MESA, Ariz. -- Do you keep a list of the Major League ballparks you've been to? Do you plan trips to add new stadiums to the group? How many have you been to? Five? 10? Mike Stanton most likely has you beat. He's pitched in 43, and that's not counting a couple exhibition games in Mexico.

The 43 includes ballparks that no longer exist, such as Cincinnati's Cinergy Field, Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Milwaukee's County Stadium, and old Busch Stadium in St. Louis. He has pitched in all of the 30 big league parks active last season as well as the Astrodome, Olympic Stadium, and Three Rivers Stadium.

"That's a lot of travel," Stanton said.

Cubs pitcher Randy Wells overheard the conversation. How many big league ballparks has he been in?

"Two," he said.

He's got time. So, what are Stanton's favorites?

"The Astrodome was a good place to pitch, and Houston is home, so that's a little different draw," Stanton said.

And the bad?

"Montreal was tough because there was never anybody there," he said. "The way they have the field set up, it was a high left-center fence. It was just a weird layout."

He's even pitched in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at Hiram Bithorn Stadium.

"I hurt a knee in San Juan," Stanton said. "That was a tough place to pitch because the first year, the turf was fast and the fences were short. There weren't a whole lot of places you could pitch to a hitter."

He could add two more ballparks this year if he breaks camp with the Cubs. They will play at new Yankee Stadium April 3-4 in exhibition games and also at the Mets' new ballpark, Citi Field.

Stanton has never really sat down and thought about all the clubhouses and bullpens he's seen.

"I know I've played in current stadiums, and I knew there were some old ones," he said. "I wouldn't say there was one I really disliked or one I really liked."

There were some quirks he recalled.

"Mile High [in Colorado] was tough because left field played like 200 feet," he said. "Right-center field was like 2,000 feet. It had a huge wall, too. Once Coors Field opened and they started doing or not doing whatever they're doing to the balls with the humidifier -- whatever the conspiracy theory is -- that was a tough place to play."

What about New York vs. New York? Stanton has played for both the Yankees (1997-2002, '05) and Mets (2003-04).

"My first time in Yankee Stadium was actually as a Red Sox so that was a tough place to play," Stanton said. "It was an old school baseball stadium, the way it's formed, and when I first got on the mound, it was real different. All the other stadiums were cookie cutter stadiums from the '70s, all round. Yankee Stadium was different. Was it in '98 when they re-did Yankee Stadium and they took four feet off the mound so it was really domed. They had to do that for drainage. It gave a real weird feeling to it."

And Shea?

"The two years I was there, we [stunk]," he said. "People ask me all the time, 'What's your favorite team?' and that's not a fair question. We won three championships in a row. Shea was OK. Not the best part of town.

"If there was one team that needed a new stadium," he said, "it was the Mets."

Any place Stanton wanted to demolish with high-powered explosives?

"Probably my least favorite would be the Vet [in Philadelphia]," he said. "There's a part of that stadium that most people didn't see, including most players. The bullpens were unbelievably bad. It smelled. They would rinse the food trays and crud and it would go underneath the stadium and stands and it would smell like rotting food. If there was one stadium that needed to go, that was it."

He has fond memories of some of the classic parks, like Tiger Stadium.

"It was kind of like Fenway," Stanton said. "Fenway's bullpens were terrible, too, but Tiger Stadium had a mystique to it with the overhangs. You could literally throw a baseball out of the stadium. It was different.

"We called [the bullpens] the submarines because they were down in the ground," he said. "It was hard to watch the games from the bullpens. Every few years, they would paint them. I think it was green. But they never stripped off the old paint, so the fence that you look through, each piece was like the size of a pencil. They just kept painting over it and painting over it so it gave you even more of a claustrophobic feel.

"Only eight guys could fit down there, and everybody else had to sit outside," Stanton said. "I almost cracked my head open going into the dugout. There was a cement pillar that was about 5-foot-8. Every time in, several guys would crack their head."

Stanton, who is six feet tall, isn't used to ducking.