Monday, March 01, 2010
THE WEST COAST ROAD TRIP.
In an attempt to get back to talking about actual baseball, and something more positive, I wanted to share with you my West Coast baseball roadtrip plans for 2010.
As you know, every season, we like to add a few more ballparks to our growing list. I’ll never be able to do the once-in-a-lifetime “all ballparks in one season” trip, but I can add them a few at a time. The West Coast parks, especially San Francisco, have loomed large on my list of parks I have wanted to see. Last year, we had planned on going to California, but the itinerary was difficult and then we ended up having a family conflict. This year, however, we will not be denied. We have planned a 10-day roadtrip that encompasses every West Coast park (except Seattle, of course, since we’ve been already).
Right after the All Star break, we go out west for 10 days, hitting Anaheim, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix and Los Angeles. We see the Mets six times, see the Mariners in Anaheim, see Phoenix in San Diego, see the Red Sox in Oakland. This trip doesn’t include Seattle because we’ve been there, and doesn’t include Colorado because it doesn’t fit.
We already have tickets for every game except San Diego (because it doesn’t matter - we’re going with friends) and one of the Dodgers games. We got lucky in the SF and Oakland onsales, and have been scouting the secondary market for the rest. We’re pretty happy with what we have. We already have hotel rooms (thank you, Starwood points) and the coast-to-coast plane tickets. (Still need to buy the inter-city plane tickets.) We don’t hit any great promotions with the exception of TIM LINCECUM BOBBLEHEAD DAY in San Francisco. (I swear we will be some of the first people in line for that item.) We are torn between whether Lou Seal or Stomper is the mascot we are the most eagerly looking forward to meeting. (I would kill to encounter the Crazy Crab, but know that’s just not possible.)
Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about this trip, and the planning of it has made the offseason far more tolerable in many ways. (In other ways, it just reinforces how much the Mets suck in terms of how they treat their fans, as you look at ticket prices and amenities and promotions and other similar pieces of information.) I plan on documenting every relevant moment in full, both photographically and in video.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip so we’ve been researching this within an inch of its life. The Google doc with the trip information in it already extends to several pages. Many generous baseball fans on the West Coast have been flooding us with information. But if you have hard-to-know information, insider information, the kind of information you only know because you’ve been there a gazillion times - share away. Anything we can find out by reading the team’s website - we got that stuff down. (We’re the kind of people who read the A-Z guides on every team’s website just because we think it’s fun.) I know LA pretty well, and we have friends in SD, SF and LA, so we’re good on touristy data.
The person who offers up the best or most useful piece of information which I did not already have in my possession will be compensated with a prize. I have a couple lying around here from last season. The scope of the usefulness will determine which prize. I already have expert parking tips for Los Angeles, so you’ll have to top that.
Or you can just tell me how much you hate me for going on such an excellent trip.
Posted by Caryn at 07:29 AM
That looks like a fabulous trip - have a great time!
San Francisco is one of my favorite ballparks (I give PNC in Pittsburge a slight edge), and it has the best food in the majors :)
Enjoy scoping out all of the ballparks!
I have been to all these stadiums except Anaheim—which is strange since I have driven by it at least 100 times.
Oakloand is a concrete dump. Nothing positive about that one
Seatlle is great—the atmosphere around the ballpark is amazing and the stadium itself is great—hope the rook is open.
Arizona is OK ... I was not impressed .... with the rook closed, it just felt artificial .... food was pretty good .... the outfield was just too much metal ... not the best atmosphere for me.
SF—my second favorite stadium to Camden Yards .... great feel all around—outside the stadium, inside, the view, the food .... just a great experience.
LA—another great experience ... decent food, not great .... a well-maintained version of Shea Stadium ...
SD—terrific stadium .... the park in CF is amazing .... decent food, not great .... the Gas Lamp District around the stadium is fantastic.
Enjoy this trip .... I love heading to the West Coast for Mets games .... this year, that 4-game set in SF on one weekend and another 4-game set against the Dodgers n LA the following weekend is a dream trip.
Enjoy your trip—
I agree that Oakland is a concrete dump, but the fans who show up there with the drums and the horns and the flags are wonderful to watch!
