I’ve done the Grand Canyon and some national parks out west before so I’ve seen the landscapes…but they still impress me. It’s just nothing like what you find back east. I clocked some straightaways at over 10 miles! That just made me think of the course we used to run for high school track and how long it seemed…and now here it was, laid out directly in front of me. Plus all the mountain ranges and how they dwarf anything I had known as a “mountain” (i.e. the white mountains in New Hampshire). It’s all pretty cool.
Second, San Diego is INCREDIBLE! If you’re looking for a travel buddy, I really want to go back. While we’re at it, I’d also go on a trip back to Denver or Las Vegas. Keep me in mind! So I stayed near the “gaslamp district”… any of you San Diego-ites (San Diego-ins? San Diego-uns? …San Diegans!) might know what or where that is. It’s right by the water and they have street after street of nice restaurants, wine bars, pubs and attractions. I wanted to try them all and even ended up extending my stay in the city by a night. The weather was always perfect and the people were really friendly and wanted to know all about my trip. I need to get myself to a convention back there or something.
Third, I must apologize in advance for the length of this post and to those of you who haven’t seen the movie Anchorman with Will Ferrell. I’m mildly obsessed and I’ve been looking forward to writing this San Diego post for quite some time. If you have seen the movie, great! If you haven’t, go rent it and make sure to watch it more than once because I absolutely hated it the first time I saw it.
With that in mind, the following is based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed…
Game Notes:
I’m going to put something out there. If you like it you can keep it, if you don’t you can send it right back. Petco Park was absolutely breathtaking, I mean, that thing was good. I’m having a hard time believing anywhere else will top it. I did not give the park an “A+” because I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to hand out that grade. If I do decide to use that grade I reserve the right to return to this post and in my sole discretion change Petco’s grade to an “A+”.
Where do I start? To give you a bit of an insider’s look at these posts, I’ve taken roughly a page of notes per park and about 50-75 pictures. I then narrow down the pictures and try to touch on most of the notes in each post. Well, for Petco Park I filled two pages completely and took about 150 pictures! To give you perspective and maybe help hammer home a previous point, Dodger stadium started to spill onto the back of the first page and Angels stadium barely came through with 2/3 of one page…there just wasn’t that much to grab my attention.
Before we do anything else I think you should look at this picture. Obviously I wasn’t going to fit all of the cool things into one picture but this one does the best job. I may refer back to it a few times.
I found the right field gate and immediately upon entering the park I knew this place would be different. There were horses, a live band, people spread out eating picnic food on a grassy knoll and a man on fire! OK, no horses or burning people but this is a tremendous idea by the Padres. They charge people $5.00 and families can go sit together with their kids to eat (yes, they allow food in) and watch a game. Also, there is a full size little league field right next to the knoll for kids to get all the energy out of their system prior to first pitch. Here is their view.
Behind the grassy knoll are condos and office buildings that provide tenants/employees with great views of the game. There had to be a half dozen buildings (all fairly tall) that had great views of the stadium. What better way to spend a Thursday afternoon procrastinating then by watching a live baseball game? In front of the grassy knoll are bleachers with grass floors and a sandbox! No, I don’t have a family yet but when I do we’re coming back here. Everything you need is within a 200 ft. radius and to top it off they have a kids menu with exceptionally priced ballpark fare.
I HAVEN'T GOT 100 FT. INTO THE STADIUM AND ALREADY I'M WORKED UP! (lower your voice, Matt…)
Next…it had a theme! San Diego is pretty much the most south-westerly city in the country. When you walk into Petco, you know that. The entire stadium has a desert feel to it yet still welcomes you with open arms. The concession areas were filled with unique (if overpriced) food and drinks and for the most part had an open air element to them. Even the plain walls were dressed up with Padres paraphernalia or flowers or brightly colored trees.
As I walked around the park I kept stumbling across more and more cool things. Take this picture for instance. There are two things to note. First, how great is this idea?! They had one of these scoreboards under every section on the lower level. Second, notice off to the right the HDTV that complemented every one of these scoreboards. I mean, by the beard of Zeus, I haven’t seen anything like that yet!
