Friday, November 01, 2024

My favorite stadiums 6-1

 6.

 


 

We are 6 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to sunny southern California as today's stadium is Petco Park in San Diego, CA home of the San Diego Padres.
 
The Padres used to play in a big, multi-sport stadium that was named after a San Diego sports writer: Jack Murphy. There are a few things that happened in baseball that won't happen again: Cy Young winning 511 games, Connie Mack managing one team for 50+ years and I can guaran-damn-tee that no owner will ever build and name a stadium after a sportswriter.
 
Though it would be great if the Red Sox played at Shaughnessy Stadium. Instead of the Green Monster, there would be a Red Monster and it would be made of curly hair. The Sox could mail in every game and coast on reputation--it would be great.
 
In any event, the Pads shared the Murph with the Chargers before getting their new place: Petco Park. Aside from a few years when they put palm trees on the other side of the fences, there wasn't anything really interesting about their stadium.
 
That changed when the Pads moved to Petco in 2004. This stadium owes a lot to Baltimore's Camden Yards in that they built the stadium around some of the buildings that were existing on the site. So in left field, there's the 100-year-old Western Metal Supply Company that was set to be demolished, but was retrofitted into the park designs. There's a team store, a Hall of Fame, seats to watch the game and club offices.
 
It's pretty damn cool.
 
That's one of the things that I liked so much about Petco, it was quirky but it wasn't a forced quirkiness that new parks sometimes shoehorn into their architecture plans. Old parks have strange angles and uneven dimensions because they were jammed into the city's footprint. San Diego does a really good job of authentically recreating that for Petco.
 
The stadium itself is just great. We sat in right field and had a great view of the whole stadium. The sun was setting while we were seated and although it was in our eyes, the sunset was absolutely breathtaking. Honestly, I can't believe that I live in stupid Massachusetts rather than in San Diego. Why don't 1 billion people live in this gorgeous city? It's mind boggling.
 
We walked around the park (more on this in a second) and it was such a pleasurable experience. The concourses were big and roomy, the Padres Hall of Fame was much cooler than it had any reason to be and the team store was pretty dope too. They also had a bunch of local micro brews for a reasonable price and the kids loved the food.
 
When you take the weather, the setting and the park itself, this is a god damn home run. If I lived in San Diego, I'd go to as many games as I possibly could. It was so great.
 
Another really fun thing--in fact it was the thing that my kids loved the most about seeing the game--was that in center field there was a beach and a little park. The kids ran around the beach, which is totally appropriate for San Diego, during the game (honestly, we sat in our seats for two innings) and then made their way to the grassy part of the park where they played Wiffle Ball and other fun little games while their mother and I drank beer and watched the game.
 
This leads me to something that I spoke about when I wrote about Comerica Park and the carousel found there. I would assume that many baseball purists detest these features at the park. You're supposed to be at the ballpark to watch and stay invested in the game. That's the entertainment, right?
 
And I understand that way of thinking, when I talked about Camp Nou in Barcelona, that was one of the things that I loved most about my experience there: people were 100% invested in the match.
 
But the more I got to think about it, isn't baseball (and all sports, really) supposed to be fun? And isn't going to a game supposed to be the most fun time of all? The food, the drinks, the souvenirs, that's all part of the experience. So why shouldn't there be a carousel in Detroit, a giant wacky slide in San Francisco, an exploding scoreboard in Chicago and a beach in San Diego?
 
You should want kids and their parents to have fun. You should want kids and their parents to want to come back. That's how you build bonds between the team and the fans, especially the young ones. My youngest doesn't like baseball at all, but from time-to-time she'll talk about the fun that she had at Petco Park. She won't mention being able to watch the Red Sox play the Padres, but she'll talk endlessly about chasing her sister in the sand.
 
That's what it's all about, I guess. Going to the park and watching your kids connect to the game that you love, even if it's not in the way that you made that connection. You couldn't do this at any other sport, but you can with baseball. And that's the reason why it's always going to be the best sport ever invented.
 
Here's the box score of the game that we went to that night: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2019/B08230SDN2019.htm The Pads were kinda butt that year and get the hell kicked out of them by the visiting Red Sox 11-0. Old Jelly Donut Martinez hit two ding dong johnsons in the win. There were no current Hall of Famers, but in what would be the start of his last month in Boston, Mookie Betts played center and right field. Xander Bogaerts played shortstop in the park that would one day become his home and Eduardo Rodriguez improved to 15-5 with the win.
 
This was one of the last times that the Sox would (mostly) run out the 2018 Championship lineup; without the DH, JD played rightfield so Jackie Bradley Junior sat while Betts started in center. Andrew Benintendi played left, Rafael Devers the hot corner, Mitch Moreland and BROCKHOLT! rounded out the infield with Christian Vazquez caught.
 
I really wish that the Sox could've kept that team together for a couple more seasons. They ruled.
 
5.
 

We are 5 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to Charm City as today's stadium is Oriole Park at Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles.
 
Since World War II, there have been three seminal moments in baseball that changed the industry. The first was the breaking of the Color Barrier in 1947*. The second was opening the West Coast when the Dodgers and Giants relocated to Los Angeles in 1958. The third was Oriole Park at Camden Yards opening in 1992.
 
* I get that things were different in the 40s and that it's always great to celebrate when an injustice is struck down but at the same time, not allowing Black ball players in Major League Baseball wasn't some sort of law of nature or act of God that was sent down from the heavens. A bunch of racist assholes just thought that things would "be better" if Black people weren't in their ball parks. And these racist assholes happen to own MLB teams. MLB has every right to celebrate the desegregation of their game--and in a lot of ways it helped progress in our country--but the cause of the reason for celebration is the same body that is doing the celebrating: MLB.
 
It would be like if I decided to throw a puppy in a small box and leave him there for three years. On its third birthday I let the dog out and then throw a party for myself for being a liberator. It's my own shitty actions that caused this whole mess. For a long time MLB owners were major league dicks. Maybe you should pull the throttle back a little on congratulating yourselves on being less dickish.
 
When Camden Yards opened in April of 1992, it's really hard to put into words just how game changing this place was. I remember the week after it opened, Sports Illustrated published an image of the park over a two page spread and I must've spent an hour obsessing over every detail. The warehouse in right field. The stacked bullpens. The weird nooks and crannies. The short fence in left field. The seats had these monograms in iron: there was a baseball player in between two letter Bs, which stood for Baltimore Baseball. They even had one of those old time signs on the outfield wall that said, "Hit in here!" with a picture of a finger pointing to a bullseye. I have no idea whether anyone ever hit it there, but that sign is long gone now.
 
All of these little details that made this stadium so unique. The people who designed it, the people who okayed the design; you can tell that they were baseball fans. Not only that but they cared about baseball and its history. One of them was Larry Lucchino who died today. He was Orioles CEO when the team was building Camden Yards and he was also the CEO of the Padres when they were building Petco Park. Not to mention his right hand person on these projects (and others like the revitalization of Fenway) Janet Marie Smith.
 
Both should be in the Hall of Fame for what they've done for the game.
 
