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Sports Illustrated has what I would describe as admittedly not the best survey up today. It's about which ballpark provides the best all around MLB experience for fans. There's only one small problem, the voting for the survey was left to the fans of the teams themselves - and they could only vote on their own team. That should work out well, because we all know how objective sports fans are, particularly about their own team. I don't see how this could go wrong at all.
There were 10 categories: affordability, food, team quality, tradition, atmosphere, fan IQ (thanks for the plug SI), hospitality, promotions, traffic, and neighborhood. And they weren't weighted, which needless to say made the rankings interesting.
The Cleveland Indians were #1, which is sort of OK I guess. My only issue is they were listed as 9th in terms of fan IQ and yet at the top of this article is the picture SI used of them. Yes, they're in red face, which is, you know, basically identical to going to a game in black face.
As for the overall list, there are some real head-scratchers here.
The Pittsburgh Pirates ballpark experience was ranked #3 - so apparently team quality is totally ignored. Meanwhile, the Yankees were ranked #20 and the Red Sox were ranked #21.
Less surprising was that the Marlins and Nationals rounded out the bottom of fan experience. Since the survey was done in March, the Nats didn't have the advantage of having been in their new stadium yet.
Anyway, have a peek at the list yourself, and go to town in the comments.
[SI's MLB Ballpark Ratings By Fans]
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