Originally I had planned to be in Chicago through Sunday. Thanks to some work-related trip changes (this was entirely a leisure trip and it makes more sense than flying home and flying back to the Midwest during the week), I’ll be here through Monday. That last-minute change has allowed me to reshuffle my schedule while I’m here. Good thing I didn’t buy tickets too far in advance. Here’s my revised schedule:

• Thursday, June 6, 7:10 PM – A’s @ White Sox. No promotion. Ticket purchased.
• Friday, June 7, 1:20 PM – Pirates @ Cubs. Promotion: Cubs floppy hat (fishing cap), first 20,000 fans. Ticket purchased.
• Friday, June 7, 7:10 PM – A’s @ White Sox. Promotion: Fireworks
• Saturday, June 8, 3:10 PM – A’s @ White Sox. Promotion: 1983 White Sox T-shirt, first 20,000 fans [I loved the old logo BTW]
• Sunday, June 9, 1:10 PM – Braves @ Brewers. Promotion: Carlos Gomez bobblehead

I realize that I haven’t followed up much on meeting up with the Chi-town faithful. I’m also in Milwaukee for Sunday night (what-what). Please reach out to me in the comments or via e-mail/Twitter and we can figure something out. See you at the yard.

Note: For more pictures, check out the Flickr set I uploaded from the weekend. I’ll be doing this for all future ballpark visits. When I have time I’ll add old ones too.

View from RF corner at Marlins Park

Ever since the first indoor major league baseball game was played at the bold, brash Astrodome in 1965, purists have lamented the absence of character and quality in the domed game. Too loud, many said. Artificial, especially with the advent of fake turf. Aesthetics were brutally utilitarian because all of the early domes were multipurpose. Trading in difficult climates for air-conditioned perfection meant a lack of natural light and the regular smells and sounds of the outdoor game. In 1989, SkyDome took a big step forward with its retractable roof, even as all of the other dome elements remained the same. Eventually technology evolved to the point where there are now five newer retractable roof ballparks in Phoenix, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, and as of last year, Miami. The political side of how Marlins Park was built and funded has been well documented, so I won’t cover it here. Instead, I’ll focus mostly on the ballpark itself: how well it does hosting ballgames and how well it’s integrated into the neighborhood and city.

View from near where I parked my car west of Marlins Park

I had driven 4 hours from Tampa to Miami in a beat-up rental, battling torrential (yet normal) rains along Alligator Alley. Marlins Park is set in Little Havana at the former site of the Orange Bowl. I could come here a thousand times and still be struck by the juxtaposition of this enormous, gleaming edifice dominating the landscape against low-slung, generally low-income housing. When the Orange Bowl was there it all seemed the fit – a rickety old stadium set among rickety old houses. There’s no worry about gentrification here, as Little Havana will have no trouble retaining all of its old charm and character. Great, inexpensive food from just about everywhere in Latin America abounds within a mile or two of the park. And the unique parking situation, carried over from the Orange Bowl, remains completely intact. Anyone driving through the surrounding neighborhood on game day will see a multitude of flag-waving residents luring cars to their yards with the promise of cheaper parking. The official garages charge $20, within a block it’s only $10. If you’re willing to go a block further, like me, you can find parking for $5. I found an older Cuban gentleman sitting on a chair next to his corner lot, and when he said parking was only $5 I was sold. Many of the yards are partly paved to accommodate cars so they’re prepared for this, and street parking is a no-go for non-residents, so cough up the $5 and walk the two blocks.

Triangular ramp at first base gate

Two monuments commemorate the old football stadium: a painted column on the lower deck commemorating the old stadium’s history, and the arrangement of the distinctive “Orange Bowl” letters on the east side of the ballpark. It’s not much to show for all of the history the stadium has experienced as the host of a major bowl game and the University of Miami Hurricanes, but it’ll have to do. The ‘Canes have swapped places with the Marlins, playing their home games up north at Dolphins Stadium.

First pitch for the Mets-Marlins tilt was set for shortly after 4 PM, perfect for the retiree set. I had been told that there’s absolutely no reason to buy a walkup ticket at the box office. That assessment was proven correct as there were numerous scalpers assembled along the streets leading to the main plaza behind home plate, west of the stadium. $10 later (should’ve been $5) and I had a seat in the outfield at field level. Apparently the Marlins are giving away blocks of promotional tickets to get people in the park. On both Saturday and Sunday the tickets I bought were marked “promo”.