What was so groundbreaking about this stadium is that it destroyed the multi-purpose super stadia of the 70s. Other sports and activities could happen at Camden Yards, but first and foremost it was a baseball park. There was no artificial turf. There was no bad sight lines for the games. There was no equidistant outfield walls. The park was part of the city, it fit into the Baltimore neighborhood like a glove. It owed a lot to the past, but at the same time it was filled with the modern amenities that you need in order to have a fun time at the park.
 
The concourses were spacious, the seats were wide and close to the action, there was a barbecue pit in right field manned by former Oriole Boog Powell. It was an amazing baseball palace.
 
The funny thing is, the first time I made the trip with my friends Skaus and Archie to Baltimore, we almost didn't get in. We flew from Boston to Washington, jumped in a rented car and drove 45 miles north to Baltimore on Friday night. Our game was on Saturday and we were going to reverse the trip back to DC on Sunday morning. Pretty simple plan.
 
Dummy (that's me) accidentally bought tickets for Sunday instead of Saturday. You know who didn't double check his tickets until he was waiting in line on Saturday? This dufus. The people at the ticket window couldn't have been kinder as I stammered my way through an explanation, "My flight ... uh ... it leaves tomorrow at 2:00 and ... uh, uh ... it's in DC and I'm so stupid ... we're from Boston and ... uh, uhm ... I'll never come back down here again. My friends are going to murder me. Please help."
 
They gave us new tickets, for pretty much the same seats in the bleachers and it was a great experience. I had wanted to come to Camden since I first saw that picture in SI and it did not disappoint. It was a hot day and we beat the heat by quaffing some Natty Bohs. And man, there's nothing like being 20-something in a park and city you've never been before drinking suds, eating whatever you want, bullshitting with your pals and watching baseball.
 
If there's a heaven, I hope that it's something like that.
 
I ended up going to Camden Yards for another game, this time with Aly and our friends the Olexys (with whom I saw the Nationals' park). We had slightly better seats, but the Orioles were worse and Camden less populated.
 
Here's the boxscore of the first game I saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2001/B08110BAL2001.htm Only one current Hall of Famer played that day: Oriole legend Cal Ripken. But there were plenty of players who could be in Cooperstown some day: Manny Ramirez, Nomar Garciaparra and the Sox starter was David Cone. The O's beat the Sox 4-2 behind three hits from Ripken and some pretty good pitching by Josh Towers.
 
This was in August of 2001 and the Red Sox were circling the drain. Jimy Williams was about to get shitcanned, the Mike Lansing/Dante Bichette era was about to end. As for me, August of 2001 was a really good month: I got to see Camden Yards, the following week I had tickets to watch Radiohead perform at Suffolk Downs and the week after that I went on one of the best trips ever, Ireland, with my family and closest friends.
 
4.
 

We are 4 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to the Mile High City as today's stadium is Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies.
 
I was prepared to dislike Denver and I was really prepared to hate Coors Field. I was ecstatic to find that not only did I love Coors Field, but I thought that Denver was tip-top too!
 
Just about every year, I do a guy's trip to a different Major League city. Since I go with a great bunch of dudes, they've all been a blast. I think that the trip to Denver was my favorite.
 
We went to a concert (Hootie and the Blowfish and the Barenaked Ladies), which 20-year-old me would sneer at, but guess what? I'm not 20-years-old anymore. It was a hell of a lot of fun, BNL were good but Hootie? Dude brought the house down. I don't think that there was song that I didn't know and the covers (Public Enemy and Led Zeppelin) were in my wheelhouse. It was way better than expected.
 
The next night me and my buddies went to Red Rocks. There was an EDM festival (I think? I'm not 100% sure) where I don't think that we concentrated on the music. It was just the most beautiful place to watch live music. The scenery was amazing and breath taking. I was glad that I didn't care about the music because I just focused on what was around me as the sun went down.
 
The final night was our trip to Coors Field, again it beat all expectations. The area around Coors is awesome. As you'd expect there are a ton of breweries, one that pours pints of Pliny, and there is also this very cool little museum dedicated to baseball stadiums. That was a lot of fun to walk in and check out the memorabilia from old stadia.
 
We finally made our way into the park, our seats were along the third base side, and it started to rain. And rain. And rain. They wanted to get the game in and the rain delay was expected to be two hours.
 
This is the sucky thing about centering a trip around an open air stadium, sometimes it rains. And sometimes those games are called off. So that brings up the existential question, if you were inside the park for a game that was called, does it count? We had a long discussion about this during our two hours and I think that we came to the consensus that it did.
 
I wouldn't say that rain outs are ever cool, but this one wasn't too bad. It was a warm rain, so you weren't cold AND wet. The other dope thing is that we got to really explore the park. See the Rock Pile, which are the bleachers in center field that sorta look like a mountain range -- they're super far from the plate, so the sight lines weren't great there.
 
In center field, near the bullpens, the Rockies have planted a little forest and it looks really awesome. It's a way for the Rockies to bring the Rockies to the ball park. This is a modern stadium--it opened in 1995 and it's the third oldest park in the National League (behind Dodger Stadium and Wrigley Field)--so the concourses are wide, the food selection is plentiful and the beer selection is even better.
 
The park is big but since the air is thinner and the ball travels further, it plays a little smaller than you think. That's been the Achilles heal of the Rockies, right? Big dudes that can slam the ball to Boulder, but the pitching is always suspect. That reputation of high scoring games is warranted, as you will soon see.
Once the rain subsided, we made it back to our seats and watched the Reds and Rockies pummel each other for a bit. I don't know what it's like in April or October, but you couldn't have asked for a better night when we went in July. Just a great night in the most underrated park in the Big Leagues.
 
If you find yourself in Denver and want to catch a game, go to Coors Field. The Rockies suck, so you'll get great seats but you're going to have a fantastic time. I couldn't recommend this place more.
Here's the boxscore of the game that I went to: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2019/B07130COL2019.htm It was an old time squeaker as Cincinnati prevailed 17-9. Current Hall of Famers? None. But Reds first baseman Joey Votto will probably go and there's an outside shot that then-Rockie third baseman Nolan Arenado might make it too. But the pitchers who participated in this blood bath aren't going anywhere.
 
It was interesting to see former Dodger phenom Yasil Puig in right field (he had a dinger and six RBIs) for the Reds and if you're a fan of money dumps, future Red Sox Trevor Story was playing short for Colorado.
 
I know I sound like your hippie uncle, but go to Denver, you won't be sad.
 
3.
 

We are 3 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to the Jet City as today's stadium is T Mobile Stadium, home of the Seattle Mariners.
 
Programming note: you may have noticed that yesterday there wasn't an update. The reason: your pal Byron is a bit of a moron sometimes and screwed up the numbering of the countdown. I was a day ahead of everything so I took yesterday off. But now we are where we want to be (and it only took 27 days!) so on with the show.
 
When I was in my teens and 20s, Seattle was the place to be. Or at least that's what it seemed. It was in the corner of the United States far from everything (everything that I knew about at that point in my life) but Seattle was the epicenter of cool. If you're a Boomer, it's what San Francisco was. If you're a millennial, it's what Austin was. Seattle was Gen X's north star.
 
Or that's the cliche. And whatever, I fall for cliches all the time so I was all about Seattle. From the music to the technology to the coffee shops to the city's sports teams (how could you not love Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton and the rest of the Supersonics) not to mention having the coolest baseball player on the planet (Ken Griffey Jr.) and the scariest pitcher (Randy Johnson), Seattle seemed like the place to be in the 90s.
 
