Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Safeco Field gives fans a choice of great views

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Newest park is best for just walking around

BY JOHN J. BYCZKOWSKI
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Safeco Field. (Enquirer file photo) | ZOOM |

        SEATTLE — What seems quaint to visitors is often a big pain to the locals.

        Take the trains that run by the new Safeco Field. Fifty trains run by the ballpark each day, rumbling past right field during ballgames about every other inning. Visiting sportswriters wax nostalgic about how the trains add to the old-time feel of this unstained new ballpark.

        OK, so the law says that a train passing through a grade-level crossing has to blow its whistle. But that long and that loud? Louis Dukes, a fan from Everett, Wash., thinks the engineers deliberately pull a little long on their whistles, to put ripples in the beers of the upper-deck fans. “They should name this place "the Depot,'” he groused.

        It is but one blemish on this fine new ballpark, where the first game was played just July 20. Players complain about glare off the batter's eye, and the wind — an element foreign to the old Kingdome — blowing sure home runs back into the ballpark.

        Long lines at the concession stands create jams in the main concourse. The Mariners have attempted to route the crowds using portable metal barriers.

        “The crowd dynamics haven't figured out how to flow through the concourse,” said spokeswoman Rebecca Hale, trying to be nice to both the fans and the architects.

        Pray that the Mariners and the “crowd dynamics” get that figured out, because this may be the best park in baseball for just walking around. There are seemingly dozens of perches and balconies for taking in the game, or checking out the aircraft carrier sitting in nearby Elliott Bay, or watching the sun set over the Olympic Mountains, or all of them at once.

Safeco Field | ZOOM |

        “There's one place here where you can take a picture and get the city, the Space Needle and everything,” said Mitch Roseberry of Seattle, a mechanic at Boeing.

        Team president Chuck Armstrong looks out from the press box in wonder at the rows of people leaning on railings around the outfield. “We don't sell standing room, but look at all the people standing,” he said. “They all have seats.”

        And it's not that the seats are bad. There simply are many great places to take in the view. “Everything changes if you move around — your perspective, the game, how you view it, what you see of the field and how you orient yourself to the game, and then you can also orient yourself away from the game,” said John Palmer, an architect and the Mariner's head of ballpark development.

        You'll find fans:

        • Down the right field foul line, beyond section 111, on a balcony inside a break in the upper level.

        • On the far end of the upper level in right field, at the top of the stair tower, on the balcony next to the main scoreboard, overlooking right center field, and looking north toward the skyline and Elliott Bay.

        • In a bar stool, in the bar beneath the hand-operated scoreboard in left field, through a foot-high slight along the bottom of the scoreboard, toward home.

        • On the catwalk and porch in foul territory down the third baseline, with the skyline at your back.

        • On the walkway beneath the left field $7 bleacher seats, along the drink rail, above the out-of-town scoreboard.

        • Through the chain link fence along the bullpens in left field.

        • The last row in the upper deck. Through the glass on the third-base side, fans can see the bay and the mountains; on the right looms Mount Ranier.

        “There's no comparison between this and the Kingdome,” said Conrad Gonzalez, a teacher from Anchorage, who said he's seen two dozen ballparks, including Ebbets Field and Crosley Field. “You're right on the field.”

        Now, if the Mariners can only teach the crowd about dynamics.

       

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