Exterior Design:

At times, Angel Stadium is conceptually adept and visually engaging, but always with little to no true architectural merit. This is despite ostensibly having an eclectic group of architects, including the famed Robert A.M. Stern.

Even a spiritless exterior design like Turner Field can claim to be more than a concrete paint job plastered with gimmicks.

The Angels insisted on calling this a “new park” when it reopened in 1998, but that’s never really been plausible, as the exterior and interior lines are still highly recognizable. This is especially true of the outside, where utilitarian exposed ramps were given a coat of heavy green paint, new plazas were decorated with palm trees, and a gimmicky grand entry was added behind home plate. It’s architecturally hollow, and transparently so, but bluntly attractive.

I can’t speak to the extent to which the grand entry façade used the bones of the original white civic-looking structure, but it certainly looks that way. While it’s often referred to as stucco, the fact that it’s actually light beige (or copper dust, as the architects would say) painted over concrete might partly confirm this. Regardless, any charm it possesses is neutralized by this aesthetic banality and architectural emptiness. Rather than the brick, stone, steel, or glass seen in even the worst retro parks, we have paint on concrete camouflaged by frivolity.

For what it’s worth, most of that frivolity (all at the grand entrance behind home plate) accomplishes the goal of making Angel Stadium an inviting and playful ballpark, which was the stated purpose. More kids see this ballpark in person than others, and they will like it. Fans are greeted with an immediate and memorable sense of arrival.

Inside and out, the “The Big A,” particularly the crowning circularity of the halo, was always Anaheim Stadium’s strongpoint. We see this theme of circularity emphasized with the new grand entry. Flanked by two oversized Angels’ caps, the home plate façade curves outward toward the fans, subtly enhancing the already ingratiating sensibility of the design. The brick plaza in between mimics the infield. Propped up by baseball bats, the ring holding up the signage resembles a semi halo.

There’s only one exterior design similar to this in its team-oriented gimmicks, and it might be instructive to contrast Angel Stadium to this much more successful one. Comerica Park (Detroit) features a similar set of baseball bats around its grand entrance, but they are specially crafted to resemble the bats of Tiger legends, while the Angel Stadium bats look like they came out of a Louisville Slugger’s factory. Where Comerica Park has artistically sculpted Tigers added in near perfect rhythm and proportion, Angel Stadium has two brute team hats. And with Comerica Park, all of this is backed by tasteful design cues with some architectural merit.

When the banality is not camouflaged by this frivolity (everywhere except around home plate) at Angel Stadium, it’s rather revealing. While they don’t jut out as much as those at Guaranteed Rate Field, we still have the exposed ramps of the original design. Even more transparently, the corners of the ballpark have the same utilitarian design of the original, again just covered with a coat of paint. You don’t have to look too closely to see the old stadium. The palm tree plazas help the situation, but this appearance would be unacceptable for other parks.

Overall, this criticism should be taken lightly, as this comes with the territory of renovating an older ballpark rather than constructing a new one. Just don’t compare it to the latter.

Score: 4.5/10

Interior Aesthetics:

The general consensus from ballpark nerds and longtime Angel fans alike is that Angel Stadium should have incorporated the “Big A” back into the interior design in a Kauffman Stadium-style renovation, restoring the 1960s’ “modernist” aesthetic vision. I generally agree with that sentiment. Instead, like some other retro ballparks, the 1998 Angel Stadium renovation is a testament to its time: heavy on loud gimmicks and overly themed designs, attempting to mask an interior design the lacks much true aesthetic merit.

To its detriment, Angel Stadium also failed to completely start anew in the outfield, as the shell from the multi-purpose stadium design can be seen spanning the right side of the park.

It all adds up to a rather haphazardly put together appearance with little aesthetic vision, a lot of dead space, and no continuity between elements. Only the maintenance of a simple, open design and the new attractive treatment of the batters’ eye prevent it from being among the worst interior designs of the new or renovated post-1991 ballparks.

Let’s first look at why the Angels decided to renovate rather than construct a new ballpark. Even before accounting for costs, the initial intention was to build a new ballpark, and then the Angels noticed something crucial. When stripped of the outfield stands, the original main grandstand (1966) was nearly identical to the highly successful Camden Yards (1992) and other three-deck 1990s parks that were in the works.

