Moving to Miami

They’re counting down in Miami.

At the end of the Florida Marlin’s ninth-inning 7-6 home victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 9, 2010, the stadium announcer told everyone there were only 160 more baseball games in what is now called Sun Life Stadium.

Sun Life, which opened in 1987 as Joe Robbie Stadium, will cease to be a baseball park in 2012 when the Marlins get a new $515 million stadium with a retractable roof. The park, with seating for 37,000, is going up now on the old Orange Bowl site in the Little Havana area of Miami and is scheduled to see its first game on opening day of the 2012 season.

We were pleasantly surprised when we saw the Marlins beat the Dodgers, partly because Florida came back from a two-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth to win with a bases-loaded double by Ronny Paulino and a walk-off sacrifice fly by Jorge Cantu. But also because we had heard so many negative things about seeing baseball in Sun Life Stadium and we actually enjoyed the field despite its problems.

There was a story in the local media before the game about the demise of the large “Teal Monster” scoreboard in left field. The scoreboard, which kept track of scores of other games, suffered an equipment malfunction and no one wanted to pay to get it fixed, so there was a large ad for Major League Baseball in its place. We didn’t miss it, though, because we’d never seen it.

Sun Life is obviously a football stadium that the Miami Dolphins let the Marlins use on occasion (it’s located on Dan Marino Boulevard and the names of former Dolphins stars line the stadium). That doesn’t normally work very well, as other MLB teams can attest (the early Colorado Rockies for one). But Sun Life felt … well, full of life the night we were there. There were 25,308 fans for the game, about 10,000 more than we’d seen earlier in the week at Tropicana Field, and they were a noisy lot.

Part of the noise level came from the fans but the loudspeakers also boomed. It quickly became obvious the Marlins want to give their fans more than baseball entertainment. It started before we got into the stands. Near the entrance there were a half-dozen, scantily-clad young ladies “dancing” to bump-and-grind music. We found out later inside the park that these were the Marlins cheerleaders, called the Mermaids (photo).

There was a delightful saxophone rendition of the National Anthem before the game by the South Florida jazz saxophonist Billy Bones. And Scott Stapp, lead singer of the rock band Creed, sang in a video what may be the club’s fight song, “Marlins Will Soar,” to kick off the game. There were long breaks each half-inning, with the time filled with all manner of contests like “name the Marlin Morph” and dancing by a bunch of overweight dudes called the “Marlin Manatees.” There also were fireworks (try that indoors) and a rock concert after the game.

One of the highlights of the game was an eight-minute delay in the fourth inning when a section of the padding fell off the right field wall. Several members of the field crew rushed out to fix it, amid shouts from the fans to “use duct tape.” Another highlight was the sixth-inning appearance of Marlins relief pitcher Burke Badenhop, who had three straight hits pounded back to him. He fielded each one cleanly, turned and fired to second base, but missed the first two throws. The crowd erupted in applause when he made the third throw to start a double play.

And, by the way, Sun Life was the 31st MLB park Alta and I have seen a game in, all of the current major league teams plus the old Montreal Expos' dungeon. Now we have to start over with the new parks in Washington, D.C., New York City and Minneapolis. And we’ll be back to Miami sometime after their new field opens.

Take Me Outdoors

Baseball is an outdoor game. Something happens to baseball when it goes indoors. Maybe it’s the sound; the noise indoors sounds canned.

We’ve been to all the indoor baseball parks now, hitting Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., April 7, 2010 for the Tampa Bay Rays’ second home game of the season. Tropicana’s not a bad stadium, certainly not like where the Montreal Expos or Minnesota Twins used to play. Tropicana also isn’t the best indoor park, but the two on top of my list – Miller Field in Milwaukee and Chase Field in Phoenix – both have retractable roofs. Tropicana is the last indoor baseball park without a retractable roof.

The only excuse to have an indoor baseball field is to protect the players and the fans from weather. But I’m not convinced indoor baseball draws more fans. The night we saw the Rays beat Baltimore 4-3 there were only 15,220 fans. That was about one-third of the crowd on opening night. And the Rays started the 2010 season as one of the hottest teams in baseball, even sweeping the Red Sox in Boston. In 2009, Tampa Bay was 23rd out of 30 teams in attendance, drawing an average of 23,147.

I don’t think Tampa’s fans are staying away because the team isn’t any good. I’m blaming the stadium. The location in St. Petersburg could be part of the problem because it’s away from the population base in Tampa. But I think ballgames indoors also leave something to be desired. Weather is part of baseball, whether it’s the wind coming in from centerfield or rain that interrupts the 4th inning. There are even times games are postponed.

