E-Mail This Article to a Friend What Sox ownership can learn from the folks running Wrigley BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Wrigley Field. Fenway Park. Which is better? Too difficult to say, and much of it depends on what you value most about the ballpark experience. Nonetheless, after a weekend in Chicago for last week’s Sox-Cubs tilts, I’ve found out that there are some things that Cubs ownership could learn from Boston’s suits, and vice versa.

What could the folks here steal — er, borrow — from their Windy City counterparts? There are lots of differences to choose from — not all of them good — but some might be worth pursuing. When you sell out every game as the Red Sox now do, you don’t need to add much to attract people to the park, but that’s not to say you can’t improve upon the amenities you have.

Especially when you’re charging the prices you are.

So let’s take a look at what John, Larry, Tom, et al. could learn from the caretakers of the Friendly Confines.

• Seating. Wrigley’s almost as small and almost as old (est. 1914) as Fenway, but nobody there talks about the cramped seating and aisles. Not only is there enough legroom at Wrigley, but there are also cup-holders at nearly every seat. Unfortunately, the Sox ownership knows the bitter truth: cup-holders added now would only further clog the already-tight passageways down the aisles. Increased legroom can be accomplished in only one way: by removing all the seats in the park and starting over. So what’s holding them up? As when they increase legroom on an airline, contractors would be forced to lose two or three rows of seating to accommodate the extra space, and the Red Sox — with their clearly defined season-ticket holders — cannot surrender those rows without established patrons being up in arms. Add to that another problem: Fenway’s seats are not on a slope. Instead, each row sits on its own concrete step, so those would all need to be removed as well. Not an easy job, especially if one was to attempt to accomplish it during one off-season, i.e., a New England winter.

• Traditions. Traditions by definition can’t be invented; they just evolve, even though that still doesn’t explain the reasoning behind "Sweet Caroline" blaring in the eighth inning. All the same, Sox ownership could add some accouterments to jazz up the outside of the park and make it even more of a tourist attraction than it already is. For instance, why is that Ted Williams statue located in the park’s least-visited spot? Move it around front (city zoning be damned) and it becomes a must-see locale and photo-op mecca — similar to what the famous red Wrigley Field sign and the Harry Caray statue are to that park. And how about adding a similar old-time sign out front? That piece of junk across the street from the ticket office isn’t exactly a shrine to Red Sox tradition or even architectural good taste. Get another statue. Get a real sign. Get a statue of Jason Varitek flashing a sign. Something besides those boring vertical banners.

And aren’t there enough Boston celebrities to provide a nightly "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (or "Caroline" or even "Tessie") sing-along? Surely there must be.

• Creature comforts. Not only are the spaces cramped at Fenway, but a lot of those seats are either facing the wrong way or somehow obstructed. Wrigley has installed auxiliary scoreboards in the grandstand that hang off the upper-deck roof, thereby allowing folks who can’t necessarily see the Green Monster or any of the other façade scoreboards to always know what’s going on.

One of Wrigley’s drawbacks (for the menfolk, anyway) is the continued existence of "troughs" in the men’s rooms. Lousy, to be sure, but at least there’s shelving above where people can place their cups or cardboard trays while they’re doing their business. At Fenway, chaps must balance their drinks on the uneven porcelain urinals (God knows where they put the trays), and it shouldn’t have to be so.

The Sox brass won’t go along with this, but one of the great things about Wrigley is that there’s always a guy nearby selling hot dogs, sodas, and, yes, beer in the stands. Sell more of these products in the park and you’ll have less congestion in the concourse below, folks won’t miss as much of the game, and everybody’s happier (except for the people who have to pass two beers to you in seats 14-15 of a 28-seat row — and then pass your cash back to the vendor). Flawed? Perhaps. But it’d be an improvement.

• Aesthetics. The Chicago writers are right; the Fenway interior reminds one of a NASCAR contestant compared to the sparsely decorated Wrigley walls. I know the Boston ownership group has to make its $600 million back somehow, but somewhere along the way they have managed to slap an advertising sign or logo on seemingly every spare inch of their park. The oversize ads plastered on the Monster, along with the right-field Budweiser logo, are particularly egregious. Compared to pristine Wrigley, Fenway suffers from ballpark ads that are intrusive and Visine-inducing eyesores (even though they do add some much-needed color to the park, which primarily green-tinted Wrigley lacks).

Maybe in this case the grass (and the stadium) really is greener on the other side. All in all, however, Fenway and Wrigley are the two best ballparks around, and with a little luck, they’ll stay that way.

In the meantime, appreciate the stadium — and the team — that you’ve got.

"Sporting Eye" runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com