Park #12

August 22, 2005: San Francisco, California
Before I begin, I updated my pictures, they are located at photos.yahoo.com/jefflazarus. Then just click on the baseball pics. There’s also a bunch of pictures from the cities I’ve been to, as well as the baseball stadiums.
SBC Park has to be the best park on the left coast. This place is pretty bad ass. As you get to the stadium, there are two things right off the bat that peak your baseballian interest. First, the address of the stadium is “24 Willie Mays Plaza”, and second, there is a giant statue of Willie Mays himself at the front entrance. Now, the park is very interesting because there is a strict divide in the park’s loyalty. On one hand, there is much devotion to the Say Hey kid (that’s Willie Mays), they do a lot to honor him on the exterior of the ballpark, but the inside of the park is a veritable shrine to Barry Bonds. Now despite all the steroid “allegations”, Barry Bonds is not the player that Willie Mays was. I just thought I should go on the record with that.
Okay, back to the park. I walked around the stadium, and as I approached the front gate, this couple that was probably my age asked me to take their picture. They were on a baseball tour too. They gave me a little insight about the stadium, but then when I asked what their favorite park was, and they said Dodger Stadium, I figured their opinion had no merit. Plus, they were Yankees fans, strike 2. Anywhoo, as I walked around the park, I went to McCovey Cove. This place is fantastic. First, there is a giant statue of Juan Marichal, showing his high leg kick that makes Dontrelle Willis look like a paraplegic. Also, as you stand behind the stadium, you are behind the right field wall known as the “Splash Zone”. This is because if someone hits a home run over right field, it will most likely go out of the stadium and into the water behind the stadium. This area behind the stadium is great. First of all, it leads to this giant marina, which is just a great view. Secondly, the whole sidewalk in this area is covered with little bronze Giants milestones (most of which included Bonds, but oh well). Thirdly, there is place next to the stadium where you can put your bikes, not just a bike rack, but a small complex where they guard your bicycles, which I think is a great idea.
As you get into the stadium, the awesome continues. Now, call me crazy, but I think brick and baseball go together like chicken wings and beer. They are just made for each other. As you get into the field area, there is the perfect amount of brick: enough to make you feel good, but not too much so that the place is showing off. The whole right field wall, the “Splash Zone” is a brick wall. This is just a great sight. In center field they have a giant scoreboard, and right next to it, there is a kids’ playground. This playground has this ginormous baseball glove and this huge coke bottle that is a slide…….which security of the park has informed me is for children only (I may have stretched out the slide a little bit). What really shocked me about the park was how small it looked. I mean, the place probably holds like 48,000, but it didn’t look like it at all. Then I figured out why, because there are very few seats in the outfield. There are almost no seats over the right field wall, and in left and center, there is only a set of lower bleachers. Because the outfield isn’t completely covered with seats, it makes the stadium seem more open. Also, there did not seem to be many bad seats in the place. I got a bleacher ticket for $15.00, and my seats were hella good.
SBC park, just like in Oakland has the bullpen on the sides. However, this is even weirder because SBC doesn’t have much foul ground at all (not like McAfee). In fact, there isn’t even enough room to put benches in the bullpen area. This means that whenever a pitcher is going to warm up, he has to run out of the team’s dugout and runs down the foul line to the bullpen area. This was kind of funny to watch. One thing I did not expect about the park was the weather. I knew that San Fran had fog, but I didn’t know it would be so cold. I mean, it is mid-August and it had to be 50 degrees, it was crazy, I had no idea. I guess that’s one more thing that TV has left me ignorant about.
Well, I got to the game early and watched batting practice, and I got to see something great. A lot of home runs come into the bleacher area where I was sitting, and someone hit a home run into the stands. Well, as it was coming, like 10 guys were converging on the ball, pushing people out of the way and all of a sudden this middle-aged woman jumped up and caught it. These guys were all so embarrassed; I had to laugh. One thing that did piss me off was that there were no replays on the jumbotron EVER. I don’t think they played a single one, which sucked.
As for the game itself, the Giants were playing the Phillies. Jon Lieber was pitching, who threw a great game when I was in San Diego. He didn’t look so hot. He gave up a three-run homer to Moises Alou in the 3rd inning. The homer landed only about 15 feet away from me, it was pretty cool. It was really great seeing Omar Vizquel again, I miss that guy. You can really tell that he has lost a step or two since he left Cleveland, but the fans love him and he is still exciting to watch. Would you believe that he has 20 stolen bases this year? Also, he was wonderful (as usual) in the field. But the real story about the game was their pitcher, Noah Lowry. This guy was great. He pitched 6 solid innings, only giving up 2 hits and walking none. In the 7th, I thought he was gonna crack, he gave up two hits and a walk to load the bases with no one out. But then he struck out Abreu and got Burrell to ground into a double play, it was amazing. I can’t believe he got out of it. The Giants left him in for the 8th and the beginning of the 9th. In the ninth inning, he got the first two batters right away, but then gave up a single. Felipe Alou (the manager) then took him out. Now, the fans were pissed that he got taken out with one out left to go, and I was too at first, but the kid had thrown 130 pitches at this point, and even though we all wanted to see him stay in, he needed to come out. So, LaTroy Hawkins finished the game. It was a great game. And that Lowry kid ended up with 8 2/3 innings, giving up only 5 hits, no runs, and I think only one walk. I heard on the radio afterward that in the month of August he has pitched 32 innings and only given up 2 runs!
For the food, oh boy oh boy, their hot dogs were fantastic. They were made on the grill and were very thick footlongs. And they put onions on them. I thought it was one of the best hot dogs I’ve ever had. They also had churros at the game, and of course, I had one. Now, these weren’t as good as Chicago, and they didn’t have the different flavors to choose from, but I don’t think that a bad churro exists yet. I was also surprised to see that they sell sunflower seeds at the ballpark, which I had not seen before.
Overall, I think the ballpark is fantastic, they really did a good job with it. Also, San Fran is a hell of a town, I got to spend the whole day running around the city checking out all sorts of places. I think I’m gonna give SBC ballpark an A-.
Well, now its back to Cleveland for a few days until I hit the east coast.
12 down, 8 to go.
LAZ