Wallaby Wednesday: Imagining a 21st-century O-Town Zeros ballpark

If Heffer’s fanaticism is any indication, Spike Hammerhead was to the O-Town Yards what Ken Griffey Jr. was to Seattle’s Kingdome. The slugger and stadium shared their best years in baseball, making each other synonymous with the same franchise.

But surely by now, the mid-1990s home of the O-Town Zeros is more obsolete than the landshark’s swinging arms.

Unless he was busted and disgraced for using performance-enhancing drugs, Hammerhead might now be a hitting coach. He may be one of a handful of Zeros TV analysts, either as a color commentator in the both or a pre- and post-game guru in the studio. Or he could hold an official or honorary front-office position.

Whether he is present or remote, though, Hammerhead’s new role undoubtedly accompanies a new venue for the Zeros. Based on how their stadium is depicted in Season 1’s “Spitballs” and in some non-hardball Rocko’s Modern Life episodes, they were due for a change around the turn of the century.

If and when Static Cling sees action, it may or may not catch us up on the O-Town sports scene. Until then, we can only look around the real world and make educated guesses on how the venues have evolved.

“Spitballs” premiered, and presumably takes place, in 1993. More than half of the 28 real-life big-league ballparks at the time were multi-purpose facilities. Beginning with Houston’s Astrodome, a slew of stadiums sprouted in the 1960s and 1970s to house baseball and football teams plus miscellaneous events.

Besides the Zeros, Rocko shows the O-Town Yards hosting jackhammering competitions and WWWWF matches. Between that variety of events, its vast seating capacity and its circular outward appearance, it clearly qualifies as multi-purpose.

But only 10 MLB venues from 1993 are still in use as of 2019. Concomitant with Rocko’s production, waves of retro-modern and retro-classic ballparks were taking shape.

By 1993, Baltimore’s Camden Yards was already open, replacing Memorial Stadium the year prior. The following season, Cleveland moved its team from the 74,438-seat Municipal Stadium to the 35,041-seat Jacobs Field. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers opened the Ballpark in Arlington.

Coors Field became the permanent home of the Colorado Rockies in 1995. As with Cleveland, this marked a substantial drop in seating capacity. The Rockies previously cohabitated with the NFL’s Denver Broncos at the 76,273-seat Mile High Stadium. At Coors Field, they started with 50,200 chairs, and have since cut it down to 46,879.

Since then, apart from Miami’s “contemporary” Marlins Park, every new MLB stadium is of a retro variety. Common consensus in 2012, when Marlins Park opened, was that the retro movement had peaked. But 2017’s arrival of SunTrust Park, a retro-modern venue in Atlanta’s suburbs, suggests otherwise. This century’s retro model is still very much in.

Being the satirical conformist to corporate-infused Americana that it is, O-Town is sure to have gone that route in giving the Zeros a new home. Fundamentally, the place must be an old-time diamond and seating bowl garnished with state-of-the-art conveniences.

Non-baseball events are still feasible here, but the latest venues are built with the game more expressly in mind. In addition, all of the modern retro ballparks have a seating capacity south of 50,000.

At the O-Town Yards, a front-row seat meant needing to watch for wild pitches by the Psychos’ flame-throwing reliever. The new venue may have more intimate stands, but that comes with a greater need for cautious spectating.

 

And based on the Static Cling trailer’s glimpse of the current O-Town movie theater, the retro-modern ballpark’s HD screen will bear risks of its own. Fewer seats and fewer square miles likely mean a higher percentage of attendance relative to capacity.

Combine that with the venue’s modernized accessories, and vigilence is imperative, lest game day become “a very dangerous day.”

For major-league franchises who abandoned the shared football facilities, the capacity cutback meant a drop in cumulative ticket sales. But inflated prices and private luxury suites can help them recoup that, to say nothing of stadium naming rights.

Other than shared company/family names, there was not much in the way of corporate naming rights circa 1993. But two-thirds of the active MLB parks have since submitted to the bug that began to bite high-end sports and entertainment facilities mid-decade.

The aforementioned Coors Field was one of the first places to do that. In addition, Colorado boasts one of the ballparks that took the name of a sponsor synonymous with the market. Milwaukee’s Miller Park and Minnesota’s Target Field come to mind on that front.

Those are also among the few venues to not undergo any name changes since they opened. Others have either reverted to a non-corporate moniker or transferred the rights to another sponsor.

Given the way one corporation owns all of O-Town, city hall included, there is a heavy favorite for the new Zeros stadium. The odds favor a 50,000-seat (or smaller) Conglom-O Field or Conglom-O Park.

Dark horses include Chewy Chicken, Pizza Face and the newly arrived Buzzbucks. But even without paid preferential treatment, those companies can bank on a substantial presence at the concession stands.

Beyond the old-fashioned wait-in-line stands on the concourse or at the food court, they likely have a full-fledged restaurant within the stadium, across the street or both. Given the all-encompassing array of food options in most modern ballparks, the Chinese restaurant from “Fortune Cookie” and the Schnitzel Hut from “Schnitheads” are potential options as well.

And if no combinations of those entities are coming together for a unique, Frankenstein-esque dish unique to Conglom-O Park/Field, equivalent competitors must be.

The days where you can spot Heffer holding a plain hot dog while fixated on his favorite player are long gone. Friends, and maybe even strangers, will now keep him and Rocko from getting back to their seats by daring him to reprise his Knockwurst Nightmare Platter feat with the biggest and best the stadium’s concessions can dish up.

The Schnitzel Hut may even capitalize on the locals’ love for sausage by lending four of its weenie costumes to a between-innings race, a la Milwaukee. If it is not that, then the race may pit four varieties of reliably funny cheese.

When neither that nor other in-game presentations nor the game itself is sufficiently entertaining, Slippy the carny is there. If Detroit’s Comerica Park can feature a Ferris wheel and carousel, so can O-Town’s new ballyard. In fact, Conglom-O Field/Park would likely go beyond that with its assorted carnival features.

If the lines are too long for that, the stadium wi-fi will fuel ticketholders’ O-phones with interactive Zeros apps. Heck, if you hurry, you can use a given app to beat your fellow fans to first dibs on any game-day perk available.

And to think that, circa 1994, Rocko unfavorably compares his first attempt at camping to “walking in a mall.” If only he could have more of a heads-up on the new O-Town Zeros game-day experience.

Baseball’s exponentially maligned pace of play may stretch the average O-Townie’s patience and interest thin. But Rocko, who prefers Mr. Sensible for home entertainment, the fast-paced sideshows could be too much to handle.