certainly a strong argument to be made that it's revitalized the sport and contributed to urban renewal in many cities. On the flip side, the construction of all new MLB stadiums built since 1990 (including Tampa's multi-purpose stadium and Atlanta's Olympic stadium, but not including the ballparks currently in the works or Toronto's $570 Million SkyDome, which opened in 1989) have cost a little over $5.5 Billion.

It's a false comparison since the dollars are not inflation-adjusted, but just for kicks: Fenway (1912) and Wrigley (1914) combined were built for around $670,000.