Petco Park, San Diego (MLB #11 - How do you get to the game?)
The five California major league teams display two starkly different approaches for getting people to baseball games, and show how teams’ and cities’ visions have changed over a generation or two.
In Oakland, Los Angeles, and Anaheim, the stadiums are surrounded by acres of surface parking lots. There is a prominent public transit connection in Oakland, but the expectation is that you will arrive by automobile. Those parks were all designed in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
In San Francisco and San Diego, there is little parking available (I think there’s more in San Diego, though wouldn’t swear it), but the stadium is in the heart of a downtown area, and public transit is readily available. Those parks opened in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
Which is better probably depends on how you feel about automobiles and public transit, and, of course, where you’re coming from. Our viewpoint, from trying to do a driving tour, is probably a little different than most, but we’ve found Anaheim and San Diego* the easiest to deal with. I’ll explain the asterisk in a minute.
In San Diego and San Francisco, a trip to the ballpark also typically includes a meal at one of the many nearby restaurants. That’s a definite benefit. But hotels anywhere near the ballpark are expensive.
In San Francisco you really can’t get very close to the park with a hotel, and it’s still expensive. So we stayed with friends in the South Bay area and took CalTrain in, which was comfortable enough, but took two hours in one case.
In San Diego, we’re about a block and a half from the stadium (nice!), and there are restaurants all around. But it’s the highest hotel rate we’ll pay on the trip. It would be even more expensive if we used the hotel’s $65 per night parking, so we found a garage a few blocks away for a third of that. Hence the asterisk.
Anaheim was nice, easily walkable from the hotel, although the half-mile walk was all through the parking lots, so there weren’t any restaurants particularly close.
There are neither restaurants nor hotels in the vicinity of Dodger Stadium, so we’re just staying an hour away (instead of 30 or 45 minutes), in Palmdale, on the other side of the mountains.
Finally, in Oakland, we stayed only about a mile away, in a hotel labeled “airport,” but there’s no way we would have walked. Just to walk to a little eatery a block from the hotel, there was a place where we had to walk in the street, because we couldn’t get through all the garbage piled on the sidewalk. Friends in the area advised us to follow “Oakland rules,” and take absolutely everything that even looks like it might have value out of the car and glove compartment. We didn’t follow the ultra-Oakland rules and leave the windows down so that would-be thieves could look through the car, and discover there was nothing worth taking, without having to break a window.
Personally, I’ve found San Diego to be the best overall experience. The view from the upper deck (see the picture at the top) isn’t San Francisco Bay or the hills behind Dodger Stadium, it’s downtown San Diego, and it’s very clear you’re in a downtown. The stadium itself is more spacious in the concourses than many of the downtown stadiums. Although there were 38,822 in attendance tonight, comparable to the two games we went to in San Francisco, the ramps weren’t so crowded that people were stepping on your shoes. And there’s a large courtyard with a grassy area inside the stadium, which is a nice touch. Once you get outside the stadium, there are people and restaurants everywhere, as I like in a city stadium.
What’s the future of new baseball stadiums? The most recent one opened is Globe Life in Arlington, Texas, which is a bit of an exception. That’s because there are two downtowns in the Metroplex (Dallas and Fort Worth). The stadium is centrally located, and since the state frowns on not using an automobile whenever traveling more than 50 feet, it has acres of parking. But it also has a complex with lots of restaurants. The next one is likely to be Las Vegas, but Las Vegas itself is an exception to every rule. So I don’t know what the next ballpark in a traditional city will be. Maybe I’m biased, but I think the model in Phoenix or San Diego, with a downtown ballpark with a public transit stop a block away, well-defined rideshare rules (at least in Phoenix), and parking garages nearby, makes the most sense.
More about the venue
I like Petco Park. OK, I like most baseball stadiums, but I really like Petco. Besides the location and the feel, I like the fact that when confronted with a building on the National Register of Historic Places, they incorporated the building (“Western Metal Supply Co.”) into the park. It looks the same as it did from the street, but it now has the team shop inside and the back side juts into the left field corner, defining home runs there.
The game
In the bottom of the seventh inning, it was a critical juncture in the game. The Padres were already ahead 3-1, and had the bases loaded with one out. The Athletics brought in Michel Otanez, a rookie pitcher making his major league debut. A couple of pitches into his major league career, half the lights in the stadium went off. At that point play was suspended. The Padres started playing “When the Lights Go Down in the City” on the PA, and a lot of the fans in attendance pulled out their cell phones and turned on the flashlight app, and started swaying back and forth, as one would at a concert. The combined light of the cell phones wasn’t close to the stadium lights, but it was a nice touch. After about three minutes, the lights came back on, the PA played a bit of “When the Lights Come On,” Otanez took a couple of warmup pitches, and the game continued. Unfortunately for Otanez and the A’s, it didn’t go well. He walked the first batter, gave up a single to the next hitter and a sacrifice fly to the next hitter. He got the next batter out, but the Padres had scored three runs, and the 6-1 score would be the final. I wish Otanez better lighting, and better success, his next time out.
Kerry and I were particularly amused by the episode. The major league record for strikeouts in a game is 16, by Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. Johnson was the best pitcher the Arizona Diamondbacks ever had, but he was usually a starting pitcher. In fact, he only pitched in relief in one regular season game for the Dbacks. On July 18, 2001, the Dbacks were playing in San Diego (at Jack Murphy Stadium, the predecessor to the current one), and in the top of the 3rd inning, the lights on the field went out. The Padres were unable to get them turned back on, and the game was suspended. Johnson had been scheduled to pitch the next night anyway, so he pitched when the suspended game was resumed. He struck out 16 in seven innings, allowed one hit (in the 8th inning, so it was almost a combined no-hitter), and the Dbacks won easily. Kerry and I wondered, when the Padres were so quick with the appropriate music for the lights going out, if they’d dealt with this other times as well. Incidentally, Johnson also pitched in relief in one post-season game for the Diamondbacks – three and a half months later, he came in during the 8th inning of the 7th game of the World Series, retired the five batters he faced, and was the winning pitcher when the Dbacks rallied in the bottom of the 9th, in the best game we’re ever likely to see.
A week ago, I mentioned that Fernando Tatis Jr. had not been hitting well this year, then he got six hits in the two games we saw him play in Anaheim. He’s gotten at least one hit in every game since (and in about 10 games before that, although I hadn’t realized it at the time). Tonight, he had a home run. On May 26, he had a batting average of .244 and an OPS (On-Base average Plus Slugging Percentage) of .756, pretty mediocre numbers. He’s now at .280 and .829, where a player getting payed as much as he is should be. In other words, he’s playing very well. On the other hand, Manny Machado left one of the games we were at with a hamstring injury, came back tonight as the designated hitter, and left the game for a pinch runner.
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