There’s a Tampa Bay civic group that wants to build a new stadium for the Rays, who are locked by contract with St. Petersburg into using Tropicana until 2027. The civic group wants a stadium closer to Tampa. I haven’t seen anything about having a new park with either a retractable roof or no roof at all.

Farther south, in Miami, the Florida Marlins have been playing in a football stadium (now called Sun Life Stadium) with a layout that’s much worse for baseball than Tropicana. But the Marlins park, even though it is falling apart, is still a better place to watch baseball than Tropicana. Part of the reason is that it is not covered (sure, we haven’t been to a Marlins home game in August). We saw the Marlins game April 10, also their second home game of the season, and they drew 25,308, albeit against the Dodgers.

Tropicana Field almost feels deserted it is so quiet, despite 15,000 fans. The biggest noise comes from the incessant clanging of blue cowbells which I guess are supposed to be a rally signal. They made me feel like I’d gotten lost in a Swiss cow barn.

The best thing about Tropicana is the Rays Touch Tank, a large fish tank in centerfield where kids and adults line up before and during the game for a chance to “pet” and feed a flock (herd?) of Cownose Rays. The rays, gray and about two feet across, swim circles around the tank, bumping into hands stuck in the water. The rays feel smooth, but like hard rubber.

I’ve been keeping score at all the ballparks. At all the previous parks we’ve been to, a scorecard costs $1 or $2. Not so at Tropicana. The scorecard is included in a free issue of the Rays’ magazine, “Inside Pitch.”

M-M-M-Miller

Miller Park marks the 29th MLB baseball stadium we’ve been to and undoubtedly will rank among our favorites.

The beauty of the day (Memorial Day 2009) probably accounts for some of our pleasure with Miller Park but we would have loved the stadium anyway. We saw an afternoon game with the bright sun warming our backs. Everyone around us was having a good time. The game itself was a pitchers’ duel with no hits until the 6th inning, with the Brewers beating archrival St. Louis 1-0 in 10 innings.

Milwaukee’s Yovani Gallardo gave up just 2 hits over 8 innings , while the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter had a perfect game until the 7th inning. Bill Hall won the game for the Brewers with a two-out single, scoring Casey McGehee, who reached first to start on the inning on an error by third baseman Brian Barden.

Miller Park has an old-time baseball feel even though it opened in 2001 and has a fan-shaped retractable roof. There’s lots of brick on the exterior. Arched windows circle the stadium. There are a number of statues in the front, including one of Hank Aaron.

The park, with construction starting in 1996, had been scheduled to open in 1999 and was to have been the site for the 1999 All Star game. But financing problems stalled the construction (the original $250 million cost went to $400 million), as well as a crane accident in July 1999 that killed three construction workers. There’s a monument to the workers near the front of the stadium (see photo). The All Star game was finally played at Miller Park in 2002.

The field has a huge color screen past center field, as well as a scoreboard that stretches 76 feet. Past left-center field is a yellow slide for the mascot, Bernie the Brewer, to slide down. Inside the park is a Brewers Hall of Fame and the Miller Park Kids Zone play area.

We were told a must-have for lunch was a brat. I tried one and was disappointed, a Johnsonville brat would have been better than the one I had. Alta had a huge pretzel (10-12 inches across) that was dipped in melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Sausage as well as beer is a definite feature of Miller Park. Beside the kind you eat, there is a “sausage race” during the 7th inning stretch, when “Roll Out the Barrel” is played on the loudspeakers.

We walked to the park from our motel (Best Western Woods View Inn on National Avenue), a 20-minute walk past a VA hospital and through a wooded park. A very nice experience on a beautiful day. The park is adjacent to Wood National Cemetery, established in 1871 originally for the burial of Civil War veterans. Among those buried there are five Medal of Honor recipients. Since we were there on Memorial Day weekend flowers, flags and personal mementos had been placed on all the grave sites (photo).

Doomed Dome

The Minnesota Twins’ ballpark since 1982, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, is in its final season in 2009. It will be replaced in 2010 by Target Field. I doubt anyone will be sorry to see the Metrodome go.

We’ve been to games in 28 of the ballparks for the 30 Major League Baseball teams, plus the old Olympic Stadium in the Montreal Expos last season. Olympic Stadium was really bad and the Metrodome is nearly as bad.

When I walked into the Metrodome for a Twins game against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 23, I felt like it was the 1960s and I was in the old arena where the National Western Stock Show was held in Denver.

A narrow, concrete concourse winds around the park’s exterior, with a few concession stands sprinkled around. You can’t see the game from the concourse, unless you try to peak through guarded gates. We sat in the second level. After taking stairs to that level, we were told (politely but firmly) by a guard at the top of the stairs that we couldn’t go back to the first level. That’s to make sure that low-lifes like us couldn’t try to find better seats later in the game.