Already a Mariners fan, I wanted to go there so bad. But I never made it there until 2006 when I made a business trip to the Emerald City. Seeing a game at Safeco (that's what it was originally called) was like the culmination of my early teens and twenties. It was almost a quasi-religious experience.
 
But more on that in a second.
 
As I wrote about last year in this space, the Mariners are one of my favorite teams because they always seemed to be shrouded in mystery. They had a weird team of misfits (even ten seasons into their history), they played in a shitty dome (it always seemed like it was about to start pouring INSIDE the Kingdome) but they were a Major League team that was as far away from Boston as you could get. How exotic!
 
But then things slowly started to change for the M's as they began developing bonafide superstars: Griffey, Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner. That was the first wave! Now the Mariners were a legit franchise and they still played in that shitty stadium. The club knew that they needed a new place to play in order to survive the Pacific northwest, but public sentiment wasn't exactly with them.
 
Until 1995. That was a year of great excitement in Seattle as the M's, left for dead at the All-Star break, started streaking in the second half winning nearly every single day. While the Mariners were winning, the first-place Angels were losing. Eventually the Mariners made up the double-digit deficit and won the AL West crown for the first time every in a dramatic one-game playoff series. The Kingdome was rocking, everyone had Mariners fever.
 
Which was fortuitous because there was an initiative on the ballot that November to use public funds to build a new stadium. Thanks to all of the good will and excitement from the summer it passed. Safeco Field opened in 1999 and the Mariners have not made a peep about moving since then.
 
When I went to the Mariners game back in 2006, we sat in the upper bowl along behind first base. We were high up, but the view was absolutely spectacular. The roof was open, it was a nice summer night and the visage of Mt. Rainier was plain to see.
 
I don't remember much about the game, I think that the Mariners weren't great in 2006 and neither were their opponents, fellow Class of '77 expansion franchise the Toronto Blue Jays, but the vibe itself was awesome. It's how I always imagined what baseball in the northwest to be like: technologically advanced (the roof opens and closes and the stadium was packed with modern amenities) but at the same time still close enough to nature that you could feel it.
 
No matter how big of a city Seattle is, it always felt to me like it was an overgrown logging town. 
 
Like you had all of the huge buildings in the city proper and the minute you walk outside of the city limits you're surrounded by gigantic sequoias--in other words I picture that Seattle was a metropolis located in a National Park.
 
Of course, that's insane but that's how I imagined it. And I have to say T Mobile Stadium didn't let me down. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still kinda felt that way. There's not a lot of major league cities where you can watch a baseball game under the shadow of a mountain. Obviously that mountain is far away, but you get my drift. Fenway Park has a giant neon sign for a gas company overlooking left field, Seattle has a mountain. What's better?
 
As I said earlier, the stadium is packed with a ton of amenities: wide seats, plenty of leg room, pretty good sight lines without gigantic poles, almost every seat is a winner. The concourses were wide too with a ton of offerings: sushi, chocolate covered grasshoppers plus your standard fare of hot dogs, peanuts and crackerjacks. Due to the preponderance of microbrews, the beer selection was the best that I'd ever encountered.
 
Ballpark aside, if you haven't been to Seattle yet, go. It's a really walkable city with tons of stuff to do. I saw the Space Needle (overrated, $15 [then] for an elevator ride but the view is spectacular), tons of cool museums, obviously great music venues and really cool shops.
 
When I was there I stopped into the Ebbets Field Flannel store and it was like being in a museum; only you could buy whatever you saw the mannequins wearing. Unfortunately it has since been sold to the parent company of Lids and is no longer there. But it was still a highlight of my trip. And you'll have your own when you visit Seattle.
 
Here's the boxscore of the game I saw that day: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2006/B07240SEA2006.htm There is one current Hall of Famer (actually, one of the newest ones) Adrian Beltre. Beltre was in the midst of lost seasons when he played for the M's, he didn't get good again for another couple of years when he suited up for the Red Sox. A future no-doubt Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki also played for Seattle, with a rare 0-4.
 
For the Blue Jays, not much was going on with them. Troy Glaus, Lyle Overbay, Eric Hinske and Frank Catalanotto were in the lineup. Former PC Friar John McDonald manned shortstop. Like I said, despite finishing second in the AL East (Seattle finished last in the West) the Jays were a meh team at best.
 
Future Red Sox starter Joel Pineiro picked up the 7-4 win for Seattle. Another future Sox, Hinske hit two dingers that night for the losing Jays.
 
2.
 

 
We are 2 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to the City by the Bay as today's stadium is Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.
 
By virtue of working in the tech field for the last 15 or so years, I've been to the Bay area. A lot. Not as much since Covid, but for a number of years I was going to San Francisco or San Jose two or three times a year. I was either going to love it or hate.
 
Fortunately, I loved it. I think everything about San Francisco is great. I love the weather (going there in January was a real treat that I often felt guilty about mostly because my wife was stuck home in the snow). I like the city, I like the suburbs. I like that the malls and the campuses of the various places I worked at were outside. I just really enjoyed the whole vibe of the place.
 
Would this change if I lived there? Undoubtedly. The things that I find charming now would probably drive me crazy if I put down roots there.
 
One of the first times I went out there was for JavaOne, a conference held by my old company Sun Microsystems. It was the first time I had to talk to customers about my product and I was nervous. But it was a good conference in that I gained some confidence, it was really great talking to real customers and I got some time to explore the city.
 
I flew into the Bay area on a Monday and that night I took the BART over to Oakland to catch an A's/O's game. I wrote about this experience a little more than three weeks ago and it wasn't great, despite me always wanting to go to Oaktown.
 
I was scheduled to fly home on a red eye that Friday night and the Giants were home to play the Phillies. Since I had nothing to do until like 9:00 that night, I checked my luggage at the park and watched the first six or so innings from PacBell (that's what it was called then).
 
To go from Oakland's decrepit stadium that was literally falling apart and barely a quarter filled on a Monday to the Giant's new place, that turned the trick of being both state-of-the-art and retro four days later was like getting into Doc Brown's DeLorean. It was amazing. The stadium was backed with wild Giants fans that were up for every pitch.
 
The distance between Oracle Park and the Oakland Coliseum is 16 miles, but it may as well be a million because the two places shouldn't share the same continent never mind be in the same general area. This is not a shot at the people of Oakland, the Coliseum has its charms, but if you ping pong from one venue to the other, prices aside, its obvious which one you'd choose.
 
Oracle Park (or AT&T Park or PacBell Park) is absolutely wonderful. Situated on the water, there aren't a lot of prettier views. I mean look at the image that I attached along with this post, it looks amazing. And that's part of the fun of going to a Giants game; it doesn't happen too often but every so often a left handed slugger will blast a pitch into McCovey Bay.
 
How can you not love that?
 
The rest of the park is as advertised. Like all of the new places, the seats are roomy and there is ample leg room. Not only that but there are no gigantic poles in your way, so you can check out all of the action and not worry about missing anything. The concourses are wide and filled with plenty of choices of food and brews.
 
