PacBell/AT&T

AT&T Park was originally PacBell Park. I’ve been to a handful of games there and this is easily one of my favorite parks. I have sat in upper deck first base side, field level by third base, club level first base, and field level in shallow left field. They’re all good seats. The view from the upper deck is spectacular. You can see the top of the SF skyline, McCovey Cove and the SF bay, and Oakland. Outside the park along McCovey Cove you can see into the stadium from under the stands in right field. They also have a great Willie Mays statue by the home plate entrance. If I had to complain about something, the only drawback is they didn’t angle the seats towards the infield.

Original and updated front gate

The first season the park was open, tickets were hard to get. I was able to see two games that first year with my friend Tom and his son. The unpredictable thing with baseball in San Francisco is the weather. To be safe, attend every game with shorts & t-shirt and a heavy winter parka. Another cool feature of the stadium is one of the kids play areas. They have a mini stadium where they can play. There’s even a JumboTron with a camera person showing live footage.

It turns out the three seasons I attended games here the Giants made the post season [2000, 2002, & 2003]. The Giants obviously had some pretty good talent over these years. They had Barry Bonds through this stretch. Say what you will about his steroid use, the dude could hit the ball. Other Giants included Jeff Kent, Rich Aurilia, and Marquis Grissom. For pitching they had mediocre starters having the best years of their careers and Robb Nen as the closer. For opponents I saw the Expos, Pirates, and Padres at their home opener in 2003. For one of the Expo games, I saw ‘the fat pussy toad’ Hideki Irabu out pitch Russ Ortiz. This Expo team featured Vlad Guererro – who was 0 for 6 in two games. I also saw Kirk Rueter have a great outing with a Nen save. For the Pirates game the next year, I saw Rueter again. He had a decent start but ended with a no-decision as did Kris Benson. The Pirates also had Jason Kendall, Brian Giles, and Jack Wilson. The Pittsburgh bullpen gave up 5 in the seventh inning for the home team victory. For the Padre game Jason Schmidt had a good outing but the bullpen handed him a no-decision. The Pads had no one of note on the roster. They had guys like Mark Kotsay, Ryan Klesko, Xavier Nady, and Jake Peavy in his first full season. [To hear how much of a dick Peavy is, see the Petco Park entry.]

A funny thing happened on the way to the park for the home opener in 2003. This game was right after the BRBL draft in San Francisco [obviously]. I attended the game with John, CJ, BoCJ, and my girlfriend. John and I used to work together in a drug abuse treatment program. Over the years we saw a lot of people with severe psychiatric illness beyond their addiction. One particular patient had chronic paranoid schizophrenia in addition to his drug abuse problem. He was consistently homeless and would show up into our clinic sporadically – usually every 4 to 5 months. As we’re walking from our car to the stadium, I see this guy walking towards us and say to John, “Hey…that’s Joe Smith” [The patients’ name isn’t really Joe Smith. I’m protecting his real name.] John says, “what?” and I repeat myself. So John calls him over. ‘Joe’ comes over and says hello like he expected to see us.

This is a fantastic ballpark. If you’re travelling to the bay area, do your best to see a game here.

Busch Stadium

The new Busch stadium is one of the parks I have only attended once so far. I didn’t make it to the old Busch stadium so I can’t make any direct comparisons. However, I did attend games at the Vet in Philadelphia and Three Rivers in Pittsburgh. If it was anything like those two parks, good riddance. The saving grace for the old park was their decision to replace the artificial turf with real grass. But I digress…

This is an impressive park. The exterior is red brick. Once inside, the walkways behind the seats are spacious and easy to orient yourself to where you are in the park. The game I saw was the first game in the 2007 Butthead Ballpark Tour. We were sitting in the cheap seats for this game – upper deck right field by the foul pole. There is an impressive view of downtown St. Louis from our seats. One of the most impressive sights was the Cardinal fan base. You expect to see fans wearing the home team gear, but this was over the top. I would venture that over 90% of the people in attendance had on at least one item.

