Tuesday, August 31, 1999Ballpark hits and errors
After crisscrossing the nation from Baltimore to Seattle, our ballpark aficionados share their memories on everything from hotdogs and beer prices to which of the parks had the best cheap seats.
Best food
• Baltimore's fresh-cut French fries, with salt and vinegar.• Texas' brisket of beef sandwich. Tender and tangy, gotta be the best ballpark brisket anywhere.
• In Phoenix, Indian fry bread and burritos. To be honest, neither was great, but the idea of fry bread and burritos is one worth copying.
• Most esoteric, but good: Denver's buffalo-meat barbecue sandwich and Rocky Mountain oysters with cocktail sauce (green chiles on the side), upperdeck behind home plate.
• Seattle's jumbo hot dogs. Every park sells a big dog, but Seattle's $4.50 jumbo is the size of paper-towel tube on a wonderful bun.
• “Tornadough” fried-dough twister (both butter and parmesan are good, but cinnamon best) in Denver. Finger-lickin' good.
• Baltimore's big pretzels made fresh, not frozen.
Best deals
• Phoenix's $1 seat, in fair territory.• Denver's Rockpile (center-field bleachers). $1 and $4 day of game.
• Camden Yards' scalp-free zone, where Baltimore fans can buy tickets from other fans at face value (scalping tickets is illegal within a mile radius).
• In Atlanta, $1 for the each of the two outer-most seats in each of the rows of the right-field upper deck.
Best places to stand• Catch the sunset from ramps on the third-base side of Safeco Field and see the ferries on Elliott Bay and Olympic Mountains. Breathtaking.
• Red-background standing room only behind left-field bleachers in Texas has an oh-so-pleasant feel. But it's a mystery why. “It's in the design,” is all former Rangers owner Tom Schieffer would say.
• The porches in left and right field at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, which are actually over the field.
• Anywhere on the main concourse in Coors Field, 360 degrees around and open to the field.
Fun art
• “Evolution of the Ball” outside Coors Field — 50 kinds of balls, ranging from conventional to beach ball, moth ball, Lucille Ball etc.• License plate logos in Seattle: Insignias from all major league teams made from found metal (pop cans and such) and mounted on license plates from their states. Cincinnati's, unfortunately, is on Ohio plates from Cuyahoga and Geauga counties.
Touch of NASCAR
• At the BOB in Phoenix, we stopped counting ad signs in the ballpark at 60.• The Texas Rangers downsized Jackie Robinson's retired No.42 to the size of a license plate to squeeze more signs around it.
Stadium Stories
Ballpark hits and errors