Before they redid Fenway, the Red Sox were thinking about a new park on the water. My guess is that if they did that, they'd have looked west to San Francisco for inspiration for their new place. My guess is that it would have been absolutely magnificent. Fenway is great and all, but man I'd love to have had Oracle Park East to walk into 81 times a year.
 
I think that we all would too.
 
Here's the boxscore of the game that I saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2008/B05090SFN2008.htm The post Bonds years for the Giants were an ugly era and this box score proves it. The Giants' lineup is god awful with no one in particular to talk about. There are no current Hall of Famers, but the Phillies had a few guys on the cusp: Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and that night's starting pitcher Cole Hamels.
 
The Fightin's beat the Giants 7-3, as they scored four in the seventh (by that time I was in SFO waiting for my flight). Rollins hit a home run and a guy died outside the park. Not from the homerun, but two fans got into an argument after the game and one of the dudes sucker punched the other. That person fell, hit his head and died. He got a year in jail and five years probation.
 
I had nothing to do with it.
 
1.
 

 
We are 1 day away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to Steel CIty as today's stadium is PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
 
This is it, kiddos. The big enchilada, the best park that I've seen (so far) in all of the parks that I've gone to in this great big continent of ours.
 
Back in 2009 my friends Ryan and Andrew decided to go on a mini Armpit of America tour and hit Cleveland and Pittsburgh. We called it the Armpit of America tour because we were jerky coastal jerks. (I'm pretty sure Ryan and Andrew didn't think this, but were just humoring me--I'm the jerky jerk.) But guess what? I learned something during that long weekend. I learned that those two cities may be husks of what they were in the early 1900s but they're still really great cities with funky neighborhoods, great food, great beer, great people and amazing ballparks.
 
I felt dumb. But the good thing about feeling dumb is that it doesn't last long and you feel a little smarter later. And that's a good thing.
 
Exiting the long Fort Pitt tunnel and coming into the city was pretty damn amazing. You go through a mountain and come out to a view of the city of Pittsburgh. It was so cool.
 
We didn't get to spend a ton of time of Pittsburgh. We woke up in Cleveland, hung around for a bit and had to make tracks to Pennsylvania. It was a two-hour drive, but with traffic we had just enough time to find our hotel, drop our bags, get something quick to eat (not Primanti Brothers, but Morton's -- my buddy has an obsession with eating at every single one and he hadn't tried the Pittsburgh location yet, yeah I can relate), snag a beer name the stadium and get to our seats by first pitch at 7:05.
 
I remember walking into PNC Park and being absolutely astonished by what I saw. The ballpark is small but not stifling, it's intimate. It's situated on the Allegheny River, so it has to be a real moon shot to land in there, unlike at Oracle Park. As a matter of fact, only 67 balls have made the drink in the 23 years since it opened up.
 
The view is glorious. Looking out to center field you see the river, the Roberto Clemente bridge and the city skyline. It's criminal to me that a better team, a team with an owner willing to spend the money to have an all-star at every position, isn't playing in this park. This park should be in every single MLB post season, it's so special.
 
Like the other parks, this has all the perks: the roomy seats, the wider concourses, different types of concessions, beers from all over--though we had the Iron City variety. It's a great place to watch the game. If you're a Pirates fan from way back and had to suffer through years at the old Three Rivers Stadium, like the folks from Cincinnati, St. Louis and Philadelphia, you must feel like you've died and gone to hardball Valhalla.
 
That's the crummy thing though, now that the Pirates have a beautiful park, the teams are subpar but when they were playing in that glorified cement park, they had world-class teams. I guess that there's a reason they say that clothes make the man and not the park makes the team.
 
Speaking of glory days of long ago, the game that we saw was interesting in that it was 70s night. Both the Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds wore uniforms from the decade where both teams dominated the National League.
 
After the game was a concert by the ultimate 70s group: KC and the Sunshine Band. Did Ryan, Andrew and I make a pact that the first song we didn't know, we'd leave? Yes. Did we end up staying there for the entire concert because we knew literally every single song? Also yes. We're middle aged Yinzer women getting down, getting down (that) night? Doubly yes. The place actually got a little wild.
 
Pittsburgh has a bunch of really great things going for it, I'm really happy that I got to experience the place for myself and made up my own mind--people always say that Pittsburgh is a hole, it's not. Near the top of the list for why the city is so cool is their baseball park. The Pirates are going to stink for the next few years (which is too bad because I like the Pirates) so getting tickets to watch them play is super easy. Plus, you might see a band that you think sucks, but is actually pretty awesome.
 
Go to Pittsburgh, throw Heinz ketchup on everything and enjoy yourself. You won't be disappointed.
Here's the boxscore of the game that we saw that night: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2009/B08220PIT2009.htm Zach Duke spun a beaut that night as the Buccos pasted the Reds 12-2. Ryan Doumit hit a bomb. While there was no current Hall of Famers, Joey Votto is probably going to wind up in Cooperstown and maybe Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen may join him. That's a definite maybe though.
 
Andover, MA native Ryan Hanigan started behind the dish for the Redlegs and notched a hit. I'm sure I told Ryan and Andrew my Ryan Hanigan story, which I'm not going to go into here. This entry is long enough.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

My favorite stadiums 13-7

 13.

 

We are 13 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're here today in the City of Brotherly Love as today's stadium is Citizen's Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia, PA home of the Philadelphia Phillies.
 
Much like the clump of ballparks that I've reviewed in the last week or so, CBB (Citizen's Bank Ballpark, not Comedy Bang! Bang!) is a great, modern park. It has all the amenities that you would want: tons of leg room at your seat, great sight lines, cool stuff to look at when the game slows down, spacious concourses where you can pretty much eat whatever you want.
 
There's no downside to CBB, it's an absolute gem of a park. Ryan and I sat on the leftfield side in the second or third deck and had a terrific view of the field of action.
 
* A quick aside: here's one very cool thing about Philadelphia, there is a bar that serves my all-time favorite beer: Pliny the Elder. If you know anything about this brew, made by Russian River, it's that it's really only available in the Bay Area (we also found another bar that had it on tap when we visited Denver to see the Rockies play). For some crazy reason, there is a small bar called Monk's Cafe where they have this available.
 
When I saw it on the menu, I almost lost my mind. Pliny? Here? On the east coast? Our waiter didn't seem to give a shit and had no further information. But it was great. If you ever find yourself in Philly, find Monk's Cafe and grab a Pliny. Your taste buds will thank you and then you'll thank me.
 
Anyway the park is amazing. Like Truist Field, Citi Field, Great American Ball Park and the others, there is a ton of history on the walls. There are statues of great Phillies dotting the areas surrounding the stadium. It's modern ballpark building 101 and, I love it.
 
But I got to wondering ... as a person who has had Fenway Park as his favorite team's home, the Red Sox park has changed a bit since when I started going there (1983) but not drastically so. For Phillies fans (and Pirates, Reds, Cards, etc) their game watching experience has changed immensely. Those teams all played in the "futuristic" multi-sport bowls that were dimly lit and filled with astroturf.
 
Now the teams play on grass, in brightly lit parks on grass. Where once these teams relied on strong pitching and slapping the ball around and running and running and running, there's more of a preponderance of swinging for the short(er) fences.
 
Yes, pitching is still key; but as Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine once opined: chicks dig the long ball. What's it like to go from Veteran's Stadium to CBB? It must be like going from an Atari 2600 to an xBox, from AM to SiriusXM, from a Model T to a Lamborghini. What I'm trying to say is that the jump from then to now must've been pretty huge.
 