Main concourse

The plaza is certainly friendly enough, with lots of open space and numerous tents and stages set up most weekends. Saturday had a performance by Cirque after the game in the plaza, whereas Sunday had a large tent setup for a pet adoption drive. The tents and canopies helped soften up the plaza, which is flanked on the north and south ends by the concrete tracks that guide the rolling roof. The first time I saw those tracks in the original renderings I swore they were inspired by the USS Enterprise. Two restaurants are tucked into the street level facade, along with the team store and a cell phone outlet. The home plate gate is nothing to write home about, with simple gates leading straight to escalators that go up to the promenade (main level). The third base gate (SW corner) has a unique triangular ramp structure, perhaps the most elegant architectural element at Marlins Park. Its support columns are on the inside of the triangle, giving the appearance of the segments floating in mid-air. Unlike most other stadia, the ramps had limited access. The club, suite, and other premium levels were not accessible from the ramps, which was perhaps the first indicator of Jeff Loria’s disdain for the regular fan.

Outfield at Marlins Park

Neither gate has much in the way of a grand entrance into the concourse. It felt like entering a mall through one of the side entrances. Once inside, however, the space opened up fully and looked magnificent. Wayfinding signs were set just so, and the place had a very museum-like quality to it, precise yet inviting (fitting considering Loria is an art dealer). The promenade was at least 40 feet wide everywhere, with the concourse floor covered in a colored, textured surface resembling terrazzo. Regions of the concourse were color-coded in bright primary colors. Strangely, even though the Marlins adopted orange as one of its main colors in its image revamp prior to the opening of Marlins Park, there is precious little orange inside the stadium. Concourses, walls, and tiles are blue, red, yellow, and green. Everything else is museum white. Teal, the team’s former main color, has been banished. Loria left the garish treatment for the lime green outfield walls and the ever controversial home run scuplture by Red Grooms, a painted steel ode to sealife that resembles the backdrop of a pinball machine.

Seating bowl from center field

Concessions are surprisingly ho-hum. There is a “Taste of Miami” food court area, and a concessions stand in right center serves up pressed Cubano sandwiches, but everything else is fairly standard, uninteresting fare. Although pre-made, the Cubano was better than I expected. There’s no carvery or wok station like Target Field. There aren’t even any portable grills for fresh hot dogs, or a single permanent grill like the Saag’s stand at the Coliseum. It’s not just that the grill provides a better tasting sausage, it also contributes to the ballpark atmosphere via the wonderful aroma of grilled hot dogs, Italians and brats. Without that element, the air inside smelled a little too clean and conditioned. It felt  arena-like.

With food and beverage in hand, I passed up my seat beyond the bullpen in right and looked for the best sneakdown opportunity I could find. I found one in section 3, about 15 rows up from the RF line. Pretty much everyone was sneaking down at some point, and I had no idea why the hundred or so people sitting in the upper deck were still there. After the sandwich was consumed I walked around the full length of the concourse, which has a view to the field from every section including center field. An enormous Budweiser bar stands in center and was quite popular. The Bacardi bar on the other side looked downright desolate, despite both having many of the same offerings. If anything the Budweiser bar benefits from being backed by the huge glass curtainwall doors in left field. The doors and roof weren’t open as there was some rain in the forecast and the temperature was 86 degrees outside. (By the way, the beer selection at Marlins Park is terrible, as one would expect from South Florida.)

A good look at how the roof column and truss system is put together, cutting into the seating bowl

A long escalator in left took me to the upper deck, which was depressingly empty. For both games, only a single concession stand was open. I saw directly behind home plate in the fourth row and liked the view (and the A/C effectiveness) better than at Minute Maid Park. The Marlins chose to stack most of the luxury suites behind the plate, with only a handful along the baselines at club level. That makes the first row of the upper deck behind home plate roughly five stories above the promenade, a somewhat common Populous practice these days (Progressive Field, Busch Stadium). The cantilever of the club and upper decks is not particularly dramatic, so it doesn’t feel very intimate despite the relatively low seating capacity (37k). Regardless, the upper deck didn’t have bad seats, and there didn’t seem to be any obstructed views. There are huge columns that interrupt the upper reserve seats down the third base line, but there seemed to be enough space to prevent obstructed views.

