The Fall Classic (of Transit) 2009 — Division Series

It’s the time of year baseball fans have been waiting for. The World Series begins tonight, though fairweather fans west of the Eastern time zone might as well not care. Southern California fans might as well keep KTTV Channel 11 shut off for the next week or so. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles both choked miserably failed to outclass their East Coast opponents.

So we won’t be treated to a Surfliner Series between the Angels and Dodgers. (This is a family transit site; we won’t use that vulgar F word that generally describes that series.) However, for baseball fans who are transit fans as well, it’s a small consolation that the 2009 World Series will be the Acela Series pitting the New York Yankees of the Bronx versus the Philadelphia Phillies of Philadelphia. It promises to be a great series between two solid teams, and it’s great for fans to go car-free.

Which brings us to the point of this pointless fun exercise. Let’s revisit the 2009 MLB playoffs and stack up the teams to see how they compare for a baseball fan to go sans car. Which ballpark would win the 2009 Fall Classic of Transit?

Here are the rules. The divisionals would have a best 3-of-5, just like the big leagues. Similarly, the league championships and the World Series would have a best 4-of-7. The first four games evaluate transit access: Game 1 weighs local bus services, Game 2 weighs urban rail services and Game 3 weighs mainline rail (commuter rail and Amtrak); Game 4 evaluates transit information available on the agencies’ websites. The latter four focus on the teams performance: Game 5 focuses on the teams’ 2009 record, Game 6 focuses on the teams’ records facing each other … and Game 7, should any series get that far, will use ESPN’s baseball stadium rankings.

The matchups follow the same brackets as the 2009 MLB playoffs. Batter up!

American League Division Series

L.A. Angels of Anaheim (Angel Stadium) vs. Boston Red Sox (Fenway Park)

The Angels, who have been a dominant force on the field, have to be carried to this game by the Orange County Transportation Authority. This agency, which is shaping up to be a shell of itself next year, has to go up against the colossus that is the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. This is one year the Angels should have sat out the playoffs.

Game 1: Buses

Shockingly, this proves to be a competitive game. Competitive, if you consider that the Angels only have to walk in meeting the lowest of expectations and manage to meet them. Boston, for having such a powerhouse transit system, is a big disappointment around Fenway Park. OCTA has only two local buses (50 and 57) meeting at State College Boulevard and Katella Avenue. The commuter buses don’t count. MBTA has five routes circling Fenway Park (8, 19, 55, 60 and 65). Amazingly, the Fenway services are more OCTA-like than Boston-like. Only three of them run seven days a week. The strongest route in the bunch is OCTA’s 57, which provides 12-15 minute service on State College Boulevard. Plus, OCTA — at least this year — has something the Boston buses don’t: owl service. This is a close one that comes down to an umpire’s call. Winner: Angels.

Game 2: Urban rail

Two words: Boston Massacre. Boston has a branch of the Green Line come somewhat close to the park. Angels don’t even show up. Winner: Red Sox.

Game 3: Mainline rail

After an abysmal showing in the second showing, the Angels have to make up some ground. Fortunately, the Angels have Anaheim Station right in their backyard. It’s home to the second-busiest Amtrak route in the nation — the aforementioned Pacific Surfliner — and has seven-day Metrolink service. However, Boston is the north end of the Northeast Corridor and is a hub for several Amtrak trains. Plus, it’s complemented by an excellent, far-reaching commuter rail service with memory schedules. Angels are back on board, but it’s not enough. Winner: Red Sox.

Game 4: Transit information

It all comes down to this. The Angels were only able to take away Game 1 unconvincingly based upon some fielding errors by MBTA’s buses. (It would look something similar to the game-deciding bad throws that enabled the Yankees to take two games in the ALCS). Boston rebounded by a rout in urban rail and a home-run derby in Game 3. How does OCTA.net stack up with MBTA.com?

OCTA’s website is chock full of information, and it’s navigation would merit a B+, but it’s clearly evident that it’s a website designed by government bureaucrats rather than someone with a background in customer marketing or use-case scenarios. One would expect OCTA to have an international audience. Orange County is not the bedroom community to L.A. and San Diego anymore. It’s an urban suburb in its own right, and considering that the bulk of its economy comes from tourism, OCTA.net needs to make its site more intuitive for new riders. Worse, it commits the cardinal sin of transit Web sites: publishing schedules in PDF only. Sorry, but any site that does not list timetables in formatted HTML is lazy.

Boston, on the other hand, would come the closest to the standard every public transit agency needs to emulate. If the Fall Classic were just evaluating Web sites, the BoSox would run away with the title. MBTA.com covers all the bases: Sharp, clean design; easy navigation; schedules in plain text; clear maps and fare info; content available in several languages; and just about everything a new rider needs to get around. MBTA.com is wicked pisser. Winner: Boston.

Boston Red Sox win the division series 3-1. Real-life outcome: Angels win the divisional series 3-0.

Minnesota Twins (Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome) vs. New York Yankees (New Yankee Stadium)

Once again, we have a David vs. Goliath situation, as the Twin Cities roll with the Metropolitan Council versus the unstoppable New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. This looks like another mismatch.