Did everyone like it? I'm guess with the way the world is, I bet a bunch of people pined for the Vet. "There's not even a jail at Citizen's Bank Park!" (Yes, there was a jail at Veteran's Stadium. Philly fans are the best, or the worst, you decide.) It would be hard to leave any place that you had great memories in.
The Vet saw a lot of really good Phillies (and Eagles) teams, so there is a ton of great recollections of the first World Championship in franchise history, two other World Series appearances, playoff games, no-hitters, the careers of Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton and tons of others. Going to a new home without all of that stuff must be hard. I could see why some people might not like it.
 
As someone who never went to the Vet, I can't do an honest comparison. All I know is that CBB is a great park and the Vet (from TV at least) looked like shit. There was nothing really unique about it. The turf looked old. The aesthetics were drab and it just looked like a place you'd try to avoid playing at. As an outside, maybe I don't get what made the Vet so special and I never will. But CBB seems to be an upgrade.
Rye and I also tried the steak and cheeses from Pat and Geno's. I believe that I was a Pat's man and Rye preferred Geno's, or it could be the opposite, I don't recall. In any event, the day left with me driving back to Massachusetts and Ryan walking home.
 
We never spoke again. City of Brotherly Love? More like City of Brotherly Hate.
 
Here's the box score of the last game I ever saw with my best buddy Ryan: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2022/B08050PHI2022.htm No current or probably future Hall of Famers in this game, Bryce Harper was hurt, but we did get to see internet meme Nick Castellanos play as well as former Red Sox Kyle Schwarber. How's that for something? Now that I think about it, maybe JT Realmuto finds his way to Cooperstown, but he has a lot of work to do.
 
Everyone on the Nats sucked--what a god awful team--Kyle Gibson went eight efficient innings in a 7-2 victory. This was a fun Phillies team, one that would make the World Series that year with a big run at the end of the year and into October. They'd lose to Houston in six, but that's how memories are made.

12.

 

We are 12 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're here today in Motown as today's stadium is Comerica Park in Detroit, MI home of the Detroit Tigers.
 
People love the past. They wallow in nostalgia. Everything that happened when they were younger is infinitely better than what's going on today. This isn't a Boomer slam, it's just human nature. If you read enough stuff from the times that you're fetishizing, you'll see that most people weren't too happy about the times that they were presently living in and wanted to go back to teh halcyon days of a generation or two ago.
 
It's hardwired in our DNA and I doubt it's ever going to change.
 
Therefore I wonder what baseball fans thought when these new parks opened up. Sure, I bet that most of them were happy about the new amenities, the chance to create new memories at the new park while at the same time sad because their old house was abandoned and ultimately torn down.
 
But what about the cranks? The people who love nothing more than staying the same? Angry that Candlestick Park in San Francisco was torn down and replaced with a new place that has a giant slide in left field. Pissed off that there's a swimming pool in right field in Bank One Ballpark in Arizona. Furious that Comerica Park has an actual working carousel in the concourse behind home plate.
 
I get that I just pretty much argued the opposite when I brought up Camp Nou where there were no distractions and people watched the game and enjoyed the traditional sporting experience without any distractions. What was it like for a Tiger fan to go from an old-school stadium like Tigers Stadium (which was built in 1912, like Fenway) to a place like Comerica Park? I have no idea.
 
I never went to Tigers Stadium. In retrospect, I wish that I did, from what I understand each section was so close to the field. But from every picture or telecast that I saw coming from that park, it appeared that it was cold, dank, on the verge of raining, just a dreary place to watch a game.
 
On the other hand, Comerica Park is bright and vibrant, with giant tiger statues all over the place. It's one of the only parks to have that little dirt path between home and the pitchers mound--I love this little path it's like if the catcher doesn't know where to go after his meeting on the mound, he can just follow the path back to home plate. Also the area around home plate looks like a house. How awesome is that?
 
It's the whimsy that I really love about this place, though I'm not sure that I'd describe Detroit as whimsical. Tough? Grimy? Overcast? Sure but not whimsical--that's a word reserved for Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, at least before it started straight up murdered a bunch of shithead kids.
 
Anyway, Comerica Park was awesome. Ryan and I sat out in the rightfield bleachers on a warm Detroit night and had a great time. BTW if you haven't yet, find a friend like Ryan who will go to places like Detroit with you. Speaking of Detroit, it's not a bad city to hang out in at all.
 
All you hear about is how dangerous Detroit is and how it's not safe for anyone. But the parts that we saw were cool as hell. The bartenders that we spoke to were all nice, one implored us to tell everyone back home that Detroit was cool and "if you look like a tourist, you won't get shot here. We only shoot our own." Which, good to fucking know.
 
Getting back to my original question, I bet that there was a swath of Tiger fans who were super cranky that Tigers Stadium was torn down and swore on their mother's graves that they would never step into that frou-frou Comerica Park. "We don't need that kinda shit around here," my strawman would exclaim. But I hope that they did because new doesn't mean bad. And old doesn't mean good. You still have your memories and just because you can't point to the place where Ty Cobb took a whiz on a fan who said "Cobb runs like he had one too many sarsaparillas" doesn't mean that it sucks.
 
So go to Detroit and go to Comerica Park. You'll have a great time.
 
Here's the box score of the game that we saw that day: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2021/B06110DET2021.htm This was kind of a bummer of a game, no Hall of Famers but Tiger first baseman Miguel Cabrera will sail in on his first try. New Red Sox waste of money Lucas Giolitio started for the White Sox and pitched pretty okay. 
 
The Chicago club won and the Tiger fans went home unhappy. First grandpa can't point to his favorite urine spot and now a loss, will Detroit ever come back?
 
11.
 

 
We are 11 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our last trip to the Windy Apple as today's stadium is Yankee Stadium I in New York, NY former home of the New York Yankees.
 
There are more than a few people who will say that once they updated Yankee Stadium in the mid 1970s, the original Yankee Stadium died and a new one rose from its ashes. In other words, this should be Yankee Stadium II. But I don't subscribe to that. This Yankee Stadium is the same as old Yankee Stadium.
 
Yes, it was refurbished. Yes there are myriad differences. But at the end of the day, they didn't move (until they did) and the playing field in 1977 is at the same place as it was in 1927.
 
I'm not going to get into spoilers here, but this entry, along with the next two entries, should be lower in my rankings than the last four or five parks that we just covered. Aesthetically these new parks are much nicer, cleaner and offer better sight lines than the next three future parks. The concourses are wider, there are more things to do, better amenities, all of that stuff.
 
However, there's something about these parks where when you walk into them for the first time, you are hit with something (and it's not the smell of decades old stale urine). You're hit with a reverence (nah, that's too corny of a word for an athletic field), a sense that a lot of important things have happened here.
I don't wholeheartedly buy into the whole sports-connects-me-to-past-generations thing, mainly because I'm a cynic (with the heart of an optimist!) and MLB has been stuffing that down my throat for decades. But it is pretty awesome to walk into a place where so many people sat and cheered for the same team that I'm going to cheer for today.
 
