Park #18

September 11, 2005: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Those people in Philly know what they are doing. Let me tell you something, all major cities can learn a lot from Philadelphia. Did you know that all four major sports complexes in the city are all within like half a mile from each other. The baseball stadium (Citizens Bank), the football stadium, the Wachovia Center (where the Flyer and 76ers play) and the Spectrum are all together. It was really cool to see all this in one area. It made me wonder how crazy it gets traffic-wise when more than one sport is going on at once, but when there is only one sport there is lots of parking that is spread out, so the traffic wasn’t bad at all. I went to the game with Koosed, and on our way from the parking lot to the stadium, we passed the Rocky statue which is located outside the Spectrum. I got a really cool picture of me punching Rocky below the belt, it was great. Also, as you get to the stadium there are many statues of former Phillies greats around the outside of the park, like Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton. The outside of the stadium itself is very cool, there is a ton of brick on the exterior walls, coupled with giant steel girders. This was reminiscent of a certain Boston area ballpark. The parallel between Citizens Bank and Fenway continued when I got into the main concourse. I say this because as you walk around the main concourse, you see that the whole thing is covered in brick. This defined much about the ballpark: that it combined both the old-time ballpark feel with a modern touch.
As you get to the field, the wonders continue; you should’ve seen this scoreboard, it was friggin huge and the picture quality was great. Koosed and I were sitting in left field, like 20 feet to the left of the left field pole. One thing that disturbed me was that on top of the left field fence, there was a five foot wide flowerbed that contained a whole bunch of purple and green flowers. This was weird, and didn’t really seem to fit with the baseball.
As you go around the stadium behind the entire outfield is known as “Ashburn Alley”. This place was like a giant baseball carnival. There were games for kids, all sorts of places to eat, and a whole buttload of areas devoted to Phillies history. There was also a Phillies Wall of Fame, that also had a “Phillies Centennial Team”, and everywhere you look you could see so much devotion to Mike Schmidt that you would think he were a god. There was also a statue of Richie Ashburn, but it was the most unflattering statue I’ve ever seen. They posed him running, which was decent, but he is posed with his head down, and he is kind of slumped over. I don’t know what they were thinking with this move.
I did get to see one of heroes though: the Phillie Phanatic. Well, at least he used to be my hero. When I saw how this guy conducted himself at a ballgame, I realized that I can no longer look up to him. This guy ran around like a maniac and would grope and grab every single person he could find. This guy grabbed more butts than a chain-smoker. This guy was even grabbing kids, eight-year olds. Not only was he a molester, but this guy must’ve had ADD or something because he could not sit still for more than three seconds. He would sit down and then right away would jump up and start flailing his arms like the world was coming to an end. It was messed up. Then a few innings later, the guy drove around on a hot dog cannon. That’s right, you heard me, a hot dog cannon. Now I’ve seen mascots with hot dog cannons before, but those were handheld ones. This was an entire car that had this ginormous cannon mounted on it, and this thing could launch a dog 200 feet. It was pretty cool.
As for the game, this was my third Phillies game that I’ve seen on the tour. I saw the Phillies beat the Padres in San Diego, in which Jon Lieber pitched. I saw the Phillies lose to the Giants in San Fran in which Lieber also pitched. Well, at this game against the Marlins, Lieber pitched as well. Pretty strange coincidence, huh? Well, the Marlins jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning after a few scattered hits; then the craziness began. The Phillies put up nine runs over the next four innings, including 6 runs in the 3rd inning, including a monster home run by Pat Burrell that had to be at least 430 feet. The Marlins didn’t know what hit them, after they gave up this 6 run third inning, the team just rolled over and died. I think they got 3 hits over the next seven innings; it was pathetic. It was hard to believe that this team was only a half game out of the wild card race. Well, the Phillies ended up winning 10-1 (or maybe 11-1, I don’t know). So Jon Lieber was 2-1 in my presence this year. At this point, I need to point out that Koosed fell asleep during the game, for like a whole inning, he personally gets an F for the day, and will remain in F-town for a good long while.
As for food, I got my token hot dog. It was good, but not great. It was a footlong dog, but it was a really thin dog, and the bun they gave me was huge. It was like for every one bite of dog, I got three bites of bun. Plus, the peppers and onions on the dog were so sweet that they overpowered the taste of the hot dog. After this sub-par hot dog, I had to let Philly redeem itself, and it did with a Cheesesteak. Holy crap, this thing was great. I mean, I’ve had what were called cheesesteaks in Cleveland, but none of them could compare to the tasty deliciousness that Philly provided me with. It was all sorts of awesome.
I thought that Citizens Bank Park was great. It really did a great job of combining the old school classic stadiums and the new modern fields. It was quite reminiscent to Fenway, which is always a plus. And they did a good job at showing the history of the Phillies. I’m gonna give the park an A-.
Next stop Shea stadium.
18 down, 2 to go. Oh yeah, Go Tribe.
Laz

