Sunday, July 15, 2012

Location of MLB Stadiums with Respect to City Centers

Sports stadiums are usually located at the center of metropolitan areas, but that is not always the case. Some are outright not even located in the city proper of metropolitan area's largest city. Here we examine the 30 Major League Baseball stadiums and their location with respect to the city center. While there may be difficulty in pinpointing one single city center, we will use the specific location given by Google Maps upon typing merely the city name. That yields good approximations of the core of the cities' downtown area. The distance from the baseball stadium to that area is calculated for each of the 30 stadiums.

There are a few cases that necessitate some remarks, in which the city that the ballpark is located in isn't the largest in that city's metropolitan area. Texas Rangers is based in Arlington, the third largest city in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Home of the Rays, St. Petersburg, is smaller than the city of Tampa. Anaheim is also part of the Los Angeles area. Nevertheless, because all of these cities are of fairly large size (all around 200K - 300K in population), it's fair to consider the distance from their center to the baseball for this exercise. Finally, it's worthy to note that the center location for New York was given as Broadway & Chamber St. in Lower Manhattan. While this location was indeed used for this exercise, it's important to note that there are tenable arguments for pushing Midtown Manhattan as the "center" of the city.

Here are the ranking in distance from the baseball stadium to the chosen city center:

Team City BallPark Mile
Mets New York Citi Field 10.1
Yankees New York Yankee Stadium 9.3
Royals Kansas City Kauffman Stadium 7.6
Athletics Oakland The Coliseum 5.8
Cubs Chicago Wrigley Field 5.1
Brewers Milwaukee Miller Park 4.2
White Sox Chicago US Cellular Field 3.8
Phillies Philadelphia Citizens Bank Park 3.6
Angels Anaheim Angel Stadium 3.5
Nationals Washington, DC Nationals Park 2.6
Rangers Arlington Rangers Ballpark 2.3
Red Sox Boston Fenway Park 2.2
Dodgers Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium 2.1
Giants San Francisco AT&T Park 2.0
Rockies Denver Coors Field 1.4
Blue Jays Toronto Rogers Centre 1.2
Mariners Seattle Safeco Stadium 1.1
Braves Atlanta Turner Field 1.0
Astros Houston Minute Maid Park 1.0
Marlins Miami Marlins Park 1.0
Rays St. Petersburg Tropicana Field 1.0
Orioles Baltimore Oriole Park 0.9
Twins Minneapolis Target Field 0.9
Pirates Pittsburgh PNC Park 0.8
Indians Cleveland Progressive Field 0.7
Padres San Diego PETCO Park 0.7
Tigers Detriot Comerica Park 0.6
Diamondbacks Phoenix Chase Field 0.4
Cardinals St. Louis Busch Stadium 0.4
Reds Cincinnati Great American Ballpark 0.3

Over half of the stadiums are located within 2 miles of the city center. At a first glance, it seems as though big cities have stadiums further out of the city center. This certainly is true for New York and Chicago. Indeed, Yankees and Mets have stadiums in The Bronx and Queens, respectively, away from the central business locations of Midtown or Downtown. White Sox and Cubs are known for being the team of "South Side" and "North Side," respectively. It may seem intuitive that for cities like New York and Chicago, with already heavily crowded downtown centers and limited parking spots, it may be more reasonable to have the ballpark crowds away from these centers. For smaller cities like Cleveland, sport events are great sources to attract people to be around downtown.

This is merely a hypothesis. In any event, even under such assumption, cities like Kansas City and Milwaukee are high on the rankings, seeming to contradict the trend. Bigger cities like Houston and San Diego are near the bottom of the rankings. It's important to note that other factors play into the location of the stadiums. While this exercise may give some insight, it's far from the comprehensive picture.

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