corrugated metal is all the rage these days in decorating. at least at chipotle. not blue corrugated metal, though. or, in the case of the bullpens at dodger stadium, blue corrugated plastic. check out what the dodger stadium bullpens used to look like, courtesy of orel hershiser's 1994 upper deck card
these days, there is plant growth covering the back of the bullpens so we can't see the plastic anymore. see? look behind clayton kershaw on this 2011 topps insert.
actually, this card is a good before/after shot as you can see the back wall of the left field (dodger) bullpen behind koufax, and the visitor bullpen is behind kershaw. here's another view, courtesy of kershaw's topps 60 insert from last year
nice work topps!
still, i am not sure when this happened, as the bullpens don't make it on to baseball cards anymore (except for those kershaw inserts this year), and the last time i was at the ravine (2006), i didn't bother to notice.
there was a big stink made prior to this season when the twins removed the fir trees from behind the centerfield fence at target field. billed as a nod to the northern forests of the state, apparently they bothered some of the hitters, so now there's just that big black wall. sometimes, there's nothing wrong with utilitarian.
[i edited this post after speigel reminded me that the bullpen walls were hard plastic. and, i found those kershaw cards in my scan folder. makes for a better post]
with all due respect, those old blue bullpen backgrounds weren't metal, they were hard plastic. there may have been some metal parts, so we might both be correct, but i remember they were hard plastic. if you sat in the outfield bleachers back in the day, you had to walk on the opposite side past those walls to get to the bathrooms. some folks would break off chunks or poke holes so they could see into the back end of the bullpen. maybe that's why they changed it.
ReplyDeleteone last thing - when they first put up the foliage backdrop, one of the bullpen pitchers put a fake deer in the 'forest' back there.
no intent to steal your thunder,brother, just added in the spirit of accuracy.
BTW - if you look closely at wettland's card, just to the right of his rump, i think you can see sunlight through a couple of the knothole gang's peepholes.
ReplyDeleteYou know what? You're right. I think I do recall it being a hard plastic from the games i went to when I was a kid. I wrote this post by just looking at the photos. Bad gcrl. Thanks for jogging my memory.
ReplyDeleteWow, you brought back some memories. I totally forgot about this. Now you see some huge plants.
ReplyDeleteEnjoying the blog. :)