Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (110 page)

A popular item at the D-Backs merchandise stands and on their giveaway nights, the Diamondbacks Garden Gnome is practically the unofficial mascot of the club.

Kevin:
The gnome brings good luck.

Josh:
Put it in your garden and your flowers will bloom.

Kevin:
Put it near your pool and no one will pee.

Josh:
But what does it have to do with baseball?

It takes only four minutes for the roof to close, and the Diamondbacks have a special song that plays as it does. According to the team, it costs just $2.00 for it to close or open, which is hard for us to believe considering moving the nine-million-pound structure requires two 200-horsepower engines and miles and miles of steel cable.

While heading out of Phoenix, we found ourselves traveling through the desert. Mountains rose in the distance in mighty beauty that held us both awestruck. Unfortunately Kevin was driving, and Josh had to keep reminding him to keep his eyes on the road, and not the scenery as we wound our way along the narrow canyon roads.

The other problem was that the air conditioning in the road trip car was on the blink (Thanks for nothing Budget Rental!). It worked, but sporadically. The inside of the car was hotter than the surface of the sun.

“Hot enough for you?” Josh joked.

“Yeah, but it’s a dry heat,” Kevin replied.

“Why do people say that stuff?” Josh asked.

“Got me,” said Kevin. He was not trying to cut the conversation short, he never did anything of the sort. Rather, the infernal heat and many days of eating Mexican food morning, noon, and night were beginning to catch up with him.

“I need a pit stop,” he said.

After driving for another 20 miles without the hint of a rest stop, or even a road sign, things began to get urgent. We were passing through a particularly beautiful canyon, with the road hugging cliffs that dropped 200 feet or more. There was no place to stop, but the alternative seemed worse, so Kevin pulled off at a scenic vista that offered the most majestic span of the canyon yet.

“Drastic times call for drastic measures,” Kevin said, the sweat pouring off the brim of his ballcap. Then he put the car in park, opened the door, and climbed over the guardrail.

“Watch out for rattlers,” Josh yelled. “I read on the plane that it’s nesting season.”

Kevin just raised his hand in the air in recognition, descended about ten feet below road-level, and got about his business. When he returned a few moments later he was a new man. It may not have been the most comfortable bathroom experience—hanging off the side of a cliff—but it was satisfying. And the view was breathtaking. He was ready to drive another 500 miles if necessary.

Kevin climbed back up to the asphalt slab, and found Josh on the other edge of the cliff, sitting on the guard rail. “Quite a view, eh?” he said.

But Josh didn’t respond.

“I say it’s quite an impressive view,” Kevin repeated. “

There’s a diamondback, right there.” Josh whispered through clenched teeth.

“Which one?” said Kevin, noticing that a few other cars had pulled into the scenic lookout. “Is it Justin Upton? He’s on my fantasy team.”

Kevin began looking around when Josh grabbed him.

“Not a ballplayer, you idiot, a snake,” he said. “It’s right in front of me.”

Sure enough, a real diamondback lay coiled 15 feet away, which seemed like a safe enough distance. But then again, you never could be sure with snakes. This one was fat with diamonds all along its back. It wasn’t rattling, but it looked mean. And it kept sticking its tongue out at Josh, which didn’t seem like a good sign.

We backed away slowly, the snake eyeballing us like we were the last morsel of food on earth. The slower we backed away, the more the snake watched our every step.

Finally, we managed to escape unharmed and lived to write the second edition of the book. And as an added bonus, Kevin’s bladder didn’t explode.

SAN DIEGO PADRES,
PETCO PARK

T
he good people of San Diego certainly enjoy spending time outdoors. And why shouldn’t they? We would too if it was 72 degrees and sunny every day of the year. Whether it’s surfing the perfect waves of the Pacific, hiking in the cool mountains that surround the city, or simply kicking back wherever and soaking in some sunshine, spending most of one’s day outside is integral to the life of San Diegans. And with the outdoor themes of sky, sunshine, ocean, and earth in mind, they built the Padres their first exclusive home.

