A professional acquaintance of mine, Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register, has been a traveling baseball writer for 20-plus years and has covered games in all 30 of the current Major League Baseball stadiums. Not many people have done that. Journeyman ballplayers, traveling baseball writers who have done both leagues, and ultra fans, I suppose.

A logical thing to do, when you have been inside all 30, is to rank them, from first to worst, and put up a monster photo gallery, showing each of the 30 stadiums — with a few words describing each yard. That is exactly what Plunkett did at the link, above.

I went over the list of 30 stadiums and many of them still seem new to me, which is a function of age, of course. Anything opened since 2000 — and 14 ballparks have been — seems new to me.

Then I wondered 1) how many of the current 30 I have been inside and 2) how many demolished or unused stadiums that housed MLB teams I have been inside.

It is less of a close-run thing than I thought.

Let’s start by ranking the stadiums currently used that I have been inside. Then we rank those I entered that are no longer hosting baseball — or no longer existing.

1. Dodger Stadium. I’ve seen hundreds of games there. It is the third-oldest stadium still in use (opening in 1962), and it is crumbling a bit, here and there, but it has a fine view of hills and palms and Vin Scully still works there. It’s like home and always will be.

2. Fenway Park. OK, a confession. I have been inside Fenway Park, on a visit to Boston 15 or so years ago, but it was before the season began, It was midday, and the stadium had a big door open, and we just walked in the warehouse-like concourse, and out to the seats. What I remember is how extraordinarily compact it is. Every seat seems a few feet from the playing field. So, no game, no crowd … but I went there on purpose and walked (sneaked) in. I’m counting this. The oldest MLB stadium still in use, opened in 1912! And, man, is it a throwback.

3. AT&T Park, San Francisco. My first game there was in 2001, when the Los Angeles Xtreme played the San Francisco Demons in the first week of the short-lived XFL football league. I was back in 2002 to see three baseball games, World Series games, no less, as I covered the Angels’ seven-game victory over the loathsome San Francisco Giants. It was October, and it was cold sitting outside there. Aside from the weather, I really like the place, and McCovey Cove. Particularly of interest is that everything in the stadium is built to seventh-eighths scale, which is why the whole stadium seems a bit cramped.

4. Petco Park, San Diego. The San Diego Padres’ home. Interesting. More than a little Camden Yards-ish, with a nearby building incorporated into the stadium. A playground beyond center field. A home clubhouse in the round. I like it. Not much offense there, but it’s fine.

5. Angel Stadium, Anaheim. Hundreds of games there. Spiezio’s 2002 World Series Game 6 home run; Glaus’s game-winning double. “Yes we can!” The Rally Monkey. But the stadium itself? Didn’t like it before the remodel for the Rams. Didn’t like it after. Don’t like it now with the fake rocks in center field. Bill Plunkett makes a point of noting that the Angels “once had one of the best press boxes in baseball” — before they moved it down the right-field line and sold the media’s space to the expensive-ticket-buying public. A thoroughly unremarkable facility at any and all points in its history.

6. Chase Field, Phoenix. Where the Arizona Diamondbacks play. Easy enough to get to, from SoCal, but I think of it really for two things that have little to do with the game — the strip of dirt between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, a quirky touch … and the swimming pool in right-center field. Thank goodness the place has a roof, given that Phoenix is the hottest place this side of Abu Dhabi.

7. Minute Maid Park, Houston. Saw one Astros game there early in this century, when it was still known as Enron Park, ahead of the Enron scandal. Two things about this one: The inexplicable rising slope in deep center field, and the weird little train out in left field.

8. Turner Field, Atlanta. Another place where I never saw a baseball game, but I was inside the stadium several times — all pertaining to the 1996 Olympics. It served as the main stadium, and I saw opening ceremonies there (a shaky Muhammad Ali lighting the torch), and some subsequent track-and-field competition, too. They then reduced capacity by about half and the Braves moved in in 1997. Very functional, but no flourishes worth remembering.

9. U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago. A couple of days before the opening match of the 1994 World Cup, in Chicago (Germany versus Bolivia), I went over to what was then known as the “new” Comiskey Park to see the Angels play there, and I have never been more disappointed by a stadium as new as was that one, back then. It opened in 1991. Plunkett ranks The Cell Block third from the bottom of all current yards. “They demolished the wrong Comiskey,” he wrote. The day after my one game there, murder suspect O.J. Simpson set off on the famous “slow-speed chase”. Just sayin’.

