I come to praise the Orange Bowl. I'm not crazy. Listen.

The papers have been full of OB farewells recently, and they have not been affectionate ones. The Dolphins are moving north next year, leaving the Hurricanes and the New Year's game the only attractions at the Bowl, and speculation runs that they, too, will follow Joe Robbie and the demographics to the site near the Broward line.

The consensus is that this is a good thing, that it serves the Orange Bowl right because it is a bad place and we deserve better.

I have a suspicion that we indeed deserve the new stadium. But I don't think newer is better in this case, and I think it will serve us right to have to go there, because we're a fickle crowd.

First, the grim truths:

Picture the ball park: It's rusting and rickety and it thumps with age. It is located almost in the center of the city, jammed into a mixed residential / commercial neighborhood; the search for a parking spot would give Odysseus pause. Its bowels are dank. The ramps run wet with spilled beer and other, less palatable liquids. The seats are narrow, and some of them absurdly obstructed. Unless you sit on an aisle, pushing out for a trek to the rest rooms is a nightmare, and once you get to those restrooms the nightmare lingers. Long lines, unspeakable behavior inside. The concessions are rudimentary, and you have to wait a good long time for them, too. The scoreboard looks like a throwback, the public address system is a whistle in the wind.

I'm talking about Fenway Park in Boston, where the Red Sox play. All these things are also true of the Orange Bowl, of course, but I was thinking of Fenway.

The OB isn't modern, but its failings are hardly unique. At Fenway, for instance, the parking situation makes the Orange Bowl, in its congenial Little Havana environs, look like a grand design. In the men's rooms there are no urinals; there are 20- foot troughs. Quick service, yes -- but at what cost to aesthetics? The last time I sat in Fenway, in June, I "watched" Roger Clemens win his 13th from behind an imposing girder. About all I could clearly see was that the upper deck was in no imminent danger of falling.

So what is the big difference between Fenway Park and the Orange Bowl?

In Boston, they love Fenway Park. They do not use the park's decrepitude as an excuse for staying home. To the contrary, they revel in its age. The place is honored. Try to move it to a field near the New Hampshire border, they'd lynch you on the spot.

This is hardly news to hard-core sports fans. The old places such as Fenway, and Wrigley Field in Chicago -- where they don't even have lights yet -- are spoken of as hallowed ground.

But this is not a sports issue, not really. Get a Bostonian to take you on a tour of his city, which fairly groans under its history, and he will surely spin you by Fenway.Fenway's history is actually pretty grim -- the Sox haven't won a World Series there since 1918, and in the modern era the park has been the scene mostly of epic collapse by talented teams. There has never been anything in Fenway to match the Dolphins' undefeated season or the Hurricanes' national championship game in the Orange Bowl.

And still. In Boston, they just love the park. Here, we don't even bother to hate the Orange Bowl any longer. Now we merely hold it in contempt.

It's a plague on "new" places such as South Florida that inhabitants rather casually assume there is no history to them, in the face of evidence to the contrary. South Florida is a particularly new place, though it's considerably older than the Orange Bowl, which we think of as antiquated. Yet the Bowl is one of the most celebrated buildings in the state. On my own city tours for visiting friends and relatives, I'm always asked about the Orange Bowl. Usually I solve that by driving the tourists over the big hump on 836, heading east, so they can get the full impact of the Miami River cleaving the city and the Bowl rising out of its low-rise neighborhood. A couple times I've had to take the visitors down to the east end of the stadium itself, for a peek inside. Invariably, lots of oohs and aahs.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@