Chase Field, Phoenix (What are the best seats in the house?)

What are the best seats in the house? After you’ve gone to a few hundred games, sitting all over a stadium, you get some opinions. So here are my opinions of Chase Field.

Starting in 2001, we bought four tickets less than 10 rows behind home plate for 10 games each season. They were great seats, with the scouts a few seats away in one direction, Hall of Fame announcer Joe Garagiola and his wife a few seats away in another, and the family of one of the team’s stars (Steve Finley) right in front of us. And the view was great, watching Randy Johnson from only two or three times as far away as the hitter. But they cost a lot of money ($100 apiece in 2001), and our two children didn’t have the love for the game that we did. We had an agreement with the kids that they wouldn’t bring books to read during the 2001 postseason – didn’t want that on national TV.

By 2007, the children were off to college, and we calculated that we could buy two full season tickets for the price we were spending for the four seats for 10 games behind home plate. Actually, cheaper, because we could go to the weekend home games, and sell most of the tickets we didn’t use. So we bought tickets close to the field, about two-thirds of the way from home plate to the left field fence. It turns out that the even-numbered rows have a few inches more leg room in that section than the odd-numbered (who knows why), so we moved once, and while we’re in Row 2, the curve of the wall cuts off Row 1, so it’s actually the front row, a couple of feet from the foul-ball retriever on the field. That’s Kerry in the picture, just to the spectator side of the left-field ball retriever. The view is pretty good, and when the left fielder comes sprinting over for a ball down the line, you realize how big and how fast those players are. In the days before they extended the safety nets, they were good seats for catching foul balls, too.

For the World Series in 2001, we were in the upper deck behind home plate. You get the feel of the crowd, you can see what’s going on, but it’s a long way from the field.

In 2011, we’d sold our tickets to a particular September game, but then it turned out the Diamondbacks had a chance to clinch the pennant that day, so we bought seats in the front row of the upper deck, but near the right-field foul pole. That was a bizarre viewpoint – I’m glad I sat in those seats once, but wouldn’t do it again.

We’ve been with groups that got tickets to the luxury boxes a couple of times. The food is great, and you have a bathroom just for your group of 20, but the view’s not great, and I think they’re overrated and overpriced.

And we’ve sat at other random places around the ballpark.

Frankly, my favorite seats were ones we got by chance. There are two rows of 6 or 8 seats that are right behind home plate, built so that the seats are basically at field level, and your eyes are at the level of the middle of the strike zone, with no one between you and the pitch but the umpire, the catcher, and some plexiglass. You’re in the view of the TV camera that looks at home plate the whole time. We were at an event for season ticket holders one day before a game, and the team apparently hadn’t sold those seats, and didn’t want them to be empty for the TV broadcast. They asked us, and some others who were wearing clearly recognizable team gear, if we wanted the seats. They were spectacular. The fact that it was a good game, ending with an extra-inning walk-off home run, helped. We were reminded of that day every game we went to the next year, because in one of the “sizzle reels” that the team showed before each game, they showed Daniel Descalso hitting the home run – and us jumping up in the background to watch it.

Today's game:

The Diamondbacks beat the Rockies again, 6-0 this time. To me, Jake McCarthy is the story of this series against the Rockies. He only hit the ball out of the infield once more (that was a hit), but also had an infield hit, reached base another time when the shortstop rushed a throw to get him and threw it away, stole a base (his 5th in three days), and caused a balk by bluffing a steal in a way that caused the pitcher to illegally step off the pitching rubber. McCarthy is still hitting under .200, because he was terrible at the start of the year. He’s young, only in his second season, so the jury’s still out on whether he is going to manage to stay in the majors. If he continues to have the impact he’s had in this series, he’ll be in the game a long time. If not, he’s having a better week this week than most major leaguers ever have in their career.

Phoenix, May 31, 2023