Don’t worry, Sharon - honestly, the actual stadium is second or third to me compared to the whole experience of seeing games in different places and going on a ten day trip that’s 95% baseball.
Frankly, I’m not sure what the purpose is of telling someone that various stadiums aren’t “good” is when that person’s just told you that they’re going and they’ve made all the arrangements.
Color me all kinds of jealous! Sounds like an amazing itinerary, enjoy.
My best piece of advice is something you must already know, and I learned last year: in San Diego, remember where you park! The surrounding parking buildings all seem the same, and it took us some time to find our car after a putrid Mets loss. (Not the one where K-Rod allowed a walkoff grand slam. The night before.) Wonderful stadium, though, and great area around the stadium. (As mentioned above, a park in CF!)
Oh, and I guess it’s obvious if you’ve done it in the past but I didn’t realize it until I went to a faraway Met road game: if you can afford it, try to sit behind the Mets dugout. You’ll find yourself surrounded by a great mix of fellow Met fans and friendly fans of the home team.
This sounds amazing! Can’t wait for your recaps etc. Remember to get the garlic fries at AT&T Park!
I’m not sure if I have any valuable advice but I’ll try anyway. Since you will be driving to these stadiums, knowing where to park is essential. I see Ben above has suggested remembering where you parked in San Diego, although I don’t remember having any problem locating my car (I *did* however have issues at Dodger Stadium, being late, dark, not-properly-lit parking lot and of course having a rental car that I wasn’t quite used to driving around with yet). I would say ask around for more advice on where to best enter Dodger Stadium or else you WILL get screwed trying to locate your whereabouts (unless it’s a day game…then enjoy). As for Anaheim (which you knew was my fave), do NOT park behind the home plate entrance but rather park by the highway. Trust me, it will be a lot easier to navigate. I swear without my GPS, I’d still be lost in a Nevada desert since i had to get on the highway, get off, get back on and get back off only to get back on again b/c of where I parked. Of course it could be b/c I am a huge spaz, but hey, admission is the first part of the battle. See you SF!!!
We got astoundingly great parking advice from a Dodger Stadium vet (which I am not sharing publicly). We are staying in a hotel near Anaheim so we don’t even have to drive. San Diego we will be taking the trolley with friends or walking.
Julie, thanks for the garlic fries taunt. :) They are not going to live up to what I remember SF garlic fries tasting like, I’m afraid.
We have gotten very good seats for this trip. Personally I don’t like sitting behind the Mets dugout because I like to watch & take photos of the dugout and you can’t do that if you’re sitting behind it. We are sitting there in AZ b/c we got a great deal and are in the same seats for both games. I also disgree that it’s the only place to find friendly Mets fans - and part of the fun for us in going to other parks is talking to the fans of the other teams, so it wouldn’t really be a consistent road seating strategy for us.
July 23rd is a night game (7:10) - have my tickets in hand and just double checked. Fridays are always night games. The food at Dodger Stadium is generally horrific, even on the field level. There aren’t restaurants like at Petco and AT&T. Dodger dogs used to be good when I was a kid, but they suck enough that I wouldn’t even recommend them just for novelty purposes. Nine out of ten times, we bring our own food (no, I don’t make sandwiches, by bring our own I mean we stop at Gelsons and get sandwiches or salad bar.) Parking at Dodger Stadium is $15 which is almost twice as much as at Angel Stadium ($8, at least last year) but you’re not going to be driving to the Angels game. Last year we went to two games in San Diego and stayed at the Westin Gaslamp which is walking distance. Get to Petco early enough to see the Mets batting practice because there’s an area behind center field where fans can stand and all that divides you from the field is a chain link fence. So you can see players up close and maybe they will throw baseballs into that area (I’m hereby submitting that as a tip for your prize competition). Petco is an extremely cool stadium and we had a great time on our road trip there. AT&T is, needless to say, quite gorgeous. Have only been to one game there, the last Dodgers-Giants game of the regular season in 2008. Of course I’d seen Bruce there in 2003 but that didn’t really count.