The Cards were mediocre this year and would finish under .500. The previous year they lost to Boston in the World Series and still had much of the talent on offense. They had Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, and Rick Ankiel. They had questionable pitching. Chris Carpenter was out for the year. In contrast they were playing the Philadelphia Phillies who were a year away from winning the World Series. They had Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, and Pat Burrell. They had Adam Eaton and Cole Hamels. This was the year they experimented with Brett Myers as the closer. The game I saw was an easy win for Philadelphia on a good Jamie Moyer outing. 

The three of us [Marc, John and I] flew in to St, Louis from our respective home cities that afternoon. We ate lunch at a bar near the arch which also happened to be near the park and the hotel we were staying in. At the bar, Marc somehow finds out from the waitress that there is a gay pride march scheduled for the next day. [I’m still not sure how that came up in conversation.] We checked into the hotel and walked over to the ballpark. As we were watching the game, these two guys sat next to Marc. Both with lots of gang tattoos. Marc turns to them and says, “My friend Dave is here for the gay pride march tomorrow.” They didn’t laugh. Thanks Marc.

Citi Field

I have attended one game at Citi Field so far. I happened to see this game on Memorial Day – right after going to my first two games at the new Yankee Stadium. Perhaps it was a difference in expectations, but as disappointing as Yankee was, Citi was really impressive. From the outside the park is OK. A friend described one side as looking like the outside of a NASCAR track. The rotunda entrance behind home plate is fairly impressive. I attended this game with my friend Joe and we decided to enter through the rotunda. As we were walking in, people are talking about the Jackie Robinson statue. Robinson got his start in New York and he’s the only player to have his number retired by all major league clubs. All around there are pictures of Robinson on the interior walls. As we make it past the turnstiles I walk to the back of the rotunda and there is a giant 42. WTF! I figured this was in addition to the Robinson statue. Sadly this was the Robinson statue. This was disappointing. We made our way to the seats. We bought club-level tickets and sat close to home plate.

 
The inside of the park is nice. They seemed to go to a great deal to make the retro feel and pulled it off. One of the interesting things was putting the out of town scores above the upper deck in left field. The tendency for most new parks is to put the other scores near field level. The stadium staff were friendly and so were the fans. I should mention my friend Joe is more of a Met fan than a Yankee fan. The food was also pretty good.

The game I saw was against the Nationals. The Mets were considering contending for the division but they eventually finished fourth in the division. New York looked better on paper than in reality. They had good offense in David Wright and Carlos Beltran. For pitching they had Johan Santana and the newly signed Francisco Rodriguez. The Mets also had Jose Reyes who was injured a few days before the game I saw. He would miss the rest of the season. They were playing the Nationals who had the worst record in the majors last year and would have the worst record this year too. The Nats had pretty good offense but terrible pitching. They had Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman. For the first half of the season they had Nick Johnson and towards the end they picked up Nyjer Morgan. Not surprisingly, this game went to the Mets. Of note for this game, the 40yo Gary Sheffield had a home run and FRod got the save.
 

One of the things that impressed me the most was the waterless urinals in the men’s rooms. If you consider how many men attend a Mets game over the season. Presume they use the restroom once per game at one gallon per use and that’s an impressive amount of water saved. It’s not as though the men’s room was going to smell any worse.

If you’re in New York and you can only see one game, I’d recommend Citi much more than the new Yankee stadium. 

UPDATE 09/24/2012: I was in NYC for a business trip and had the chance to catch a game with my friends CJ and Grace. It was the last home stand for the Mets who had been eliminated from the post-season for a while. The Mets were playing against the Pirates who had been eliminated from the playoffs even earlier. The result was an empty ballpark. Attendance was announced as 22,000. I think they were including ballpark employees, the Pirates staff, and people who happened to drive too close to the stadium. We sat in the lower level just past 3rd base in good seats. The good news about empty parks is no lines for anything. We entered the stadium through the rotunda [behind home plate] and walked around to left-center field looking for food. CJ mentioned that Citi was known for having really good food. The stadium does have a wide selection of offerings. I settled for hot pastrami on rye with a knish. I was impressed. For ballpark food this was really good…a little better than the game itself. This match-up featured two September call-ups pitching against each other. Perhaps one day I can say, "I saw Kyle McPherson pitch against Jenrry Mejia” as they battle each other for the Cy Young but I’m guessing not. The highlight of the game? With no fans in the park, the Mets teamed up with a local drug store for the “Get $2 off detergent if the Mets hit 2 home runs in the game” promotion. Thanks to Ike Davis I was a winner that night!