Game 1: Buses

What is this Fall Classic good for if not to stir up a little crap? Getting to Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx yet not too far from Manhattan, should be a cinch. Yankee Stadium is served by four high-frequency routes (1/2, 6 and 13). Service goes well into the night and the headways aren’t worse than 15 minutes. On the other hand, the Twins have a distinctly Minnesotan transit system. The best routes have 15-minute service, while 30 to 60 minute service is the norm for the Twin Cities. On the other hand, the Metrodome occupies a well-bused section of downtown Minneapolis and is served by almost a dozen bus lines with a broader reach to the metro area. It’s a controversial opener, but the underdogs squeak by. Winner: Twins.

Game 2: Urban rail

To its credit, Minnesota opened a light rail line connecting downtown to the airport and Mall of America, and the Metropolitan Council is building upon it. Southern California also owes the Twin Cities a thank-you for returning us Art Leahy, L.A. Metro’s current CEO and former CEO of OCTA.

Though if any team has to face off the Yankees in the Fall Classic (of Transit) — and it’s bound to happen with the Yankees prodigious lineup and its bottomless payroll — they are battling a tank offensive with pebbles. No system in the majors can match the sheer size and fury of the New York City subway system. And yes, Yankee Stadium has its own station served by three lines: B, D and 4. At least Minnesota was able to get on the board, unlike the shellacking the Angels took at Boston’s hands. Winner: Yankees.

Game 3: Mainline rail

Here is where the Yankees begin to look like the Yankees. Minneapolis doesn’t have a downtown train station; it’s closer to St. Paul. Plus, all the Twin Cities have is the Empire Builder. Metro Council is opening a commuter rail line, the Northstar, but it won’t be geared to Twins fans — even though its downtown terminal will be the Twins’ new ballpark in 2010, Target Field.

I could list New York City’s Amtrak and commuter service, but rustling up the links would take days for each line. Metro-North commuter rail has a Yankee Stadium Station. At this point I’d invoke the mercy rule. Winner: Yankees.

Game 4: Transit information

The Twins are on the brink. All they have now is their website. They have one game — one better than their actual performance against the Yanks in real life. Can they stay alive?

Shockingly, they can. Even more shockingly, they do. The biggest shock of all is how come New York, which out of all American cities, needs to have a site that looks like the Yanks’ starting lineup and not like a Yankees Stadium men’s room after the final pitch.

New York needs to have a site much like Boston, with information at hand and a more organized front page. It looks like a basic HTML class exercise. Worse, it’s the friggin’ PDF schedules. Oy!

Minnesota is also more downhome, geared to locals, but it has a slightly better navigation, HTML schedules and definitely a more polished appearance. The land of lakes looks stronger here. Winner: Twins.

Game 5: Team records

The Twins, which had to play the Detroit Tigers in a tiebreaker just to get a wildcard berth, have managed to claw in by their fingers to get into the playoffs. The club would have envied to get a result like this in the 2009 playoffs, yet it still would have meant a close to the 2009 season and being wiped out in the first round of the playoffs.

In 2009 Minnesota finished with an 87-76 record. Meanwhile, the Yanks were the only team to finish the regular season with more than 100 wins: their final record was 103-59. Winner: Yankees.

New York Yankees win the division series 3-2. Real-life outcome: Yankees win the divisional series 3-0.

National League Division Series

Los Angeles Dodgers (Dodger Stadium) vs. St. Louis Cardinals (Busch Stadium)

How can the Blue Crew compete with the birds on the transit front? It promises to be a nail-biter.

Game 1: Buses

First off, when it comes to transit service to baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the National League’s cellar dwellers. Fortunately, the Texas Rangers have absolutely no public transit of any kind whatsoever, so L.A. can at least say “At least we’re not the Texas Rangers.” However, the lack of even basic bus service compounds the worst traffic flow for any MLB stadium, and this of course earns Angelenos the well-earned ridicule of being the douchebaggiest fans of all Major League Baseball. (L.A. fans don’t know that a baseball game goes 9 innings and not 6, and if it hadn’t been for Manny Ramirez’s marquee value, most Dodger fans would have come just to see and interact with a beach ball).

St. Louis, though, has a DASH-like downtown circulator bus, Line 99, that runs high-frequency service Monday through Saturday. It can be utile for many games. The drawback, though, is that other than some peak-hour express lines, there isn’t much else in the way of local bus services in and around Busch Stadium. There are some other local bus lines, but the walk is comparable to what Angelenos would have to endure.

Angelenos have to rely on Lines 2 or 4 to get to the game. Chinatown has several other frequent bus lines and Gold Line access, but the 110 freeway forms a barrier to pedestrians. The error costs the Blue Crew the game. Winner: Cardinals.

Game 2: Urban rail

St. Louis has MetroLink, which is its light rail line. There’s a Stadium station across from the ballpark, and folks from two states can see themselves a ballgame. (MetroLink crosses over into Illinois). Also, St. Louis uses the same Nippon Sharyo light rail cars as we have on the Blue Line.