Two restaurants you absolutely have to try in Arizona are Don & Charlie’s (amazing food and the largest collection of sports memorabilia west of the Mississippi). Make reservations well in advance!http://www.donandcharlies.com/ - It’s located in Scottsdale
And Matt’s Big Breakfast. They open at 6:30 a.m. (closed Mondays). May be the best breakfast I’ve ever had. It’s very small - get there early or be prepared to wait.
http://www.mattsbigbreakfast.com/ - Located in Phoenix.
I finished my last MLB stadium last year, and I did the West Coast in 2008. You really don’t need to fly anywhere except Denver and Seattle (which you aren’t doing—though the SF to LA drive can be rough). I did a team a day, though.
At any rate, there are things that I’ve found:
1) I hope you got some *really* great advice on Dodger parking, because that was the worst experience getting in and out that I had at any park in the majors. Abysmally bad.
2) You are going to melt in Phoenix. In early July when I went, it was in the 110s. Stay indoors. Don’t spend extended time outside until after dark when it drops to the 80s.
3) People dump on the Oakland Colosseum, but the crowd is actually pretty great.
4) The Dodger Dog is overrated.
5) If you are going to a night game at AT&T, bring a blanket. It gets cold *fast* when the sun goes down.
We’re flying for the entire thing. Didn’t have time to do the drive. Another time.
I really do get the heat and have no plans to do anything in Phoenix during the day that’s not in air conditioning. I saw Pearl Jam play a shed in Phoenix in July and survived. But I really do understand how hot it can get in the desert. Likewise, I’m a veteran of Shoreline Amphitheater and know how the Bay Area can get after dark. I am desperately shopping for a nice lightweight fleece for precisely this reason.
Thanks for the tips.
If you ever do drive it, San Diego to Phoenix through the desert is a beautiful drive.
Oh, two other things:
1) The As have the *best* scorecard in the majors. I don’t know if you bring your own, but one of the things I did was get the local scorecard at every park, and the A’s is the best by far. Well worth getting.
2) Angels parking are in big boxes with an exit leading to a road out onto the highway. If you get there really early, you can usually park right by the exit to the box and it makes getting out really quick.
I also had some good parking advice for San Diego, but I’m sure your friends already know it.
Have a great trip.
We’re walking to Anaheim and taking the trolley to San Diego. But thanks, I appreciate your suggestions!
Can’t remember if I told you this via email, but Chase Field does a stadium tour. It’s pretty cool. You might check into the other stadiums as well. Anaheim doesn’t do one for the general public that I’m aware of.
Oh, yeah—stadium tours. Especially for the older stadiums, they are a *must* if you are like me and want to poke around in every last crevice of a place. In Boston, for example, it is the only way to get up on the Green Monster without a ticket. I definitely found them worth the price when available. I second that suggestion enthusiastically.
Chiming in on stadium tours…we just did the Dodger Stadium tour last month, and it was well worth the reasonable price. They haven’t ignored the team’s roots in Brooklyn, which you may appreciate as a New Yorker. There’s some cool Jackie Robinson and Vin Scully content as well. There are tours every day at 10:00 and 11:30. but you probably already know that since the tours are mentioned on the website. I would recommend the later time because you have a better chance of seeing more stuff, since there’s no deadline to end (unless it’s the day of a day game, but that’s not the case for you).
I genuinely appreciate people trying to help and I’m sorry if I made it sound like I had never done this before, but on this site alone I have no less than 12 detailed writeups of baseball trips where I specifically always discuss ballpark tours, because we never miss them and love them. We are going to all of them except in Anaheim, because they only offer them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when we will not be around. We dont have those tickets yet because there’s no point in buying them in february for a July tour. I didn’t mention them because I did say “anything not covered in the team’s A-Z guide”.
This is a wonderful plan and the best way to do it too. I hope you have a great time. I’ve been to the stadium in Anaheim for a Dodgers game. It doesn’t reach the intensity of Mets/Yankees as much as the media tries to make it do so. The ballpark in Anaheim is a nice stadium to watch a game in. It’s cozy. Enjoy your trip.Make sure to show your colors and take pictures.
That looks like a fabulous trip - have a great time!
San Francisco is one of my favorite ballparks (I give PNC in Pittsburge a slight edge), and it has the best food in the majors :)
Enjoy scoping out all of the ballparks!