Park #17

September 9, 2005: Washington, D.C.
It is blatantly obvious that RFK stadium where the Nationals play was built for football and football alone. The stadium is where the Redskins played for a number of years, but do not play there now. The outside of the stadium just looks like baseball is not welcome there. That being said, the inside of the stadium is still pretty nice; they did a good job at converting it to a baseball field on the inside. I think this shows the differences between the beauty of a baseball stadium and the practicality of a football stadium. I could write a 20 page paper on the differences between the two, but I wont bore you with such drivel.
Anywhoo, so you get into the stadium and all you see is concrete. I mean there is really nothing inside the main concourse to look at, or do, other than get food. There really isn’t much to say about the inside of the stadium at all. However, the field itself was pretty nice. Unlike most other baseball stadiums, RFK had seats that went all the way around; your typical coliseum style. Now, I had seen this at places like McAfee (Oakland) and not been impressed, but RFK (and Toronto as well) really do a much better job. It seemed as though most of the seats in the stadium were a pretty good view of the field. Some of the seats were high up, but it didn’t seem like these high up seats were too far back that you couldn’t see anything. The bullpens for each team were crammed into the corner between both the left field and right field fences, further showing that this field was not built with these things in mind.
One of the advantages of having a baseball field that used to be a football field is that you know that the scoreboard is gonna be nice; RFK’s followed this trend. Also, in right field, they had a giant banner commemorating those have made the “Washington Hall of Fame”, which is Washington players in all the major sports, and even some of the minor ones. This was good because it was the only indicator that showed any remembrance of Washington’s former baseball franchise, the Washington Senators.
As for the game, the Nationals played the Atlanta Braves, who have been on a tear since the All-Star Break. The Braves got out to a quick lead, and after a three-run homer by Andruw Jones, the Braves were up 6-2. Well, seeing the Yankees lose to the Devil Rays was a great thing a few days earlier, but the next best thing after that is seeing the Braves lose. Well, in the 7th inning (I think) the Nationals got a 6-run rally in which I think the Braves used 4 pitchers. It was great to watch, Bobby Cox was pissed. Those Nationals just kept hitting extra-base hits all over the place. The highlight of this rally was seeing Carlos Baerga, who is apparently playing for the Nationals now. Despite the fact that he has put on quite a few pounds (what we in the business call Bartolo Colon Syndrome, or also C.C. Sabathia Disease), Baerga did get the rally started with a walk. Also, in the ninth, the Nationals brought in their closer Chad Cordero. Now, I hadn’t seen this guy pitch live until now, but this guy is good. For some reason I never saw it when I saw the highlights on TV, but this guy throws a ton of gas, and has a lot of movement. After seeing him throw to the first batter, I looked up and saw that his ERA is 1.30, and after seeing him pitch, I was not surprised in the least. So, the Nationals won 8-6, which was great.
As for food, the polish sausage there was amazing. It was clearly the best one I’ve had (excluding Chicago of course). The cooked it on the grill, but they cooked it long enough that it was really crispy and juicy, definitely worth the 20 minutes I waited in line for it. And of course it had peppers and onions, oh man, I can still taste it. Also, I got nachos, for the sole reason that the nacho stand was called “Nacho Revolution”. I thought this was great, I had to restrain myself from the desire of asking for extra “Cheese Guevara”.
Overall, I’m gonna give RFK stadium a C+. I liked the field itself and I thought the coliseum style was nice, and the food was great, but the stadium itself is clearly nothing special. I know that its temporary and stuff, but oh well.
Well, 17 down, 3 to go.
Next stop Philly.
Laz