The seats, at least in the second level, were built so that we had to look around the heads of fans in front of us to see home plate. There also isn’t any leg room. The sound system reverberates with a hollow sounds that makes it difficult to understand the announcer. And the plastic turf looks like faded green carpet that’s been left out in the Minnesota winters.

Again following the advice of the New York Times, we tried the carved turkey sandwich from the Minnesota Carvery, located behind Section 132 on the ground level (don’t try to sneak back down from the second level after the game starts). The Times was right about the moist and flavorful turkey, although that’s all you get on your sandwich, no lettuce, no tomato, no nothing. It does come with a Caesar salad, but you can scrape that off your plate without trying it unless you just have to have lettuce.

When you leave the Metrodome through one of the regular doors, you get pushed out by the air pressure pumped into the stadium to keep the dome up. You can also use the carousel-like entry, which prevents the wind-tunnel effect.

The real highlight of going to a Twins home game (I’m sure the smaller Target Field due to open in April 2010 will be better), is going to Minneapolis. We loved everything we saw in Minneapolis in the 2 days we were there. We stayed in a great (and reasonable) hotel, the Aloft Hotel on Washington Avenue South in the Mill District near the Mississippi River. Nearby is the gorgeous new Guthrie Theater complex, the Saturday Farmers’ Market, Stone Arch Bridge across the river, the Sculpture Garden, and St. Anthony Falls (the latter is the reason Minneapolis was such a mill town).

Target Field, which will cost about $480 million, is still adjacent to downtown Minneapolis. It’s being built by the same architect (Populous) that build Baltimore’s Camden Yards, PNC Park in Pittsburgh and AT&T Park in San Francisco. We read that the grass for the new park will be from Colorado. The sod got its initial inspection by Twins officials this year.

Since this is the last year for the Metrodome, the Twins are collecting votes for the top moments in the park’s history. My vote goes to tearing it down.

Treking at Kauffman

There are three main reasons to go to a baseball game, besides the game itself. First, there’s the park experience. Next, discovering the hometown faves and unique foods (think fried Twinkies). Finally, it’s watching the fans.

We visited three parks in May – Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, the Metrodome in Minneapolis and Miller Park in Milwaukee. Miller Park was the best of the three, but more about that later.

At Kauffman Stadium we expected the entertainment to be led by the best pitcher in baseball this year, Zack Greinke, who had a 0.60 ERA and 7 wins going into the game against the Cleveland Indians. But Greinke had an off-day for him, exiting after 6 innings. The Royals led at that point, 3-2, but went on to lose, 8-3, as their bullpen went into freefall.

Midway through the game we noticed a fan, a young man probably taking the afternoon off work on a glorious Thursday afternoon, reading a book between innings. Turns out he was more than halfway through “Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls,” one of the latest in that series. Captain Jean-Luc Picard has to stop the soldiers of Armageddon as they lay waste to worlds. You could cast Greinke in the lead role and the Indians as the evil soldiers, but in that case Picard is gone (living to fight another day) and Armageddon wins.

We’d (at least I had) been looking forward to some famous Kansas City barbeque at Kauffman. The New York Times did a story last year about the best ballpark food and listed the barbeque from the Gates and Sons Bar-B-Q stand at the stadium. Turns out that the $250 million renovation of Kauffman Stadium, completed in 2008, saw the exit of Gates. There’s now another BBQ stand but we opted for what one of the customer service reps said was the best food – the $9 chicken quesadilla at the Rivals Sports Bar past right field. If we go back to Kauffman, we’ll be looking for something else to eat.

Kauffman Stadium is one of the oldest MLB parks, opening in 1973. The renovation has made it feel new, and much of it is. The concourse is twice as wide as it was, opening up space for more vendors and concession stands. You also can walk the main concourse clear around the park, stopping in centerfield to enjoy a fountain celebration (photo), and the cascading waterfalls in left field ($7 game tickets for the Fountain Seats). Kauffman also has what is the biggest JumboTron in any park I’ve been in.

We've Got Liftoff

We thought American Airlines and Mother Nature were conspiring to keep us from seeing the Houston Astros. (Prepare for a rant.)

We had tickets to see the Astros play the Cincinnati Reds at Minute Maid Park April 18. Game time was 6:05 p.m. and our flight from Dallas was scheduled to arrive before 2 p.m., so we didn’t think there would be a problem, especially since our hotel was walking distance from the park.