Another aspect of Petco Park that immediately grabbed my attention was how many unique viewing areas there were. If you look at the stadium view picture up top you can see a brick warehouse in left field, the private viewing party deck on top of that, the seats with flowers (similar to where Monster Seats at Fenway would be) in left center, the grassy knoll, bleachers and sandbox in right center as well as some of the condos that surrounded the park. Below, looking in the other direction you can see the awesome seats that stick out under the press box, some of a tower that sticks up above the stadium on each of the baselines and another view of the warehouse seats.
And on top of these there were so many more clubs, pavilions, decks, etc. to make fans feel special and give them a unique vantage of the game. I thought the Giants had done a lot with a “typical” stadium…but I did NOT see this coming; the Padres blew them out of the water.
How about the food? I can only say “well done, sir.” The drinks were overpriced, but that has been a bit of a theme, no?
Remember how I cut myself off from generic hot dogs or fake gimmicks like the “coliseum dog”? Well, the Padres offered a Diego Dog. It’s made with bits of real Padre, so you know it’s good. Get this…spicy sausage on a French bread roll with “secret sauce”, cabbage and salsa, then I added my own jalapeños. Tremendous! I’ve never had anything like it, especially at a baseball game. Definitely got an A.
When I sat down to enjoy my purchase I knew I wasn’t in the right section and, apparently, so did the ushers. I prepared to put my charm face on and tell the guy I was kind of a big deal. That my apartment spells of rich mahogany and that I’m friends with Riley Ohlson, who comes over on occasion…but I didn’t need to! I sat in the lower bowl on the third baseline in the middle of a section. An usher immediately came over to me and asked to see my ticket. I told him that wasn’t my section and he replied with “oh, that’s OK sir, can I just ask you to move to the end of the row?”!!!!!!! What the hell?! I wasn’t even mad, that’s amazing! We needed the Atlanta Nazis to take a break from their pledge drive to kick some ass, am I right? Of course I heeded his request and moved down the row. Then another usher came down and asked not to see my ticket but why the first usher had moved me there! She didn’t care that it wasn’t my section either, she was just curious as to why he had put me on “her half”. We all shared a chuckle (myself, the second usher and the two girls in front of me who had bought the $5.00 GA seats) and I went back to eating my Diego Dog. Way to stay classy and keep the fans happy San Diego!
After that I walked around a bit more and found out it was “adoption Sunday.” I hadn’t quite put together that “Petco Park” is the namesake of the PETCO pet store. Well, it is and they had a few “pound puppies” at the park waiting to be adopted. A great idea, compelling and rich.
I suppose I should wrap up the notes section and get to the high and low points…but I’m tellin ya, there weren’t too many low points.
High Points:
-I attended this game on Mother’s Day – happy mother’s day, mom! Love you :-)
-The whole park was clean and felt like new. The bathrooms were spotless, there was no trash in the concession areas and all the ushers were friendly and seamed to genuinely enjoy their job. What can I say? I like the way it’s put together.
-Kevin Kouzmanoff at the plate aaaaannnnnd, WHAMMY! He got a hit but was booed by the fans?? No wait, they’re not saying boo, they’re saying “KooooooooZ”, just like Kevin Yooookilis!
-I walked to the game but the parking garage directly next to the stadium only charged $10 to park and was half empty. Wow!
-Unlike the two LA games, fans were in their seats for the first pitch. It wasn’t a sellout but the number of fans did not dramatically increase over the first 3 innings. Also, everyone was really into the game. Fans again SANG take me out to the ballgame during the 7th inning stretch and they were right there with every pitch. At the end of the game people knew to stand up with 2 outs and 2 strikes without being prompted by the scoreboard. That was nice to see. Also, the place went bonkers during God Bless America for the Marines that had come to the game; loudest cheers all day actually.