Those columns probably made the roof system a lot cheaper to build, as a much shorter than usual truss system was constructed. The roof itself is similar to those at Safeco or Minute Maid, a two-way multi-panel rolling structure that retracts to one end of the stadium (in this case, behind the first base line). The roof is tilted slightly from north to south, and the ceiling panels are steel, which contributes mightily to a serious amplification effect. Even though there were less than 20,000 at both games, when they got loud it sounded like 40,000 thanks to the roof. This effect was needlessly enhanced by the extremely loud PA system, which Fangraphs’ Wendy Thurm (@hangingsliders) complained about bitterly on Sunday. Worse, the PA had the most unconscionable practice of playing piped-in boos over the loudspeakers when the Mets homered. The sound was unmistakeable as it sounded like two or three guys booing into a microphone. No way that was the crowd. The PA certainly didn’t lend any organic crowd feel to Marlins Park, that’s for sure.

The Clevelander after the game

I didn’t have access to the club levels so I can’t comment on what goes on there. I did check out The Clevelander in left field after the game. A branch of the popular South Beach bar, The Clevelander has very expensive tickets ($50 seats, $30 SRO) during the game, but has free admission after the game. I followed much of the younger crowd to the club and marveled at how perfectly Miami the setting was inside a ballpark. DJ? Check. Dancers? Check. Full bar? Check. Pool? Check. Multiple lounge areas and a patio? Got that too. The Marlins and The Clevelander have to make an extra five figures just by having the place open after games. It’s not for the purist, but for the casual fan, it’s a must-see.

Despite the convertible nature of today’s dome, any domed ballpark has to be judged differently from open-air parks. The ability to control the environment is simply too much of a factor to compare fairly to open-air parks. As it stands, Marlins Park reminds me of a brand new Rawlings baseball, fresh out of the box. It needs to rubbed up with a little mud. It needs some character. Perhaps if the team didn’t go bust in 2012 and there was some carryover to 2013, I could describe the feel more positively. For now Marlins Park is a place with a good bones, waiting for a good team and a good crowd to arrive.

Panorama from upper deck

Angel Stadium during the early May-laise.

People ask me all the time if the Oakland Coliseum could ever be converted to a ballpark the same way Angel Stadium was in the mid-90’s. My reply is always the same: No. The secret to why the Angel Stadium conversion worked is simple. It was a ballpark from the beginning. The Coliseum started out as a football stadium that was converted to serve as a ballpark, whereas Angel Stadium (nee Anaheim Stadium) went through the opposite transformation. Anaheim’s case was that of an appendage that could be discarded. Oakland’s was the case of a round peg fitting into a square hole.

Pleasant pregame environs in Anaheim.

Completed in 1964 1966 at Gene Autry‘s behest, Anaheim Stadium was arguably a more Californian vision of a modern ballpark than Dodger Stadium to the north. Parking was and still is smoother and more efficient than in Chavez Ravine, and the site is close to three freeways (5, 57, 55, 22). It had somewhat remote views of the San Gabriel Mountains.  Other tourist attractions like Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm a stone’s throw away. Like Dodger Stadium it had low wall and wraparound lower deck in the corners. The biggest difference in Anaheim was the wider-angled bowl, which made the neck-craning effect more severe down the lines but significantly reduced foul territory in the process. When the Rams vacated the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for Anaheim in 1980, Angels fans got their own version of Mt. Davis – a complete enclosure of the stadium and Candlestick-like foldout seats in right field.That made the capacity of the stadium a cavernous 65,000, with little hope of filling that on a regular basis during the 80’s. The Rams only stayed at the football-expanded Big A for 15 seasons, after which native Missourian Georgia Frontiere took the team to St. Louis. That gave Disney, which assumed control of the franchise in the mid-90’s, the opportunity to remake the stadium the theme park-like manner one would expect of the company. A man-made rockpile was placed in center field as the focal point of the renovation. The iconic “Big A” structure which once dominated the outfield stayed in the parking lot, to many fans’ chagrin. Walls inside the stadium were given a sand color with red accents while the plazas outside the regular concourse were freshened up to hide the numerous ramps and exterior concrete. A Metrolink (commuter train) station was added at the outskirts of the parking lot, providing an alternative to driving and parking.

The distinctive albeit kitschy outfield

Walk into the Big A and you can see why the conversion worked. If you squint a little, you can see the same main seating deck layout as the one found at Camden Yards. In both places, the field level deck is split into two, with the concourse set around row 23 and a back seating section (in Anaheim known as the Field Terrace) providing 10 more rows of seats. A club level with eight rows rises above the Field Terrace, and suites are tucked behind the club seats. Above the premium facilities is the upper deck, which is also split into lower and upper tiers. The arrangement proved so successful that it was used in Baltimore and at the new Busch Stadium. Not bad for a stadium that will turn 50 next year.