10. Oakland Coliseum. Oh my goodness, what a dump. What a benighted place in an awful city and what a horrible place to see a game, whether it is the Athletics or the Raiders. Opened in 1966, during the heyday of the round, multi-purpose stadiums, none of which were good for football or baseball. I have seen maybe 10 Athletics games there, and at least as many Raiders games. The one constant has been that horrific, giant toadstool of a yard that hugs the freeway at the Hegenberger exit.

So, that’s 10 existing MLB stadiums I have been inside. Eight of them, I have seen ballgames at.

Now, let’s list those I saw games in which are no longer being used or (much more commonly) have been torn down/blown up.

1. The Astrodome, Houston. The “Eighth Wonder of the World”, as it was known when it opened, the first domed stadium in the country. When grass died under the dome, “AstroTurf” was invented to create the illusion of grass. I never saw a baseball game there but I did see the Houston Oilers play the Los Angeles Rams under the dome in 1979. Earl Campbell had a big game but the Rams won. Even then, it looked tatty. Most of it still stands, though, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Astros escaped it in 2000.

2. Joe Robbie Stadium, Miami. The home of the Florida (now Miami) Marlins for 18 years. A nasty baseball stadium, but the Marlins won a couple of World Series there. Take a look at the stadium (at the link), and you will see it was shaped for football, and baseball was an afterthought. Still stands, because the Miami Dolphins play there. Saw a Super Bowl there, in 1995, when the 49ers thrashed the San Diego Chargers, 49-26. The Marlins escaped to a new yard in 2012. Joe Robbie (under whatever name) is not a bad facility, as long as it’s football-only.

3. Candlestick Park, San Francisco. Impossible to get to, parking lots placed in swamps, invariably cold and wind-blown, a miserable experience for fans or players or anyone else unlucky enough to be inside. One season, when the Giants weren’t good, fans who stayed through night games that went extra innings were awarded a medal/button known as the Croix De Candlestick, which included the team logo and the Latin words veni, vidi, vixi (“I came, I saw, I survived”). Way cool. I saw the 49ers in there several times, during the glory days of Montana and Steve Young. (The cramped and overheated football press box was a version of hell.) The Giants left a few years ago, and they tore down The Stick in 2015. Memorable for the suffering there of fans and athletes and the wind-blown fly balls that fell.

4. The L.A. Coliseum. Still used by USC, and the returned Los Angeles Rams will play there this year. The Dodgers played in what is a track/football stadium for four weird seasons, 1958-61 (immensely deep right-field fence, ridiculously short left-field porch), waiting for the new stadium to be opened. Saw one Dodgers game there, with my dad, when I was a child. The Dodgers beat the Cubs 3-0. I believe Wally Moon hit a home run. (They played an exhibition game there in 2008, and it was really, really weird.) Home stadium for two Olympics. So much has happened there.

5. The Kingdome, Seattle. A butt-ugly dome that looked, inside, as if they had never gotten around to finishing it. I saw the Rams play the Seahawks there in 1979, when quarterback Pat Haden got his pinkie stuck in an open seam of the ragged artificial turf and suffered a fracture that kept him out of Super Bowl XIV. (Or maybe they don’t play in the Super Bowl without Vince Ferragama at QB.) Saw at least one baseball game there, the one-game playoff for the American League West championsh ip between the Mariners and the Angels in 1995. Seattle’s Randy Johnson beat Mark Langston, 9-1.

6. Memorial Stadium, Baltimore. Never saw the Orioles play there, but in 1982 I covered an NFL exhibition game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. This was during my 16-day (!) stay at USA Today ahead of its launch. The big story was the bizarre behavior of Colts rookie quarterback Art Schlichter. Ugly, nasty little yard.

7. Metropolitan Stadium, greater Minneapolis. Never saw the baseball Twins here, but I did see the NFL Vikings, against the Rams. I think it was just the one time, and I had covered the USC-Alabama game in Birmingham the night before. I believe I flew Braniff. The Mall of America now stands there. Another of the non-descript, intrinsically ugly stadiums of that period. It came down in the 1980s, when the Twins and Vikings moved to the Metrodome — itself torn down in 2014.

8. County Stadium, Milwaukee. Another of those in which I saw an NFL game (Rams versus Green Bay Packers) but not an MLB game. Grungy, old, beat-up, and this is in the late 1970s. I remember a long bus ride from the Rams hotel, and the city was gray and depressing. This was during the period when the Packers played half their home games in Milwaukee, because pre-renovated Lambeau Field at the time held something like 30,000, which wasn’t enough.