Our flight was announced at DFW after the gate attendant said the crew had arrived. We boarded the plane and sat down, expecting to take off close to our 12:45 scheduled departure. After 5 or so minutes, passengers started complaining it was getting too warm so the flight attendant said she’d get someone to turn on the air. She came back to say the flight crew actually had not arrived and no one could cool things down. Another 5-10 minutes and a voice over the loud-speaker suggested we might want to get off the plane because no one knew where the pilot and co-pilot were.

That’s the way it stood until about 3 p.m., when the gate attendant announced they’d found another flight crew. Ten minutes later we were told the weather was so bad in Houston they’d closed Bush International. We sat, and sat, and sat some more.

We finally got into the Houston airport well after 5, had to pick up a car, drive to our downtown hotel and check-in, then walk about 6 blocks to Minute Maid Park. We made it for the 7th-inning stretch (during which they sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas”).

Minute Maid Park (originally called Enron Park before that financial debacle) celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2009, replacing the Astros’ home of 35 years at the Astrodome. It has a retractable roof and three retractable side walls beyond left field (they all were closed when we were there because of the heavy rain).

We discovered the retractable roof has leaks. My seat happened to be right under one, which dampened my enjoyment of the game until we moved down a couple of spots.

There’s a large model of a locomotive on the wall above left field, because the park’s site used to be Houston’s railroad terminal. Other than that, Minute Maid Park doesn't have many interesting elements, except the models of Texas-sized cowboy boots (photo) at various locations in the public areas and the FiveSeven Grille overlooking centerfield. The FiveSeven is named for the numbers worn by two of the Astros best players, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell.

Another distinctive feature of the park is a small hill sloping up in the far reaches of centerfield, beyond the warning track. A flag pole sits at the top of the hill, within the field itself. But it’s 436 feet from home plate, so not many fly balls are hit there.

Houston was up 3-0 when we arrived but we did get to see a four-run 7th in a 7-0 shutout of the Cincinnati Reds. Astros starter Wandy Rodriguez had 10 strikeouts while limiting the Reds to two hits and two walks.

Dreamin' of Nolan

The Texas Rangers are living in the past. The past may be good, but it doesn’t help the now.

The Rangers put on a pre-game show at Rangers Stadium the night we went to see them play the Kansas City Royals. The show, which featured former Rangers flamethrower Nolan Ryan, got as many cheers from the fans as the team did on the field. The modern-day Rangers looked like they were dreaming about the past on this night, April 17, as the Royals took batting practice off a series of Rangers pitchers for 19 hits and 12 runs in a 12-3 blowout that looks closer on paper than it was.

The pre-game video of Ryan showed him reaching various pitching summits, but the episode that drew the most cheers and laughter wasn’t about baseball. It showed a Ryan pitch hitting Robin Ventura in a 1993 game, then Ventura charging the mound. Ryan, then 46, wrapped Ventura in a headlock and pummeled him in the face. Texans are proud of that sort of thing. Nolan must be proud of it too, because he’s now president of the Rangers. (Admittedly, it isn’t just Texans who enjoy full-contact baseball. The video still gets high ratings on the Internet.)

For us, the best things about Rangers Ballpark, opened in 1994, were its museum and the fireworks show after the game (photo above). We took a tour of the stadium before the game, getting glimpses of some of the corporate boxes, the press box, the indoor batting cages (the Rangers get two, while the visiting team gets one), a Nolan Ryan warm-up room (which he didn’t use professionally) and a three-story museum. The latter is filled with Ranger memorabilia but the best part is a section with baseball memorabilia garnered from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Only 24,000 fans showed up for the game we saw. There would have been fewer except for the post-game fireworks, which matched a lot of Fourth of July celebrations. There had been a heavy rain earlier in the day and the chilly night reminded us of an early-season Colorado Rockies game in Coors Field. The only offense for the Rangers were three ho-hum solo home runs in the 8th and 9th, while Texas had no pitching and made several mental errors on the bases.

The Rangers Ballpark in Arlington (it’s official name) is open to the sky and was built to give it an old-time feel. Oddly, the architects and team killed that feel by placing a multi-story office building just beyond centerfield. The offices appear to have balconies that allow the office-dwellers to watch the game from lawn chairs, although no one wanted to see the Rangers self-destruct the night we were there. I reckon the office owners can invite prospects over and charge it off as a business expense.

Rangers Ballpark is attractive from the outside, with lots of red brick and glass. The architect also recreated a miniature version of the park for youth ball games outside the stadium and there’s a Minute Maid kids playground just inside the front gate. The park lies just down the street from Six Flags over Texas.

Food? We tried to search out what was the most distinctive food at Rangers Ballpark but found nothing worth talking about. Even our tour guide admitted there was nothing special, unless you think barbecue is unique. Better to eat down the street at Humperdink’s, a brew pub with very good hamburgers, Tex Mex and other pub delights.