The coolest thing ever?

I'm not a fan of hyperbole.

Nothing drives me crazier than listening to commentators and sportscasters call every halfway-decent play "the play of the decade" or every young star "the next big thing."

That being said, there have been two occasions in the past couple of weeks where I've ventured dangerously close to hyperbolic territory. The first was when I told my dad that the Super Bowl village was "Literally the most incredible thing I've ever seen."

And it was. For anyone who spent time in downtown Indianapolis, you know what I mean. Gigantic roman numerals acting as video screens in Monument Circle, an enormous tent in Victory Field's outfield, possibly the largest replication ever of the Lombardi Trophy adhered to the side of the normally-hideous JW Marriott hotel and hundreds of thousands of people milling about taking it all in. It was completely unbelievable.

For anyone who missed it, I'm sorry.

Anyway, that was my first near-miss with hyperbole. The second was when I saw this:

Holy crap.

That's a concept drawing of renovations to Bush Stadium, where the Indianapolis Indians played their home games prior to moving to Victory Field during the 1996 season. The building behind center field and the building that used to be the grandstands are being transformed into apartments, with the playing surface left intact.

Yeah.

That is the coolest thing I've ever seen. As a lifelong baseball fan, former baseball player and current baseball writer, there is nowhere that I can imagine that would be cooler to live than a former baseball stadium, especially the way this one is being laid out and preserved.

Bush Stadium is on the National Register of Historic Places and, in addition to serving as the home of the Indians for several decades, was the site of the baseball games when Indianapolis hosted the Pan Am games in 1987. It also served as a stand-in for both Comiskey Park and Crosley Field during the filming of Eight Men Out, a fictionalized retelling of the 1919 "Black Sox " scandal, when the Chicago White Sox allegedly threw the World Series.

Since the Indians moved out, the stadium was used as a dirt track (the "16th Street Speedway") for midget auto racing for two years and then served as a parking lot for the Cash for Clunkers program. In recent years it has sat vacant and in disrepair until, in 2011, the proposal was made to turn the structure into apartments. The project could take several years and upwards of $10 million (asbestos and lead paint have to be removed), but it's awesome to see Bush Stadium will live on in the city.

You can bet that if I'm still working in Indianapolis in a few years when the project is done, I'll be one of the first ones in line to see about moving in.

The only question is, would I want to live in the former grandstands, surrounded by history and looking out the window at the same thing I see at work, or  would I want to live in the outfield, looking in at home plate like I did as a high school- and collegiate outfielder?

Michael Raines writes for the Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field and could someday live at Bush Stadium (and so could you). He can be reached at therainesdelay@gmail.com.