That's really cool. It's one of the reasons why we follow sports, right? To get into something that's bigger than us. To feel the emotions that our parents and grandparents and great grandparents all felt.
 
Going to an older ball park is the best way of doing that. When my grandfather was a kid, he had to listen to the Sox on the radio. When my mom was young, she followed the games on a black and white TV. When I was a lad, it was a color TV but in low definition. If my kids ever follow the Sox, they'll be doing so in high-def on their phones. We're doing the same thing, but not exactly.
 
But when you went to Yankee Stadium I, you could conceivably sit in the same section that your grandfather did. Watch the game from the same POV as your Mom. Boo the Yanks like your kids will (hopefully) do. It's that connective tissue that can tie a family together. It's a beautiful thing.
Eventually these new parks will get there and as long as they aren't being torn down every 20 years, they will. But for right now, we should really try to hold on to the past just a little bit longer.
 
As far as the park itself, Yankee Stadium I was okay. It was kind of crumbling, sorta dirty. I remember everyone being on top of each other (we had cheap seats the two times that I went) but people weren't complete assholes either. I saw the Red Sox play the Yanks twice and even though I had my Boston hat on, I don't recall anyone giving us a ton of shit. Good natured ribbing, but nothing totally aggressive.
 
It was a nice place to watch a ballgame in the summer. It also seemed more democratic than the new place. There weren't 1,000 private boxes. There wasn't a moat separating the super expensive seats from the kinda expensive seats. I mean, the Yankees are the Yankees and they're going to swing their bats around (if you know what I mean) but it wasn't so blatant and gross in the old place.
 
The new place feels like a club that's too expensive to get into. At least with the old place, it didn't feel like I was going to be tossed on my ass for not spending enough.
 
Here's the box score of the first game that I went to: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2002/B06010NYA2002.htm there were two Hall of Famers in this game (both Yankees) Derek "Jetes" Jeter and Mike Mussina. Mussina had a pretty good game limiting two runs. Rolando Arrojo, Darren Oliver, Rich "El Guapo" Garces and Sun Woo Kim gave up 10 runs to the Bombers.
 
Carlos Baerga was the Red Sox DH and Brian Daubach played left field for some reason (Jose Offerman was at first). Somebody named Bry Nelson finished the game at second.
 
What a weird game.
 
10. 
 

 
We are 10 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to the City of Broad Shoulders as today's stadium is Wrigley Field in Chicago, IL home of the Chicago Cubs.
 
Look at the image that I attached to this post; isn't Wrigley Field an absolute beautiful place to see a game? It's perfect with the green green grass, the lushness of the ivy covering the brick walls, the rich browns of the dirt, the splashes blue and red that add contrast to the rest of the park. It's the Platonic Ideal of a baseball park. If you dream of baseball, it's what you go to bed thinking of every night whether you like the Cubs or not.
 
But based on my experiences, Wrigley isn't that great. I've gone twice, so I contend that I may not have been in the right headspace both times and that maybe the third part is the charm for Wrigley visits. If I were to rank these parks only by my experiences, Wrigley would be at the bottom of the list.
 
But the place is so pretty, how could I do that? Top ten seems about right, but a majority of that ranking is due to potential.
 
The first time I went to Wrigley, it was a night game where me and co-worker* sat on the first base side in some pretty decent seats that weren't too expensive. The people next to us were super nice, I think that they actually bought us both a hot dog and beer and we had a swell time. But it was kinda cold, the place seemed dark (at least the way it is in my mind's eye) and the stadium seemed a bit run down.
 
I know that Wrigley has had lights since 1988, but it's still strange to me to see night games there. Being at Wrigley at night was cool (especially because if there was a day game, I wouldn't have been able to go) but I didn't think that I had the full Wrigley experience. I was bummed about that.
 
* For a million dollars, I couldn't tell you the name of this co-worker. I can picture what he looked like back when we went and I'm sure he's changed now, but I don't even think I remember his first name. I was thinking about this earlier today and I thought that his name was Mark, but he didn't look like a Mark. He looked more like a Bob or a Mike or a Jim. Definitely not a Mark, but for some reason I'm going back to that.
 
Anyway, what's interesting (may be a strong word) is that I worked at this place for about a year and I saw this guy every single day. In fact, I'd say that outside of my wife, I probably saw this guy more than I saw my family that year. Not that we were particularly close, but when you sit in the vicinity of someone for 40 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, that's a lot of time. And now, I can't remember his name at all. It's like he never existed to me. It's kinda fucked up how the mind works, I suppose. There one minute and then gone the next. I wonder when the exact moment was when I forgot this dude's name and I wonder what piece of information replaced that original data.
 
The next time I went to Wrigley, I really wanted to do it the right way. Go all out, see the game from one of the most popular seats in all of baseballdom. Me and a bunch of buddies got tickets to see the Cubs play the Cardinals on an August Friday. The way that the Cubs do pricing is on a sliding scale, you pay for the better teams in nicer weather on the weekends than you would on other days against crappier teams.
For example, my seats were $100 due to how desirable they were--this was to the Cubs box office, not StubHub. In contrast, the same seats to a Wednesday game in April against the Reds were $15. So there's quite a premium.
 
I understood that the Wrigley bleachers were general admission and that seemed fine when I got the tickets. The reality of what this meant didn't occur to me until we got to the park. Wrigleyville is a cool neighborhood with a bunch of fun bars and places to have a few before you waddle into the stadium. So even though the park was open, we all wanted to stop at a place or two to wet our whistles.
 
We got to the park in time for the National Anthem (we're PATRIOTS!) and it finally dawned on me just what general admission means. It means looking for a seat in an already crowded bleachers filled with drunk folks who are not getting up or moving their stuff for anyone. You kinda have to be a dick to find somewhere to sit and they, naturally, respond to you in kind.
 
The thing about day drinking is that it usually leads to day peeing. And in order to go to the bathroom you need to leave your seat, fight through a crowd and get to the facilities. While there you have to pray that no one swiped "your" seat--because it's not your seat and everyone is entitled to sit somewhere and if you shuffle your feet, brother ... well you know the rest.
 
This is also true of going to the concession stand to get brews or food. If you have a good seat in the bleachers, you're not getting up. Ever. For anything. For a guy in his 40s, that sucks.
 
The crowd around us wasn't great either. Everyone, from the bros next to us to the bachelorette party directly behind us, was smashed. Not some sort of cute, "Oops I'm a little tipsy! Sorry!" kind of drunk, but the it's Saturday fucking night at 2:00 am and we're so god damn wasted that every word sounds like a threat that must be met with a high screech type of drunk that we've all experienced but all hate. Multiply that by 10,000 people and that's the Wrigley bleacher experience.
 
I think that if I was still in my 20s, I'd have loved the bleachers. I could get black out drunk with the best of them back in the day and I think I could have had a lot of fun pounding Old Styles, (trying to) talk to chicks, slurring with the bros next to me. But I wasn't. I was 40 something and just watching this kind of day drinking exhausted me. And it made me a little annoyed that I wasn't younger. That was mostly on me, not the people around me. But maybe a little on them too because these folks were shitheads.
 
So those were my times at Wrigley; a beautiful park that maybe I put too much pressure on. I'm not sure whether I thought that I'd have this experience that was going to alter my life; like I was going to some hardball Mecca or something. At the end of the day, it's a park where millionaires throw a ball around for three hours. Some really cool shit happened there over the years, see yesterdays entry on that, but it's not going to be transformative no matter what my expectations were.
 
