Camden Yards on display in new MLB YouTube series

We know that Camden Yards is "the ballpark that forever changed baseball" when it opened for business. The first game was played there on April 6, 1992 when Orioles right-hander Rick Sutcliffe pitched a complete-game five-hitter. The Orioles beat Cleveland 2-0 in a game that took just 2 hours, 2 minutes.

After the opening of Oriole Park, the era of the cookie-cutter symmetrical stadium gave way to a new generation of ballpark construction. Now parks could feature new amenities, but still be old-fashioned. They would nestle neatly into existing and historic neighborhoods and show off their home cities.

Major League Baseball introduced some new programming on its YouTube channel Monday with a short video that included discussion about Camden Yards.

These "MLB Originals" premiered with "Quick Question," which takes a closer look at common customs and situations found in baseball through experts and animation. The first episode explored the question "Why do ballparks have different dimensions?" with background and anecdotes from MLB historian John Thorn and Janet Marie Smith, senior vice president of planning and development for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who oversaw the design and construction of Camden Yards.

Click here for the video.

Said Thorn: "Camden Yards was a breath of fresh air by being a breath of stale. It was old, it was new, it was perfect."

Smith remembered that initial plans called for two teams to be playing at a facility to be built in the future.

"Initially, the state of Maryland assumed that it would be a multi-purpose stadium because they had two teams. But by the time they had the funding available, the Colts were gone.

"We wanted Camden Yards to be a place that felt familiar, but gave you something to talk about. Just as you might bring grandmother's pictures and put them on the wall or something. HOK Sports, who were the architects for this, just so fully embraced this idea that we could take the older ballparks and we could give them a new vocabulary."

Camden Yards retained some of the quirkiness of the old ballparks but with all the amenities of new ones. The old multi-purpose parks had rounded outfield walls, producing symmetrical dimensions. Camden Yards was the first since Ebbets Field in 1913 to have only straight outfield walls.

"I don't really know that we thought back in 1989 that it would set off a way that would change Major League Baseball as a whole," said Smith. "We were just, as Larry Lucchino (then team president) is fond of saying, looking to do a nice ballpark for the city of Baltimore."

Today, no two ballparks have the same dimensions.

"That is, of course, what makes baseball special," Smith said. "The building it is played in is very different. And is thought of very differently than most sports fans think of the home where their team plays."

Per the Orioles media guide, a few other notes about Camden Yards:

* Construction of the park took essentially 33 months from the time razing previous structures on the 85-acre parcel began on June 28, 1989 in the area known as Camden Yards.

* The park is two blocks from the birthplace of Babe Ruth. Ruth's Café was the bar operated by his father in the area that is now center field.

* Ebbets Field (Brooklyn), Shibe Park (Philadelphia), Fenway Park (Boston), Crosley Field (Cincinnati), Forbes Field (Pittsburgh), Wrigley Field (Chicago) and the Polo Grounds (New York) were among the ballparks that served as influences in the design of Oriole Park.

* The B&O Warehouse is 439 feet from home plate. Built between 1898 and1905, the Warehouse is the longest building on the East Coast at 1,016 feet, but is only 51 feet wide.

* The gametime temperature for the first game was 63 degrees. Cleveland's Paul Sorrento had the first hit, a second-inning single. Glenn Davis had the first O's hit, a single to center in the last of the second. The first O's homer at the park was hit by Mike Devereaux off Cleveland's Jack Armstrong in the fourth inning on April 9.

A new episode of one of the series will premiere on MLB's YouTube channel Mondays at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Much of the footage was captured during spring training in February and early March. Fans can subscribe to MLB's YouTube channel for the latest content.

So what are some of the things O's fans like most about Camden Yards? What are some other ballparks you have been to and what did you like at them?