Dome Sweet Dome

I had plans to blog about this yesterday - but due to me "taking a day off" - just from life in general - I didn't do much of anything yesterday. However, it was also the twentieth anniversary of the opening of our beloved SkyDome [suck it up Rogers, it will always, always be SkyDome, not Rogers Centre]. That's right - the opening of the stadium came about a third of the way through the Blue Jays regular season and actually was not christened with a baseball game anyway. Apparently it was opened with an opening ceremony, not unlike what one might have @ the Olympics...but like, a really ghetto Olympics with some dude parasailing into the stadium, some dancers in awful costumes and the entertainment stylings of one Alan Thicke [I checked to see if YouTube could provide some visuals here, but came up empty]. The thing is, I probably watched this with great excitement - I was a fan of Growing Pains and of the SkyDome before it was even built [I had books and architectural renderings and Domer, the mascot of the stadium]. But I think there was a general excitement and potential buzz all over North America. I mean, a stadium that can be both open-air and enclosed - what a perfect solution to our @ times dodgy weather [and honestly, there are summer days I wish they would zip it up and crank up the A/C - better than baking in the sun all afternoon - once I got the most epic sunburn @ SkyDome, although I suppose it serves me right for sporting polka dotted overall shorts]! Surely everyone will fall in line with this architectural marvel!

And yes, people did come initially. I know that my family did that first year [and every year after that] - though I'm still not sure how we got such good seats [I only know that we did have good seats - I remember nothing else about the experience] as seats were hard to come by - they would often sell out, even for crummy mid-week games featuring less than stellar teams. SkyDome was featured when Toronto hosted the All-Star Game in 1991 and then when the Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. You could eat frakking McDonalds right @ the stadium! The JumboTron was the biggest television EVER! There was a hotel that was in the stadium with rooms facing the stadium! Amazing! But then...everyone starting building retro ballparks. Camden Yards and Jacobs Field and such...they shone a bit brighter than our Dome. They were more intimate, more...baseball. No one else built stadiums with retractable roofs. They money troubles of the Dome came to light and people ultimately turned their backs.

But, I've been around a bit [*ahem*] - I've been to a number of other stadiums - it was the goal of me and my dad to go to every single baseball stadium [okay, American League only...but I have been to a National League game! shocker!]. We didn't get too far in our quest, but I surely don't love any other stadium in the same way that I love the Dome. I mean, I love it knowing that it's this hulking, overblown behemoth salute to the hulking and overblown nature of the late 80s/early 90s [right down to the colour scheme and hard plastic everything]. Yes, I'm aware that it looks like a giant boob sitting next to our giant phallus [this city seems to have the potential for naughtiness, yet we are the ultimate in straight-laced]. And yes, they never ever have vegetarian hot dogs and everything is too expensive there and when the dome is closed it's insanely humid and feels like you're watching baseball in someone's large basement. But still, it's home...other ballparks have charmed me [I think Jacobs Field would be my favourite and the readers of Sports Illustrated agree with me, but now it's called Progressive Field, which reminds me of Progresso Soup - so that takes away from the experience...Cleveland's Municipal Stadium was also completely boss and so, so ghetto - they served me beer and I was a good six years away from being the legal drinking age and the stadium was literally falling apart around us]...but...[say it with me]...there's no place like Dome!