Durham Athletic Park (Durham, NC)

The Good: DAP looks like once it was built it continued to grow and mutate on its own until it became the present assemblage of oddly-shaped, seemingly haphazardly-placed structures. The tidy but weary looking covered grandstand is surrounded by little buildings, huts, and trailers housing the ticket office, the concessions, and the team offices. The effect of this random construction is quite charming and completely opposite the planned efficiency of modern ballparks. A good variety of food (including, for the carnivores, homemade barbecue) was available, as was lawn seating out beyond the outfield walls. The movie Bull Durham (which featured DAP extensively) may have made the ballpark seem to some like a Hollywood theme park of minor league goofiness, but for those who know the minors, it was a real place, and a real lot of fun.

The Not So Good: For all its charms, the physical structure of the grandstand seems unsubstantial and small compared to other stadiums with the same capacity. And the thick black net all the way around the infield was a drag.