(new) Yankee Stadium

I attended two games during the inaugural season for this new park. It is the most expensive park built to date. As you approach from the outside, the imposing limestone and granite façade has a post-world war II/Berlin wall feel to it. As we passed the turnstiles we entered a cavernous atrium which included a JumboTron. This very clearly was a ballpark that cost a lot of money and wanted you to know that. For my first game there, we had upper deck seats behind the plate for the ‘bargain’ price of $85 per ticket. Once you left the atrium, the park was mediocre at best. The seats were basic and cramped. The food was bland. There was nothing to say “Yankees” in the seating area. Disappointed is not a strong enough word. This park is designed for people to be in luxury suites. I think the only reason they included regular seating was so the people in the ‘less desirable’ suites had people to look down on. The Yankees were certainly not going for a fan friendly approach with those ticket prices. I attended a second game the following day in the front row of the loge section past first base. [Only $140/ticket!] Same problem as the upper deck. No charm.

One of the unique features of the park is the massive hi-def JumboTron. Big, but not so big as to dwarf the other newer stadiums. If someone didn’t mention it was the biggest, you probably wouldn’t have noticed. We were misinformed before the game that the new statue garden in center would be open for viewing during play. Not true. However, they do have a free Yankee museum on the second level by first base. It’s a single large room, but they have a ton of autographed baseballs on display along with some older uniforms. It’s not a nice as some other stadium museums, but it’s free and on really hot days, it’s air conditioned. The ushers and vendors were generally very friendly – except for customer service. [The baby stroller incident.] The ‘old’ Yankee stadium is next door to the new one. Many fans were complaining that the old stadium was a better venue and the upper level seats still gave the impression you were right over the field. You definitely don’t get that sense in this park.

As was typical for the Yankees, they had a ton of talent and would win the World Series this year. They had Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, Mark Texiera, Alex Rodriguez, and Hideki Matsui. Their starting rotation included CC Sabathia, Andy Pettite, AJ Burnett, and Joba Chamberlain. [Joba was a starter at the insistence of ownership over the managers. He would finish the season with 9 wins – one less that middle reliever Alfredo Aceves.] The Yankee closer was Mariano Rivera. The two games I saw were against the Phillies who were the reigning world champs and would go on to play the Yankees in the series this year. The Phils had Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Jason Werth. Their rotation included Cole Hamels, Jamie Moyer, JA Happ, and Joe Blanton with a struggling Brad Lidge as the closer. In the first game we saw JA Happ against Andy Pettite. Happ had the better outing but neither starter got a decision as Lidge blew the save and gave up the win. Jeter and A-Rod had home runs. The second game was Hamels vs. Sabathia. CC had a good outing in a no decision. Lidge blew another save in the 9^th [ironically both blown saves were facing Melky Cabrera.] This blown save didn’t cost the Phillies the game and they rallied for the win in the 11^th inning. All things being equal, these were two great games to attend this season.

One thing I’d like to mention about the first game. The Yulia Curse. This is the second game I attended with Yulia, who is married to BoCJ and is a wonderful and pleasant person. Our first game was in Baltimore after the BRBL Philadelphia draft. Easily one of the coldest games I have ever attended. But that was opening day and this was Memorial Day. It’s been hot every day for the past two weeks. We were sweating walking into the park! But the Yulia Curse kicked in and we froze our asses off. At the end of May! The next day was hot – especially in the sun. The seats a few rows behind us were shaded. I predicted we’d be in the shade by the third inning. I might as well have predicted the iPhone would never be successful. We didn’t get shade until the end of the game. But I did take some time to visit the museum.