When Petco Park opened in 2004, the Padres, their fans, and all of baseball exhaled a collective sigh of relief. The Pads were able to finally play their home games in a facility that was designed exclusively for baseball. No longer would Qualcomm’s decidedly football aesthetics impose themselves on the game. And no longer would the game being played there feel as if it had been retrofitted and remodeled into a facility designed for something else. From its beautiful interior that incorporates the Western Metal Supply Company building into its design, to the “Park at the Park” beyond the center-field wall, to its uniquely lush exterior, Petco is a tremendous place to see a ballgame. San Diego and its home team have plenty to be proud of with this wonderful ballpark. And they will tell you so, as they routinely call Petco “The Greatest Ballpark in Baseball.”

Petco Park opened to glorious reviews. The newly built park had quirkiness designed right in, as have so many of the newer ballparks. And the designers went to great lengths to give the park a sense of place and location—succeeding on many levels to reflect elements that are strictly San Diego in nature. In our earlier edition of this book we said that the exterior had a Mission-style design, but that’s not quite right. More accurately, Petco combines many elements that are native to the region that serve to bring about the unique outdoor feeling.

Petco will never be described as an intimate ballpark. It’s vast on the inside, with a reputation as a pitcher’s park matched only by Busch Stadium in St. Louis. As for the exterior footprint, the stadium resides on seventeen acres—which by comparison is eight acres larger than Fenway Park and 4.5 acres larger than AT&T Park in San Francisco.

The design team consisted of the ballpark architectural firm HOK Sport and Southwest architect Antoine Predock. As we said previously, the designers attempted to capture elements native to the region. And on most accounts, they succeeded. From the outside the ballpark doesn’t exactly scream “ballpark” at passersby. There’s no red brick and green seats and rising walls. There’s no crowded little turnstile gates people must jam through to get to the expansive field within. Rather, Petco feels wide open to the outdoors and beautiful weather the city has to offer. The exposed white steel trusses of the exterior are more reminiscent of the city’s maritime military heritage than anything baseball-related. The outer buildings that surround the seating bowl look vaguely Aztec in style, sloping like pyramids and covered in sandstone and stucco and all the lush greenery one would expect in a place that doesn’t really have winter. Two of the buildings are actually called “garden buildings” and from them hang flowering gardens as beautiful as any you’ll find. At street level, the grounds are exquisitely manicured, featuring jacaranda trees, bubbling waterfalls, and a courtyard full of airy palms. The outer buildings only appear close to the seating bowl from a distance, but as you approach you see they are actually quite distant, echoing the distant mesas common to the Southwest and adding to the vast open outdoor vibe of the park. It’s all very beautiful, and if there is any knock on the design of the ballpark itself, it’s that it doesn’t truly feel like a ballpark until you’re actually sitting in your seat.

Petco Park also fits into its surrounding environment remarkably well. Though not directly on the water, the park
offers striking views of sailboats, navy vessels, cruise ships and the Coronado Bridge, spanning San Diego Bay from both its inner and outer grounds. Red trolleys dart past as the Orange Line of the San Diego Trolley system reaches its terminus a block away. And the park was nestled into the existing Gaslight District, an area teeming with restaurants, bars, and hotels. When Petco was being built, the Gaslight District was several shades seedier than it appears today. As a measure of good faith for the generous public funds used to build the ballpark, the Padres and their development partners agreed to spend $311 million on new construction surrounding the ballpark. Everyone seems to be a winner with this ballpark development, as a better location could scarcely be imagined.

Inside the ballpark, the most distinguishing feature that viewers on television rarely get to see is the “Park at the Park,” an elevated grassy knoll beyond the center-field fence that can accommodate as many as twenty-five hundred fans, most of whom seem to want to keep one eye on the game and the other on their children, or singles in swimsuits playing Frisbee. At first we weren’t too sure about the “Park at the Park,” but then it occurred to us that for years Cactus League fans have been sunbathing during Spring Training on the grassy embankments beyond the outfield fences of the ballparks in Arizona. Perhaps regular-season sunbathers were long overdue in the Major Leagues. And what better place for them than in laid-back and always sunny Southern California?

For those who want to keep both eyes on the game, Petco offers protected sight lines from nearly every section. A revolutionary “fractured” approach to the ballpark seating configuration creates clusters of independently angled sections that all point toward the batter’s box at slightly different angles. This makes it impossible to walk the full circumference of the park on the upper levels, but having good sight lines will always be more important than being seat-hopper friendly in our book. And Petco Park offers quality views from all levels.