9. Mile High Stadium, Denver. Yet another stadium I have been in, but not for baseball. I remember nothing other than being cold and the air being thin. I saw the Rams (or Raiders?) play the Denver Broncos there maybe 25 years ago, and I also saw a U.S. national soccer team match between the Yanks and Uruguay, in 1991, in what I believe was Bora Milutinovic‘s first game as U.S. coach. The U.S. won, 1-0. Anyway, the original Mile High was blown up in April of 2002, replaced for the Broncos by another Mile High — while the Rockies are at Coors Field.

10. Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia. Saw the NFL in this one, but never MLB. Again. The Rams defeated the Eagles on a late field goal by Frank Corral. I remember being in the lockerroom after, and while talking to Corral, who had gone to Riverside City College, whether he had kicked a key field goal against “Berdoo” (San Bernardino Valley College) … and he talked about that for a while, and then a Philly writer asked me, “Was he talking about Purdue?” And I had to clarify for him. I remember the Spectrum, for the NBA and NHL, was right next door, there on Broad Street. Another stadium not missed. The Spectrum also was blown to smithereens.

11. Municipal Stadium, Cleveland. A cavernous, ancient dump, even when I was there, in the late-1970s. Cold and ugly and right up against Lake Erie. With steel supports blocking the vision of fans. Saw the Rams play the original Cleveland Browns (now the Baltimore Ravens) there in consecutive years. Never saw the Indians but, then, hardly anyone else did, at the time. Things changed when Cleveland opened the baseball-only Jacobs Field in 1994, and the Indians sold out every home game for several years. Never been there, and Plunkett says it now is showing its age as well as more disillusionment from long-suffering Cleveland fans. The old stadium, aka “The Mistake on the Lake”, was blown up in 1996.

12. Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The Braves played here from their arrival, from Milwaukee, in 1966, through 1997, when Turner Field opened. Most of what I remember about my one viewing experience there, a Rams game against the Falcons, along about 1980, was missing my plane out of LAX on a Monday morning (because of a speeding ticket; I was in a hurry), having to wait hours for the next flight, and then getting to the stadium perhaps a moment or two after kickoff for the Monday night game. (That sort of a stressful day would kill me now.) Oh, and another thing: On the plane, I sat next to an older German man, who alleged to have been a fighter pilot for the Luftwaffe during World War II and had shot down lots and lots of lumbering Russian planes. Fascinating. The stadium? Nothing special, even if it had a major moment of history — Henry Aaron’s record-breaking 715th home run in 1974. Mostly, just another neither/nor multipurpose stadium.

13. Arlington Stadium, Texas. The Rangers played here after they fled Washington and changed names from Senators to Rangers, in 1972. It had been built as a minor-league stadium, and then went through a series of expansions, which left it as a sad and homely facility. I was there to interview Nolan Ryan, so it was worth the trip, but that stadium … ugh. The Rangers moved to Globe Life Park in 1994, and that is no rose garden either, if Plunkett’s “No 27” ranking means anything.

14. Robert F Kennedy Memorial Stadium. A particularly weird history at this decaying park, which opened in 1961. It twice has been the home stadium for Washington baseball clubs (the Senators from 1962-71 and the Nationals from 2005-07. I never saw baseball there, but I saw the Washington Redskins play, when George Allen was their coach and the Rams were visiting, and I also saw a US national soccer team match there sometime in the 1990s. DC United of Major League Soccer is the current tenant. Small, cramped, a bad baseball stadium and a rough neighborhood and a place you really don’t want to go to — even though it still stands.

Ah, memories.

Let’s do some scorekeeping here.

–I have been inside 10 current MLB stadiums, but only two of those ranked in the top 10 by Bill Plunkett. And I have seen baseball in only eight of those stadiums. One I poked my head in; the other I saw Olympic events at.

–I have been inside 14 stadiums that were once home to MLB teams. However, I have seen baseball games in only four of those 14 stadiums. The rest were the NFL or soccer games.

At any rate, I have been in far more former MLB stadiums than current ones, which suggests that 1) I have been around a very long time and 2) I traveled to games far more often in the last century than this one, and 3) that I never have covered baseball as a traveling writer, which always seemed really grueling and unappealing, and 4) stadiums are built and replaced fairly quickly, more quickly than we think, and anything over 40 years old probably could be and will be — and should be — blown up.

And I depart with a YouTube video showing the implosions of some of the parks I wrote about.

So appreciate wherever it is you are watching a game. It may be gone before you know it.