Field of Dreams
I ventured into enemy territory over the weekend. . . and I was delighted. Not by the San Francisco Giants, who fumbled away a winnable game to the division-leading Padres. But by the stadium in which they play. Formerly called PacBell Park, it’s now known as SBC Park, as a result of a corporate merger of phone companies. But bby any name, the park is spectacular. It may be the best in baseball.
The location, overlooking San Francisco Bay, is nothing short of magnificent. With Barry Bonds out of the lineup, few kayakers hang out in the water outside the stadium hoping for a home run ball to land in the drink. Bt the marvelous view is available for the paying customers all game long. The vista is actually better as the seat price goes down: from the upper deck, you take in a panoramic view of the entire bya that’s unavailable to the swells in the box seats.
The park is neatly cleft in two. The north side is geared toward those arriving by public transportation, with bars and restaurants lining the street facing the park. The south side is for drivers, lined with parking lots and people tailgating. The $25 parking fee is designed to discourage driving, but it hasn’t done much good. The lots did not seem to be suffering for customers on Saturday, a sellout.
Fans can also arrive by boat—a ferry drops them off on the plaza beyond the outfield. There’s even free parking for bicycles. From there, even those without a game ticket can watch the game from a viewing area at field level just behind the right field warning track. There’s a time limit when it gets crowded, but not if it’s not.
Inside the park, the sight lines are all good, and the seats are comfortable. There are even cupholders in the cheap seats, though they are angled such that you spill the top eighth of your beer if you put a full cup in them. A foghorn goes off and blowholes spout streams of water whenever the home team hits a roundtripper.
Then there’s the food. San Francisco is a food capital, and the food available here reflects it. Los Angeles and New York could learn something. Those cities also consider themselves food destinations, but the concessions at the four stadiums in those two cities are all dreadful.
At SBC, the garlic fries get all the ink, but they’re just an appetizer for your choice of cheese steaks, bratwursts, turkey burgers, garden burgers, Italian sausages, Louisiana red hots, or clam chowder in a sourdough breadbowl. Finish it all of not with a plain old ice cream in a helmet cup, but a Ghirardelli hot fudge sundae.
One curiosity: Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown never played a game for the Giants, but it is apparently his glove that is reproduced in larger-than-life fashion atop the left field bleachers. Or maybe the old-school glove belongs to Homer Simpson Alexander.
The location, overlooking San Francisco Bay, is nothing short of magnificent. With Barry Bonds out of the lineup, few kayakers hang out in the water outside the stadium hoping for a home run ball to land in the drink. Bt the marvelous view is available for the paying customers all game long. The vista is actually better as the seat price goes down: from the upper deck, you take in a panoramic view of the entire bya that’s unavailable to the swells in the box seats.
The park is neatly cleft in two. The north side is geared toward those arriving by public transportation, with bars and restaurants lining the street facing the park. The south side is for drivers, lined with parking lots and people tailgating. The $25 parking fee is designed to discourage driving, but it hasn’t done much good. The lots did not seem to be suffering for customers on Saturday, a sellout.
Fans can also arrive by boat—a ferry drops them off on the plaza beyond the outfield. There’s even free parking for bicycles. From there, even those without a game ticket can watch the game from a viewing area at field level just behind the right field warning track. There’s a time limit when it gets crowded, but not if it’s not.
Inside the park, the sight lines are all good, and the seats are comfortable. There are even cupholders in the cheap seats, though they are angled such that you spill the top eighth of your beer if you put a full cup in them. A foghorn goes off and blowholes spout streams of water whenever the home team hits a roundtripper.
Then there’s the food. San Francisco is a food capital, and the food available here reflects it. Los Angeles and New York could learn something. Those cities also consider themselves food destinations, but the concessions at the four stadiums in those two cities are all dreadful.
At SBC, the garlic fries get all the ink, but they’re just an appetizer for your choice of cheese steaks, bratwursts, turkey burgers, garden burgers, Italian sausages, Louisiana red hots, or clam chowder in a sourdough breadbowl. Finish it all of not with a plain old ice cream in a helmet cup, but a Ghirardelli hot fudge sundae.
One curiosity: Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown never played a game for the Giants, but it is apparently his glove that is reproduced in larger-than-life fashion atop the left field bleachers. Or maybe the old-school glove belongs to Homer Simpson Alexander.
posted by John Rosenthal @ 9:48 AM
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