The architects realized they could make a copy of Camden Yards just by renovating if they wanted to, with a large lower deck with terrace boxes above, a mezzanine club level backed by luxury suites, and an upper deck. Not only that, but they could improve upon it, with four distinct concourses instead of three, an open terrace concourse, and a home plate club. So from a functional standpoint, it wasn’t like renovating the Metrodome; it did have a skeleton that could incorporate modern amenities. While parks today would use a design more resembling SunTrust Park or Yankee Stadium, the main grandstand is fine, as the problems are almost entirely in the outfield.

We should first note that any park with a suburban location lacking views has a difficult time here, as you either have to (a) punt on authenticity and build a self-contained structure like Globe Life Park in Arlington, and gamble that the aesthetics will compensate for the contrivance, or more commonly, (b) build a ballpark open to its suburban surroundings and hope the interior lines operate effectively in view of the vacant surroundings.

If you don’t take the former tact, the best you can get is something like Citizens Bank Park. And Angel Stadium isn’t Citizens Bank Park, lacking confidence in its architectural lines and having little to no cohesive outfield design.

In what can only be described as the elephant in the room, the much derided outfield rock pile geyser exemplifies the entirety of the outfield design, and not in the way you might think.

Alternatively known as the “Outfield Extravaganza” and “California Spectacular,” the infamous geyser (referred to as “geyser” or “rock pile” going forward) might be the most mocked 100 x 100 in baseball, at least among ballpark aficionados. If you hit a pithy description ranging from “mildly contrived” to “L.A. shitty,” you’d be in the ballpark.

Well, it’s obviously a gimmick, one that was self-consciously added to give some flavor to a monotonous array of stands. By 1998, many ballparks included features to superficially distinguish their design due to underlying structural similarity, basically tipping their hand that their design wasn’t original. For example, you might respond to a snarky critic by saying, “how would removing the fake plastic rocks make Angel Stadium better?,” but the fact that the ballpark needed it in the first place shows a lack of confidence in its architectural lines. It’s a vivid example of how the ballpark wants to distract you from the fact it’s in a sea of 15,000 parking spaces and has nothing else.

While all of this is telling, the primary interest is whether an interior design feature looks good and how it relates with the rest of the ballpark. On the former point, while I can’t imagine liking the geyser, I understand why the Angels included it. I don’t think it’s self evidently ugly (certainly not anymore, after the greenery was added), and even great ballparks sometimes need to add some whim.

The central problem, which includes the fact that an external gimmick can’t anchor an entire aesthetic, is that the geyser isn’t effectively integrated into the rest of the interior design and doesn’t fit with the surrounding environment.

I understand it’s meant to bring a splash of the California coastline into Angel Stadium, but the rock pile looks out of place in a suburban environment. More saliently, it looks completely isolated in center field. It’s not part of a larger aesthetic vision, and if the rock pile was meant to alone anchor a larger design vision, that’s way too weak. If the entire aesthetic is “California coastline,” you can’t have the only reference be an isolated gimmick, however prominent.

Gimmicks can only work if they are part of an existing larger aesthetic vision. Say what you will about the train at Minute Maid Park, but that’s part of an existing grand aesthetic vision of bringing the train station into the ballpark, evidenced by the lacy ironwork, the cream stone archways, and the actual Union Station visible beyond left field. The train supplemented that sensibility. Angel Stadium’s rock pile acts alone.

This is a problem with the outfield scene in general, as elements fail to visually connect with each other or combine to represent anything in particular.  The outfield scene as a whole doesn’t connect with the main grandstand either, as they were built during different eras.

In right field, the Angels tried to keep the old football seats and build a larger wall in front of them in order to have quirky retro height dimensions, and it looks terrible. The right field scene doesn’t look like it connects with the rest of the ballpark because it was never intended to in the first place. Just judging by raw appearance, fans can tell the right field structure was built at a different time for a different purpose than the main grandstand farther to the right. All of the empty space between these structures is palpable. The batters’ eye is also an extension of the football stands.