L.A. has a much bigger urban rail network, but it doesn’t do a lick of good for baseball fans. The 110 freeway barrier rules out the Gold Line. Winner: Cardinals.

Game 3: Mainline rail

I’m betting the Cardinals club wished the series turns out like it does here and not how it did in the field. St. Louis is on the verge of sweeping the Blue Crew. Let’s see if it can come through with its railroads.

St. Louis has no commuter rail lines but is served by three Amtrak trains: the Texas Eagle, the Missouri River Runner and Illinois Service. As a plus, St. Louis’ Amtrak station is reasonably close to Busch Stadium.

Here, though, the Dodgers bring out the big lumber with Union Station being the hub of the Surfliner and several long-distance trains. We also have a Metrolink, and it helps us take the win to stay alive in the series. Winners: Dodgers.

Game 4: Transit information

Both Metro.net and MetroStLouis.org, the home page for the Bi-State Development Agency (St. Louis’ transit system) are roughly equivalent in functionality. They have OK, not great, navigation and information for new riders. Both rely on PDF schedules. Tsk tsk.

Metro, though, comes ahead on style. Bi-State’s webmaster got carried away with the Spry tools and created too many tabbed menus. L.A., though, has some of the finest graphic design for transit systems in America, and it extends to the Web site. Metro has much cleaner presentation, a nice front page organization, and it’s easier to find the URL. Metro has a choice, easy-to-remember site name. MetroStLouis is bound to lead to some slip-ups, especially if you primarily know it by its corporate name. Winner: Dodgers.

Game 5: Team records

Dodgers, being the team of Hollywood, know a good Hollywood story that hits all the right dramatic moments. Baseball wrote its finest script in 2004 with the legendary Yankees-Red Sox ALCS. The high concept: The Yankees led the series 3-0 and were on the verge of sweeping the hated Sox until Boston rallied to win the fourth, fifth, sixth and deciding seventh games and going on to dominate the World Series to break its curse. Hollywood really needs to make a movie about that.

Oh yeah, back to this series. The Dodgers pull a mini-Boston in this round, but this is only the series opener and a Dodgers-Cards rivalry isn’t exactly epic. The Dodgers had the best record in the National League, and the Cardinals had the fewest wins of any NL playoff team. (Even wildcard Colorado had one more win). Dodgers in 2009: 95-67. Cardinals: 91-71. Winners: Dodgers.

Los Angeles Dodgers win the division series 3-2. Real-life outcome: Dodgers win the divisional series 3-0.

Colorado Rockies (Invesco Field) vs. Philadelphia Phillies (Duracell Field)

I know the correct name for the defending champs’ home field is Citizens Bank Park. The jocular name is for a particular incident that helped cement Philadelphia’s reputation for having some of the most vicious sports fans in the country. On the other hand, Coors Field in Denver is the progenitor of the modern “urban park” format that most new MLB sports palaces have followed. It helped usher in the ballpark as downtown development anchor and helped to de-emphasize the primacy of parking.

Game 1: Buses

Coors Field is within easy access to dozens of bus lines entering downtown Denver, a gem in its own right. Philadelphia’s ballpark is toward the river, far away from the Center City. It’s hard to tell what buses go to The Bank, as SEPTA does not produce a system map and its bus routes are not plugged into Google Maps. For that matter, SEPTA has a horrible page not only for a big city, but for any transit system. I throw a battery at the SEPTA webmaster.

New Jersey Transit also serves Philadelphia, but buswise it’s not much better than SEPTA. It’s hard to make a comparison. Pugnacious defenders of Philadelphia, set the record straight. Until then … Winners: Rockies.

Game 2: Urban rail

Denver has a growing light rail system, and there are two lines that serve the park (C and E). Alas, both run every 30 minutes, which would be nice for commuter rail but rather thin for an urban rail system. Also, Line E only runs during rush hour. Meanwhile, SEPTA runs the Broad Street line with much higher frequencies and adds special trains for games near Pattison Station. Winner: Phillies.

Game 3: Mainline rail

This is where transit starts matching the real outcome of baseball. Denver shows up bringing the California Zephyr and no commuter rail in place yet. Philadelphia is a juggernaut, being a key point on the Northeast Corridor and having an expansive Regional Rail network. Let’s throw in the Atlantic City Line for good measure. It’s over before it began. Winner: Phillies.

Game 4: Transit information

I reiterate my point: SEPTA’s Web site is not fit for human consumption. Now Denver’s, on the other hand, has something that could give Boston a run for its money. Plus, Denver’s RTD was never as big of a civic embarrassment as L.A.’s RTD was. Winner: Rockies.

Game 5: Team records

We have another 3-2 series. Shoot, if you’re a baseball fan, make MetroRiderLA your home. We make baseball exciting. Once again, it comes down to a decisive fifth game. Who takes it? Philadelphia, and just narrowly. The Phillies had a 93-69 record; the Rockies had 92-70. It’s such a shame it had to come to this. Winner: Phillies.

Philadelphia Phillies win the division series 3-2. Real-life outcome: Phillies win the divisional series 3-1.

This post has grown so long that the Championship Series with be forthcoming in another post. Come back soon, and in the meantime, let’s argue about some sports.

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