Club/suite concourse

Yet there is a sense that, despite how good the bones are at the Big A, it’s falling behind the rest of baseball. Most of the work completed by Disney in 1997 focused on getting rid of the football seats in the outfield and the creation of multiple club facilities in the regular bowl. Arte Moreno even moved the writers’ press box from its prime location behind the plate to down the right field line. Even with the various incremental improvements, it’s hard to get past the main deficiency within: the concourses are narrow and are disconnected from the action. That’s a problem at both Busch and Camden Yards as well. At Busch, the Cardinals chose to punch large holes in the upper half of the field level to provide some views from the concourse. Don’t get me wrong – I’d switch the Coliseum for the Big A in a heartbeat – but in the face of the continuing evolution at Dodger Stadium, Moreno’s going to push hard to create an optimal environment for the Angels and fans.

Knothole Club, the only indoor restaurant on the club level, is way in the right field corner

A few weeks ago I took in a game in the club level, which has wait service. Cheap bastard that I usually am, I usually bypass such options at a ballpark. Since this was on the company dime, how could I resist? The loaded chicken nachos I had weighed 5 pounds and felt like it half-finished in my subsequently unsettled gut. The concessionaire is Aramark, and if you’re wondering if things improved by going to a bigger, richer market, they didn’t. Aramark provides tiers of service and options, so I know they’re better than this. Still, it sure seems like competitors like Centerplate are eating Aramark’s lunch, so to speak. Beer selection is also wanting, easily the worst among the West Coast major league parks.

When Moreno took over the team after the 2002 World Series victory, he grew the fan base by lowering ticket, concessions, and beer prices. Already the family-friendly alternative to the Dodgers, the Angels quickly jumped beyond the 3 million attendance mark annually and stayed there for years to come. Moreno’s hunger for a World Series of his own and to compete head on with the Dodgers fueled huge free agent purchases, including Vlad Guerrero, Torii Hunter, and Vernon Wells. Moreno never quite got the brass ring, which led to the bat-oriented spending spree of the last two seasons, Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton. The Angels’ payroll this year is $137 million, not including whatever pitching acquisitions they have to make at midseason if they decide that they want to chase the pennant despite their awful April. Even though the franchise is bolstered by a $150 million per year TV contract with Fox Sports (that’s as much as the A’s make from ALL local revenue sources), they continue to raise ticket prices well beyond what would be considered affordable.

Like the A’s, the Angels are hurtling towards the end of their lease, this one in 2016. There is an extension that could keep the team in Anaheim until 2031, but no one expects Moreno to pick up that option unless some additional, major changes are made at Angel Stadium. Moreno has been quiet on the prospects for Angel Stadium or a new ballpark somewhere in the area. Tensions between him and the City of Anaheim over the team name have calmed. Chances are that if Moreno wanted a new ballpark, he’d have to make it happen at the current 100+ acre site. With redevelopment’s dissolution, there’s little available in the way of public financing. Even in 1997, the $117 million renovation (a huge success compared to the Mt. Davis debacle) was 82% financed by Disney, with the public portion already paid for. There’s enough goodwill to do another major renovation along the lines of what the Dodgers did during the offseason, but Moreno will have to pay for it himself. If he wants to talk about a new ballpark, the only site outside Anaheim that could remotely support it is the City of Industry site being pitched for a NFL stadium. Talk about that came and went quickly last year. AEG’s downtown site has also been pitched as a relocation spot, but a retractable baseball dome is so highly incompatible with AEG’s plans that it’s hard to take such an idea seriously. If Moreno has designs on a park elsewhere in the market, he’s being very coy about it.

The Angels’ future is secure thanks to their whopping TV deal and their solid fanbase. The franchise is worth well over a billion dollars at this point (thanks Dodgers) and there’s little reason to leave Anaheim. The stadium could benefit from revamped clubhouses and improvements to the rather barren club/suite level. In right field is the oft-forgotten Exhibition Center, a 29,000 square foot space that would probably be better used partly as a baseball museum that could attract fans 365 days a year. Moreno could spend $100 million on such changes, with some development rights to the land as the City’s contribution, and the ballpark would be roughly on par with Dodger Stadium, if not the newest parks. That fairly modest investment from both sides should keep everyone happy for decades to come, pennants and World Series trophies notwithstanding. Is that enough for Arte Moreno? Only he knows.