Life lesson: don't get your hopes up, kids. Wow. That's too cynical, even for a prick like me.
Here's the box score of the first game that I went to: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2006/B05170CHN2006.htm This was a rock fight between two teams (Cubs and Nationals) that were going to finish in the cellars of their respective divisions. There are no Hall of Famers any where near these teams. If you're a Twin fan, you may have gotten a charge out of seeing Jacques Jones play for the Cubs, for you Red Sox prospect humpers Matt Murton made an appearance for Chicago. 2007 Red Sox World Series champion Royce Clayton made an appearance for the Nats and former Yankee future keystones Nick Johnson and Alfonso Soriano played for Washington.
 
Chicago won 5-0 as Sean Marshall did pretty okay. He went six with six K's and only giving up one hit. More former Red Sox relievers pitched in on the shut out (Bob Howry and Curt Schilling best buddy Scott Williamson).
 
Like the person I was with, an imminently forgettable game.
 
9. 
 

 
We are 9 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to Beantown as today's stadium is Fenway Park in Boston, MA home of the Boston Red Sox.
 
I've been to Fenway Park more than 120 times. The first game that I went to was with my Dad and it was a double header in 1983. Forty one years ago. I've been to at least one game at the Fens every year since 1986, except for 1992. I have no idea why I didn't go to Fenway when I was a senior in high school (it's not because I was awash with the ladies, that's for fucking sure) but I broke a six season streak and it kinda bugs me, if I'm being honest.
 
Aside from the Monster Seats, I bet that I've sat in every single section at least once. There are some really good seats and there some really terrible ones. In most of these posts, I've only been to the park I'm writing about maybe once so I can only offer my perspective of the place from where I sat. But at Fenway, I've had a ton of POVs and writing about them would end up being dull. So I'm going to focus on the park as a whole.
 
If I'm also being honest, if Fenway Park wasn't my "home" stadium, it would probably be ranked higher. But when you go to a place a lot, then you start to see the cracks in its facade. The prices to get inside the place are insane. The concessions are even more expensive. There are a bunch of seats in right field that are situated so that your view is of center field. There are other seats behind poles. Even unobstructed and home plate facing seats were built for people from over 100 years ago. The concourses are cramped as hell and if you don't like overcrowded spaces, you're SOL.
 
Having said all that, Fenway is still a great take. One of the best things that the FSG ownership has done is to maximize the space that they have and really make it more of a modern space. I mean, it's not going to ever look like a stadium built in the last 20 years, but it doesn't feel like a house that has been allowed to  fall into disrepair.
 
Would I like to see a new park? Of course, I think that the Sox have outgrown Fenway. But it's not going to happen, especially now when the Sox aren't very good and the center of the team's marketing events is the park itself. Plus Sox owner John Henry is furiously buying up every parcel of land around Fenway so that he can have his own Battery of shops and restaurants, like the Atlanta Braves.
 
Instead of having fans come to the Back Bay for 81 days, why not have them come for 365? Being a landlord is the best thing now for pro sports team owners.
 
My first memory of going to a Sox game doesn't really revolve around the game itself, but what was happening around me. My Dad and I won tickets in a Little League drawing. The game that we were supposed to go to was rained out and instead of our good, box seats we got stuck with bleacher seats.
 
BUT, instead of one game, we got two. Yes, we went to an old fashioned doubleheader, two games for the price of one (in this case two games for the price of none). So on a beautiful Saturday morning, I woke up and grabbed my glove and jumped in my Dad's car. It felt like it took forever, but we finally got to Boston, parked the car and went into the park.
 
We found our seats and I remember the sun being really hot that day and just beating on me. However I didn't care, TWO GAMES! As I was staring out at the field, my gaze turned to two guys a couple of rows ahead of us. They were passing a cigarette back and forth. I was really confused--not because people were smoking, it was the 80s everyone smoked--but that they were sharing a cigarette. Maybe they were poor?
A lady in front of me must have noticed my confusion because she said (and this quote has been burned in my brain for 41 years), "You know what they're doing? DRUGS!"
 
That freaked me the fuck out. You have to remember that this was 1983, marijuana wasn't legal, Nancy Reagan was going hard on her war against all kinds of drugs with her "Just Say No" propaganda, drugs were a scary, scary thing to this kid. I grabbed my Dad's arm and said, "We have to go right now. Please."
He looked at me like I was insane. Now he was confused. "What do you mean? We just got here." I didn't want to admit to my father that people were doing ... drugs in our vicinity. Maybe I thought that it would scare him or that he'd try to fight those guys, but I just said that I didn't feel good and that we had to leave immediately*.
 
* This was an excuse I used a year prior when I begged him to take me to see "Empire Strikes Back", we drove to Salem, MA, bought the tickets, popcorn and other snacks and the second we walked into the dark theater and I saw Darth Vader, I got scared and wanted to leave. He was understandably unhappy about that.
 
This time, we weren't leaving. We drove into Boston, we paid for parking, he bought me a bunch of food and a souvenir, we had 18 innings of baseball to watch. We weren't going anywhere.
 
"By, we have a long day. Let's just have some fun."
 
But I didn't relax or had a lot of fun. I kept imagining the FBI busting into the bleachers, arresting everyone on sight and throwing us in jail. I was way too young to go to jail (still am!) and I kept one eye on the game and one on the stairway just waiting for inevitable.
 
But it never happened and I spent five hours on a razor's edge of fear and worry. Which, now that I think about it is how I spend my time watching the Red Sox when they're in the playoffs. Since this was my first experience at a ball game, I'm not sure why I love the sport and going to ballparks so much. Seems kinda strange, no?
 
I'm not sure if I ever told my Dad what made me so nervous that day. I guess that I should have, we both would have had a real nice laugh about it.
 
During those 18 innings, I got to see a grand total of FIVE Hall of Famers, which is nuts. For the Sox, I saw Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Wade Boggs. For the Royals George Brett and Gaylord Perry played. The Sox lost the first game and Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd pitched a complete game in 12-3 shellacking. Jim Rice hit a couple of dingers in the night cap and Hal McRae went deep for the Royals in the first one.
 
8.
 

 
We are 8 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to Suds City as today's stadium is American Family Field in Milwaukee, WI home of the Milwaukee Brewers.
 
Let's get this out of the way first, American Family Field is a stupid name for a ballpark. It's an especially stupid name for a ballpark in Wisconsin for a team called the Brewers. The original name: Miller Park made the most sense. As we all know, Miller is the name of a brewery. The Brewers should play at a park named after a brewery.
 
American Family is an insurance company. No one should play at a stadium that sold its name to a boring old insurance company. It's so dumb.
 
American Family Field, fuck it I'm calling it Miller Park because that's what it was known when I went there, is a park that doesn't look like it belongs in Wisconsin. It's a futuristic technical marvel the way that the stadium opens and closes. I am absolutely not saying that Wisconsin is a backwards state, it's not. But what I am saying is that when you think of Wisconsin you think of rolling dells, wheat fields as far as the eye can see, cows chewing on cud, a land of milk and cheese, the simple pleasures in life. Just an all around slower pace of living. Or at least I do, I've been in Wisconsin for a grand total of 22 hours, so what do I know.
 
