Any pilgrimage of baseball stadiums would be incomplete without a visit to the South Bronx. Yankee Stadium opened with an advertised capacity of 70,000 and was the first yard to be called a stadium. It has been home to 26 World Series title teams and pays tribute to its heroes with Monument Park, an area just beyond the left-center field fence with monuments to Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Joe DiMaggio. There are also plaques honoring the likes of Thurman Munson, Roger Maris, Billy Martin, and Lefty Gomez. Until undergoing a two-year renovation in 1974-75, the monuments and plaques were in play in deep center field and fans were allowed to exit the stadium through the field and walk through the monuments, pausing to read the inscriptions and reflect on their heroes’ accomplishments. Actor Billy Crystal, who recently directed 61*, a movie about Maris and Mantle’s chase for Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961, had a creepy feeling as a kid walking through the “exhibits.”

“I thought people were actually buried under there,” Crystal said.

Derrick Hall, the Dodgers’ senior vice president of communications, says there is a motivation in building a retro park.

“The stadiums that have that look and feel that they’ve always had, they’ve been able to keep up the beauty and the ambience of it, Dodger Stadium included,” Hall said. “Some stadiums, they’ve never really cut it, and they’ve gotten extremely run-down. Here, we’ve been fortunate, where it has not. Baseball’s never changed, so, I think, the feeling is that neither should the ballparks.”

Camden Yards in Baltimore ushered in the throwback look when it opened on April 6, 1992. The Orioles utilized such features as steel rather than concrete trusses, an arched brick facade, a sunroof over the slope of the upper deck, an asymmetrical playing field and natural grass to give the new yard a familiar feel. The brick B&O Warehouse, located 439 feet from home plate beyond the right-field wall, adds to the metropolitan feel. The father of Babe Ruth, who was born blocks from where Camden Yards now stands, owned a saloon that used to serve customers in what is now center field.

“You look at the teams that built new stadiums and, not only does that add excitement to generate ticket sales and pretty much guarantee sellouts on a daily basis,” Hall said, “but it also increases your chances of adding new revenue opportunities to the ballpark, through advertising and sponsorship.”

Just look at the Cleveland Indians’ Jacobs Field, which opened on April 4, 1994. Along with Gund Arena, home of the NBA’s Cavaliers, “the Jake” has been credited with revitalizing downtown Cleveland, and the Indians won five straight American League Central Division titles and made two World Series appearances during their first six seasons there. Plus, entering this season, the Indians enjoyed a major league-record 454 consecutive sellouts, a streak that ended this April.

Of the eight stadiums to have opened since 1998, Pacific Bell Park is the most beautiful, and welcomed. The Giants, tired of playing in windy and nondescript Candlestick Park, are now playing at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, with the right-field foul line only 307 feet away. On the other side of the right-field wall is McCovey Cove, named after Giants Hall of Famer Willie McCovey. Through mid-April, Giants left-handed slugger Barry Bonds had splashed down with home runs into the drink seven times, including the 500th of his career, a monstrous 417 foot shot into the bay that gained him entry into the 17-member 500-homer club. (Bonds has since gone on to surpass that feat this season, now making a run toward Mark McGwire’s single season home run record.)

Pacific Bell Park became just the third ballpark in almost 80 years to be privately financed, joining Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium.

But Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist, who has written a pair of books on baseball as big business, disputes politicians’ claims that a new stadium pays for itself in increased revenues, new jobs, and local economic development. Zimbalist’s theory comes much to the chagrin of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who wants to build a $1-billion baseball palace for his adored Yankees on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“Every economist who has not been paid by proponents (of new stadiums) has argued that you can’t anticipate a positive economic impact from building a new ballpark,” Zimbalist told Sports Illustrated. “Who knows what fantasy world Giuliani’s living in?”

In fact, economists Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys asserted in a 1999 study that in cities with major league baseball teams with new stadiums, the per capita income fell by at least $10 per person per year in the 10 years after their respective stadiums were built.

And not even a new stadium and its resultant hype and revenue can guarantee a team re-signing its star players. Despite the allure of opening the most expensive ballpark in history on July 15, 1999, the $517-million Safeco Field with its retractable roof, the Seattle Mariners have lost Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez. Maybe Safeco coming in $100 million over budget had something to do with it.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ $50-million tweaking of their pristine grounds at Chavez Ravine, overlooking downtown Los Angeles, caused concern for many purists and fans. The team added three rows of seats each down the right-field and left-field lines; a Dugout Club of premium seats and an underground restaurant behind home plate, effectively cutting the distance between the catcher and the backstop to a fan-friendly 58 feet; and 35 luxury suites for the Hollywood elite in the stadium’s club level. Increased signage in the form of advertising has also reared its head in what former Dodger Manager and Hall of Famer Tommy Lasorda calls “Blue Heaven.”

Really, the only offending change was the synthetic warning track the Dodgers put in to surround the field, replacing the red earth dirt track.

“In our case, we also had to renovate so that we could increase new opportunities to generate revenue, because we just did not have those,” Hall said. “I mean, this stadium, historically, has not had a lot of signage. We’ve slowly added a few signs because we’ve had to, in order to be able to compete. We’re still at a point where we’re losing money every year so you just try to minimize that - and the best way to do that is to increase revenue through advertising opportunities, or through the new premium seating areas that we added.”

Interestingly enough, the Dodgers came into the 2001 season with the highest opening-day payroll in National League history, at more than $110 million. It seemed to have paid off throughout the first month of the season, though, as the Dodgers were in first place by themselves at the end of a month for the first time since August of 1997, and continue to contend in the NL West.

Yet while purists decry the seeming overabundance of advertising throughout stadiums, calling it a form of selling out, all one has to do is take a look at old photos to see that the classic parks of yore were smothered in billboards hawking their wares.

Before it became known as the Green Monster, Fenway Park’s 37-foot high left-field wall was littered with advertising, including huge ads for Gem Blades and Lifebuoy soap.

At Ebbets Field you couldn’t find a clear spot on the wall. Abe Stark, an area clothier, had a celebrated billboard under the Bulova clock, Schaefer sign, and scoreboard in right-center field, 344 feet away from home plate, that read, “HIT SIGN, WIN SUIT.”

So it would seem as though all the additional signage in today’s ballparks, even counting the grandiose mall that is Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, is itself actually a throwback to old ballparks

The ballpark renaissance will continue in the coming years, with new stadiums in the works for the Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, Montreal Expos, and Florida Marlins. Even the Boston Red Sox are talking about ditching Fenway Park for - what else? - a more profitable venue. And the Yankees are still angling for newer digs, what with a 500-pound steel joint falling from the upper deck into the empty seats below before a game on April 13, 1998, the episode seemingly demonstrating a need for a new and safer home.

“What’s important is, really, the pace of the game, cleanliness, safety, and entertainment during the game,” Hall said. “I think every stadium can achieve that, as long as they don’t become too glitzy or glamorous. You still have to be able to connect with the fans and let them feel like they’re a part of the action. So when you’re adding all these bells and whistles to a new venue, you have to keep in mind that, often, simplicity is the best answer. Because it’s about the game itself, and it’s about the fans, and it’s about the time with your family in those stands that is most important.”