Every MLB stadium ranked from worst to best
By Kareem Gantt
26. Guaranteed Rate Field — Chicago White Sox
Believe it or not, there was a time when attending a White Sox game at what is now known as Guaranteed Rate Field was a truly unpleasant experience.
When it was first opened in 1990, fans panned the new park for the height of the upper deck, which was one of the highest in the Majors at the time. Also, the park was one of the few in MLB that didn’t allow fans who sat in those high-upper deck seats to venture anywhere in the park. So essentially, if you wanted to see the Southsiders play, you were trapped on a super-high upper deck and couldn’t go anywhere else for a brief respite from the heights.
Thankfully for White Sox fans, the team renovated the stadium in the early 2000s to make it more fan-friendly, but it still hasn’t erased the glaring weakness in this stadium — it lacks character, especially given that the new stadiums built after Guaranteed Rate Stadium took on the more “retro” look that made new stadiums feel homier and better incorporated the atmosphere of a baseball game.
Guaranteed Rate Field is functional, that’s it. No more, no less.
There is no disincentive nature to this stadium compared to its Northside rival, the Cubs. Guaranteed Rate Field feels like a cookie-cutter stadium that a corporation would build, which still makes it somewhat unpleasant to watch a baseball game here. And please, don’t get me started on the name, which has to be one of, if not these worse name for a stadium ever.
All in all, Guaranteed Rate Field is competent but charmless, and quite frankly, White Sox fans deserve better than competent when it comes to their home park.