What I do know is that plunking this Jetsons-like structure on the outskirts of Milwaukee seems strange. But guess what? In this case, strange works. Miller Field is an awesome place to take in a game. It's one of the top tier stadia that I've ever been to.
 
The year that we went to check out the Brew Crew, they weren't very good. While the place was 80% sold out, there were a bunch of seats still open. Since the game wasn't a nail biter, we walked around and sat in just about every open seat that we spied. We even sat two rows behind home plate for an entire inning, and unlike the seat Nazis in Texas, no one said a thing.
 
I have to say every seat that we sat in was pretty good. Great sight lines, lots of elbow room and no poles in the way (both the steel girder or people of Polish descent). It was a real treat to be at Miller Park.
We went to Miller Park on the same trip we went to Wrigley Field and if you told me that I'd like Miller Park better than Wrigley before we went, I'd have said you were nuts. But I did. I liked Miller Park way more than Wrigley. It was just a better overall experience and I wasn't surround by a bunch of drunk pricks. I was surrounded by drunks, but they were cool as hell.
 
That's saying nothing about the atmosphere.
 
The best part of Miller Park is when a Brewer hits a home run, club mascot Bernie the Brewer sticks his head out of his German chalet in centerfield and slides down a slide into a big bucket. Balloons lift up from bucket and everyone goes crazy. Back at the old place (County Stadium), he'd slide into a giant beer stein, but they didn't bring that with them when they moved.
 
Another fun thing they do is the sausage race. In between the sixth inning (I think, could be sooner) five people in gigantic sausage suitss: Polish, German, Italian, chorizo and hot dog all run around the perimeter of the ballpark. You bet on who's going to win. Most of the time, they fall over or run in circles and it's cute for the families at the game.
 
Most of the people we met at the game were friendly too. They love to chat, mostly about food and beer. To a person each one says that before every game they tailgate in the Miller Park parking lot. I've never heard of tailgating before a baseball game, but I love this idea so much. Eighty one parties BEFORE you get into the game. How awesome is that?
 
Unlike other new stadiums, there wasn't a lot in terms of a Brewers Museum, but they did have a kiosk set up where you can buy a Brewers shirsey and put your name and number on the back. Myself and my two buddies thought it would be fun to put: Cunningham, Potsie and Malph on the back of our shirts (no one could be Fonzi). And guess what, we were right.
 
If you haven't been to Milwaukee and enjoy drinking, you should go. It's a fun ass city that's completely underrated--especially in the summer. Not only that, but if the Brewers are in town, you should go. Even if the team sucks, the stadium is a blast. You don't have to hurry there though, the team just signed a lease that will keep there for another 25 years.
 
Here's a box score of the game that we saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2016/B08130MIL2016.htm The Brew Crew got smoked like a sausage by the Reds 11-5. There are no current Hall of Famers, but Reds first baseman Joey Votto went 4-5 and I bet he sails into Cooperstown.
 
7. 
 
We are 7 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.
 
We're making our way to northern Ohio as today's stadium is Progressive Field in Cleveland, OH home of the Cleveland Guardians.
 
Yesterday I said that Milwaukee is an underrated fun city and I stand by that. However I think that Cleveland takes the cake in that regard. For decades, Cleveland has been the butt of every joke about an American city. I'm not sure exactly why as the time that I went there, it was really lovely.
 
We saw the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, which was meh as far as Hall of Fames go. Aside from being a tourist trap, I'm not sure what the point of a Hall of Fame dedicated to rock n' roll is. Yeah, it's a good place to honor all of the artists who have been popular since the rock n' roll era dawned, but are there kids forming bands right this second who are dreaming of one day entering these hallowed halls?
 
I don't think so. At least not in the way young athletes dream of reaching their sports' pinnacle. Music never really fades all the way away, like an athlete does. Even elderly one-hit wonders still travel the country playing their songs and their fans still come out to see them. Even if the band is made up of the original bassist and four guys who never recorded together on an album.
 
I'd argue that a Hall of Fame is about memories and keeping the spirits of the greats alive. The music of recording artists from the 50s can still be found. The Beatles, who came to American shores 60 years ago, are still as popular today as they were in the 60s. Same with the Rolling Stones (who still tour!) and the Who and Elvis and Led Zeppelin and myriad other bands.
 
It doesn't seem needed.
 
I know that this is a weird way to begin an entry on Progressive Field, or Jacobs Field as it was known when I went there, however if you are interested in popular music, the RnRHoF is a good way of getting you to Cleveland. When we went, there were a ton of things to do. We found a lot of cool divey bars, including one where MLB umpires do their imbibing, with a lot of interesting, friendly people.
 
But while you may come for the Hall, stay for Progressive Field. It really is one of the better places to watch a game. When we went the Indians* (now the Guardians) weren't very good. There was still a nice crowd there though. We had lower bowl seats on the third baseline and it was a great take.
 
* I'm not one of those people who get caught up and bugged out by name changes. If you are, that's cool, I just don't care very much. Most of the old names that we love (Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers) were all arbitrarily chosen by newsmen who were sick of writing, "The Boston Nationals today beat the Brooklyn Nationals by a score of 4-3 in a game that took one hour and 45 minutes to play. For the Bostons second sacker Rabbit Marranville had two base knocks and a stolen bag as Boston scored three runs in the third frame."
 
The newer names are focus grouped to death and are so sanded down and devoid of local color that the Oklahoma City Thunder could pull up stakes and become the Albuquerque Thunder tomorrow and no one would bat an eye. As a person who was a member of more than a few Amesbury Fighting Indian teams back in my youth, I always thought that it was a little strange to be playing on a team that had zero Native Americans on it.
 
I guess it was supposed to honor the people whose land we stole and gave small pox to, but it didn't seem like an honor. I think that a majority of Native Americans agreed and they didn't really appreciate it. So if the people who we're honoring don't like it, well, what the fuck are we actually doing here?
 
I'm climbing down from my soapbox now.
 
Anyway Progressive Field has this really cool feature: behind the batter's eye in center field is a gigantic wall full of plaques of former Cleveland players. It's their Hall of Fame. Guys, I have to be honest, I enjoyed it more than the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. Any player that you can think of who called Cleveland home will be on that wall and it was cool to go through and remember some guys.
 
The cool thing about Progressive Field is that it's much cozier than the Mistake by the Lake aka Cleveland Municipal Stadium which was also the home of the Browns and could seat 74,438 people. If every seat was filled for an entire season, that would mean a yearly attendance of 6,029,478 people. The highest season attendance in MLB is the Colorado Rockies during their inaugural season of 4,483,350.
 
No one is ever going to hit six million, especially in Cleveland.
 
This is an instance where smaller is better and players don't feel like they're playing in the Grand Canyon. Go to comfy Progressive Field and feel the warmth of a cozy little bandbox. You'll love it.
 
Here's the box score of the game we saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2009/B08210CLE2009.htm Both of these teams were kinda butt, Seattle was mediocre at best and Cleveland had just sold off/traded all of their players from their last run and were in the midst of a rebuild. There were no current Hall of Famers, but the Mariners had ICHIRO! and he's going to sail into Cooperstown next year.
And he should. He fucking rules.