A Super Bowl-inspired look at potential neutral-site World Series locations

Dodger Stadium has not had a World Series game since 1988, but it would be a perfect fit as a neutral-site host. (Mark J. Terrill/AP) On Tuesday, Tom Verducci

Dodger Stadium has not had a World Series game since 1988, but it would be a perfect fit as a neutral-site host. (Mark J. Terrill/AP)

On Tuesday, Tom Verducci offered up 10 ideas he termed "conversation starters" about how to change baseball in ways both large and small. Among them was the notion of playing the first two games of the World Series at a neutral site. With the Super Bowl, America's most celebrated neutral-site championship, about to be played on Sunday in New Jersey between teams from Denver and Seattle, that got us thinking about where the best places for a neutral site World Series might be.

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More than half of the Super Bowls, 27 of 48 thus far, have been played in just three cities, Miami (10), New Orleans (10), and Los Angeles (7, five at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and two in the L.A. Coliseum). Using that as a guide, we only need a handful of host cities for potential neutral-site World Series games.

The primary consideration for a neutral site World Series would be the weather. Though six teams play in retractable domes, and the Rays play in a permanent one, if you're going to have a neutral location World Series game, you're going to want to have it somewhere that the game can be played (and watched) comfortably outdoors. Here, then, is a list of the mean and average low temperatures on Oct. 23 (the date of Game 1 of last year's World Series) for every major league city in the Unites States listed from warmest to coldest (all temperatures in Fahrenheit, source: weather.com):

City	Mean	Avg Low
Miami	78	74
Tampa	75	66
Phoenix	74	62
Houston	70	61
Anaheim	69	57
Los Angeles	68	57
San Diego	66	59
Arlington	65	55
Oakland	62	54
San Francisco	61	53
Atlanta	61	52
Baltimore	58	49
Washington	58	49
St. Louis	57	47
Kansas City	56	47
Philadelphia	54	44
Cincinnati	54	44
Seattle	52	45
New York	52	44
Boston	52	44
Chicago	52	44
Cleveland	52	43
Detroit	50	41
Milwaukee	50	40
Pittsburgh	50	39
Denver	47	31
Minneapolis	46	37

You didn't need that chart to know that Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and Boston weren't going to make the cut. It's an unfortunate reminder that the game's two oldest and most beloved ballparks, Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field, the latter of which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, would not be favored for a neutral-site World Series (which, in my opinion, is reason enough to abandon an already-questionable idea).

What that chart does is give us 11 cities in which the average Oct. 23 temperature is above 60 degrees. From those, we can quickly eliminate Tampa, which will soon be the only artificial surface field remaining in the major leagues as well as the only permanent dome. It's also fairly easy to drop Miami from the list, as baseball would be better off without both Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria and giving his lime-green eyesore of a ballpark center stage at the World Series.

Two more difficult cuts come in the Bay Area, where Oakland's Insert-Sponsor-Here Coliseum gets the bump due to its recent sewage issues and Mount Davis. That doesn't feel like a big loss until you realize that, among active parks, only Fenway Park (9) and Dodger Stadium (8) have hosted more World Series than the Coliseum (6). San Francisco's AT&T Park, meanwhile, gets the cut simply because it would be unfair to eliminate the A's home park and not the home park of the team that has been instrumental in preventing them from moving to a new, baseball-only stadium. It hurts to lose splash-down home runs and triples alley, but San Francisco is also closest to that 60-degree cuttoff, along with Atlanta, making it an easier decision.

If we eliminate Atlanta as well, we get six cities that have an average Oct. 23 temperature of 65 degrees or higher: the three southern California stadiums, the two Texas stadiums and Phoenix's Chase Field. All are excellent choices and could host the vast majority of the neutral-site World Series games. Dodger Stadium, obviously, has the most historic appeal, having hosted eight previous Fall Classics dating back to 1963. San Diego's Petco Park would be the novelty venue given that it is the only of the six that has never hosted a World Series (the Padres' two pennants came while they were playing at Jack Murphy-cum-Qualcomm Stadium).