Big-league ballparks, box scores and everything around them

Major League Baseball is the version of the game most of us grew up with on TV, and it's still the trip most fans dream about. The trouble is that the broadcast only shows you the field. It doesn't tell you that some parks open their gates early enough to catch the home team's batting practice, that a few upper-deck seats have a better view than the lower bowl, or that the walk from the train to the gate is half the fun in places like Chicago and Boston.

That's the MLB section of Thebaseballbash. We write about the 30 big-league clubs from the seats, the concourse and the parking lot, and we bring the numbers along when they help. A stat earns its spot here when it changes how you watch a game, not when it just fills a sidebar.

Expect ballpark guides for the classic parks and the newer ones, road-trip routes that chain two or three cities into one long weekend, food worth the line, and the history that makes a seventh-inning tradition stick. We don't run trade rumors or betting picks. If a player said it, we link to where he said it.