-Every stadium has an area where you put your own condiments on your hot dog or hamburger or whatever. Well, Petco Park is the first one to include jalapenos standard. Also, 60% of the time, the regular hot dogs came on a sesame seed bun, every time.
-I noticed some people in the upper deck trying to get the wave started. It took them TWO (2) tries and the thing goes all the way around the park! I’m not the biggest fan of the wave and don’t participate all the time but that was damn impressive.
-The Diego Dog was delicious but boy was it filling!
-I got to catch up with old friends Cla Meredith and Bryan Corey who both pitched in the game
-Luke Carlin was called up and got his first major league hit during the game. Don’t you know the nice San Diegans gave him a standing “O”?
-Tony Gwynn shirts were everywhere. I know he’s an all around good guy but he retired years ago. It was nice to see he’s still remembered so fondly. They even gave him a statue.
-I’ve been to 10 parks now and the tickets at each of them have been the same, roughly, except for the background logo of each team. It may seem like a given at this point but even the Padres ticket was larger, on different paper and just cooler overall than any other ticket. It’s like they paid attention to every single little detail!
-I’ve seen this practice at other stadiums and sports but I’ve never seen one of these signs. It’s annoying to have to wait when returning to your seats but it’s 10 times more shitty to have someone returning to their seats with a full count and a runner on third, you know??
-This next high point goes to me. I learned a thing or two about “due diligence” from all of my mentors over the last few years. Well, I stumbled upon this place right outside the stadium.
Initially I was going to write a big thing about how they’re ripping off Cold Stone Creamery and how the similarities were too apparent and blah blah. Well, after I did a little research it turns out that Marble Slab was founded in Houston in 1983 while Cold Stone was discovered by the Germans in 1904. No, just kidding, it was born five years later in Tempe in 1988! Good thing I covered all of my bases on that one, eh? That way I can get it right when I say “Hey Cold Stone, you look like a blueberry!”
-This post is really getting long so I’m going to skip down to the low points. The bottom line though, when it comes to Petco Park is that I love, bleachers…I love, ushers…I love, Diego Dog (Matt, do you really love the Diego Dog or are you just saying that because you want one right now?) I LOVE DIEGO DOG!
Low Points:
-This section is not going to be easy to write, let’s see…
-They didn’t offer spicy mustard (though the jalapeños kind of made up for that).
-It was so damn hot that milk would have made for a poor choice.
-The drinking water in their fountains didn’t taste the best (I’m really grasping at straws here…).
-The aforementioned drink prices were a bit high but hot dogs were only $4.00. Not outrageous. Plus, the Diego Dog was Diegoliscious!
-I didn’t really like “Mrs. Padre” or whatever her name was. They should just stick with the friar and be done with it.
-The scoreboard again had to get the fans involved a little too much for my liking. They were into the game enough though.
-There were no commercials, nor was there any mercy.
-AND THAT’S IT!
Thanks for stopping by…
Overall Grade: A
Game Stats:
Teams: Padres vs. Rockies
Final Score: 6-1 Padres
WP: Chris Young
LP: Greg Reynolds
Time: 2:53
Announced Attendance: 28,624
Ticket Price: $14.00
Parking Price: N/A
Trip Stats:
Home team record: 6-4
Best Anthem: Tropicana Field
Miles Driven: 3280
States Visited: 7
Beds slept in: 13
Next Stop: Arizona Diamondbacks
Favorite Park: Petco Park (Padres)
Stadium Grades:
Marlins: D
Rays: B
Braves: B-
Rockies: B+
Mariners: B
Giants: A-
Athletics: C
Angels: B-
Dodgers: B+
Padres: A
1 comment:
Ahhh San Diego - my mom's side of the family all live there. Gas Light District is def a highlight and you can't beat the mexican food!
Side note - ran into my first "Marble Slab Creamery" in Dubai. I was so excited to find a Cold Stone - knockoff (had no clue they were first!). However, I will never return - they didn't have peanut butter cups! haram!
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