A few days after the Padres were swept by the Yankees in the 1998 World Series, the voters of San Diego approved a proposition to provide partial public funding for a new downtown ballpark. Under the plan, the city kicked in $304 million toward the project’s $457 million budget and the Padres contributed the rest. The ballpark cost $285 million to build, with the remaining portion of the price tag attributed to land acquisition and infrastructure. Most of the city’s financial support came from newly issued municipal bonds to be paid back with the revenue generated by a new hotel tax. This makes good sense for the city and its residents. Let the tourists pay a little more when they’re in town, and let the locals reap the benefits. We inconvenienced friends and relatives for places to stay during our road trip (and you should too), so the hotel tax didn’t bother us one bit.

Josh:
My Aunt Jane didn’t charge me a dime to sleep on her couch, so my tax was zero!

Kevin:
And she did your laundry and cooked your breakfast too.

HOK has surfed atop the leading edge of the recent ballpark construction wave. The company, which since Petco’s opening has changed its name to Populous, made its mark with Oriole Park at Camden Yards and its success just snowballed from there. Fans who have been to Baltimore will note the similarities between the use of its trademark B&O Warehouse and San Diego’s use of the landmark Western Metal Building in the two ballpark complexes. But unlike the B&O, part of the Western Metal Building actually juts out into the field of play at Petco. The building’s southwest corner forms the left-field foul pole. That’s right—the ballpark was constructed, literally, around this
old masonry building. If the ball hits the face of the building to the left of the pole, it’s a long foul; if it hits to the right, it’s a home run. The building also houses restaurants and observation suites for high rollers, as well as a rooftop standing-room area. What a unique trademark feature to build a ballpark around. And to think, we were starting to feel like we’d seen it all.

Petco Park was originally slated to open in April 2002, but several lawsuits brought against the city by citizens opposed to the hotel tax led to a construction halt in 2000. Since San Diego couldn’t sell municipal bonds backed by the tax hike until the disputes were resolved, there was no money to continue the project. After construction resumed, the Friars struck a naming-rights deal with Petco, the familiar pet-supplies retailer. Just a few days after announcing the twenty-two-year, $60 million agreement in January 2003, the Padres again faced resistance from the local community when PETA called for the Padres to cancel the agreement. PETA was boycotting Petco (the store, not the yet-to-be-completed ballpark), claiming that an unacceptable number of animals died from diseases and overcrowding while in Petco stores.

Josh:
PETA! Are those the same soy-huggers who petitioned the Brewers to add a tofu-dog to their Sausage Race?

Kevin:
Yup.

Josh:
Ridiculous.

Kevin:
You talk tough, but I saw you reach for your wallet when that Sarah McLachlan commercial came on TV last night.

After joining the National League in 1969 as an expansion team along with the Montreal Expos, the Padres played their first thirty-five seasons in the multipurpose, multi-named stadium that has also served as home to the National Football League’s Chargers. At the time of this book’s print date, the footballers were lobbying for a new stadium in or around San Diego but had not yet broken through the political red tape. There may have been decorative palms beyond the old outfield fences, but make no mistake about it, the stadium currently known as Qualcomm was one of the cookie-cutters. It wasn’t the worst cookie-cutter to ever come down the pike, and it served the Padres well for many years, but in the end, it was wearing out its welcome for baseball. The stadium’s main problem was that it was too gigantic to provide an authentic ballpark experience, especially after it was remodeled in 1983 to add ten thousand extra seats in right and center field for football. This expansion increased the stadium’s seating capacity to more than sixty-seven thousand. Perfect for hosting bowl games, lousy for baseball. And lousy for regular season football too. The Chargers have had trouble selling out the four-level stadium, which has meant the city (as per an agreement with the team) has had to buy the unsold tickets from the Chargers to avoid the NFL’s television blackout rule. This has really eaten local residents whose tax money has been spent to subsidize the NFL.

From 1967 until 1980 the Chargers’ present facility and the Padres’ longtime facility was called San Diego Stadium, then from 1981 until 1996 it was called Jack Murphy Stadium in honor of the local sports editor who campaigned to bring Major League ball to San Diego. After Murphy championed the movement to garner support for a big league team, a 1965 voter referendum approved construction of the $28 million stadium in Mission Valley. This suburban neighborhood had previously housed Westgate Park, which belonged to the Triple-A Pacific Coast League Padres. Like many of the PCL cities, baseball fans in San Diego still carry tremendous reverence for the original incarnation of the Padres, as is evidenced by the many references to the club, the league, and the era inside Petco.