With terraced bullpens, the left field stands are better, but they still don’t effectively connect with the main grandstand. They look like they might be from the old football stadium too. The curves of the main grandstand don’t match the lines of the left field seating far removed from the field. The empty space between this seating and the rock pile sticks out. It all looks very much like what it is: a renovation of a stadium used for football.

In the aggregate, the outfield scene has absolutely no sense of continuity, and thus can’t claim to have any balance, order, or good proportion between elements.  Different parts of the interior aesthetic scene were built during three different eras.

What prevents Angel Stadium from ranking at the bottom of ballpark interior aesthetics? Well, all of the spatial and continuity issues discussed were much more apparent before the Angels wisely enhanced the appearance of the batters’ eye and rock pile. Uncovered by greenery, the plastic batters’ eye to the right and the exposed surface to the left stuck out like a sore thumb.

Not only was this visually uninspired, but it revealed two crucially unappealing facts about the ballpark: (a) it was even more obvious that the batters’ eye and the rock pile were an extension of the original football stands and (b) the said “Outfield Extravaganza” was even more evidently a “rock pile,” as it just appeared to be rocks on old football bleachers and plastic.

If not for the new profusion of greenery seen throughout the photos in this review, all of my concerns above would be amplified. So needless to say, the aesthetics have been greatly beautified by smoothing out the edges of the center field scene.

While this isn’t saying much, Angel Stadium benefits from an open, single deck design. I’d rather be looking at a generic suburban landscape than 5 levels of outfield seating. Between the right field scoreboard and the grandstand, the “Big A” is effectively integrated into the visual scene for fans sitting in left field.

Angel Stadium also has a better view of the San Gabriel Mountains than people give it credit for. In practice, it’s a similar view to that of Coors Field (perhaps even better; this certainly gives more sympathy to the rock pile), which gets much more press despite being underwhelming on most days.

Finally, I appreciate that Angel Stadium didn’t fall into the trap of compounding its aesthetic flaws by adding even more gimmicks after the fact, as other uninspired parks like Turner Field and Great American Ballpark did, believe it or not.

But overall, the renovation needed to include a completely rebuilt outfield. While the interior aesthetics are characterized by a weak aesthetic vision, almost entirely articulated by the gimmicky rock pile, they can’t even get off the ground due to constant disconnection.

I don’t know how the Angels will proceed with their extensive renovations in the next 10 years (or maybe not so extensive, as it could be only until 2029), but they’d be wise to restore some of the curvilinear, flowing simplicity seen in the original 1966 design.

The current design is too reminiscent of the peak frivolity during the retro excess. And the retro parks that succeeded with gimmicks succeeded because these gimmicks were supplementary (think giant glove at AT&T Park) to the design, while gimmicks at Angel Stadium (rock pile) define the design, lacking any architectural continuity or aesthetic beauty to anchor them.

Score: 8.5/15

Panoramic View/Backdrop:

Okay, so not much (read: not anything) about ballparks surprise me these days, as this has been my obsession going back to childhood. In my Coors Field review in 2011, I mentioned how the views of the San Gabriel Mountains at Angel Stadium are in practice similar to the mountain views at Coors. I did this to demonstrate a conceptual shortcoming at Coors (integrating them was central to the interior design, and they are too underwhelming to base an entire design around) and to emphasize that the mountain views at Angel Stadium were underrated.

When I went to Angel Stadium in 2013, clouds closed the door on my opportunity to see the mountain views in person, and I left with my existing (already positive) impression mostly intact until today.

Well, at least judging by the photos on a good day, these views are positively stunning, and clearly equal to or exceeding those at Coors on a good day (not considering the sunset). With all the focus on ballpark views, these have to be the most overlooked. I was not aware Angel Stadium had such gorgeous views. It’s nice to learn something new!

Score: 3.5/5

Concourses:

As I touched upon in the introduction, Angel Stadium’s concourse aesthetics don’t compare well to the new parks.

While I think the term “mall-park” is overused, Angel Stadium’s concourses can literally resemble a mall, complete with tile flooring, goofy pictures of generic food, and Panda Express (the latter is gone as of 2017).

Looking for a previously unmentioned strong point? Check out the palm tree filled courtyard plazas, which I’ll detail more in the functionality and amenities section.

Score: 1/3

Total: 17.5/33