Petco Park

Florida Marlins @ San Diego Padres
June 11, 2006

Marlins 7, Padres 3

W: Brian Moehler
L: Jake Peavy
S: Taylor Tankersley
HR: Cody Ross (FLA), Dan Uggla (FLA)
Attendance: 31,090
Time of Game: 2 hours, 53 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: San Diego, CA
First Game: April 8, 2004
Capacity: 42,445
Type: Open
Surface: Grass

Following the Saturday night Angels game, I spent one last night in Anaheim before heading down the Pacific Coast once again. My buddy and I took off early Sunday morning in order to arrive in San Diego for a Sunday afternoon game at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. The final game of my 2006 California trip was at another one of the best parks in baseball.

Petco Park is located in downtown San Diego, just a short walk from the San Diego Bay and the Pacific Ocean. It was built in this area in an attempt to revitalize a neighborhood, and from what I can tell, it has done just that. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to explore in San Diego, but my limited impression was very positive. This is definitely a city I need to visit again. Not surprisingly, it was a beautiful summer afternoon in San Diego with barely a cloud in the sky.

Petco Park didn't go with the retro ballpark look and feel like many of the other stadiums built in the 2000s. The only significant retro feature is the Western Metal Supply Co. building in left field. This old brick building now houses suites, a restaurant and some bleacher seating. The 100+ year old building was scheduled to be demolished to make way for the stadium, but was declared a historic landmark and eventually became a trademark symbol of the ballpark.

The rest of the outfield seating is quite unique as well. There are two levels of seating in both left and right field, but the wide open center field area gives the park an open feel. Lawn seating is available in center field. Our seats were in the lower level in right field. Interestingly, most of those seats in right field are not covered by the upper deck, which means the right field upper deck is pretty far away from the playing field. Our seats were very nice though.

Another distinctive feature of Petco Park are the two tall light towers just beyond first and third base that also house luxury suites. These towers separate the main seating areas into a few different sections, much like they have in Philadelphia and the new Washington stadium as well. There are three distinct seating levels in those areas of the park.

None of these California ballparks are hitters' paradises, but Petco Park is probably the best pitcher's park in all of baseball. The relatively deep dimensions, especially to right field, combined with the typical wind patterns, makes this a very difficult place to hit home runs. It is almost always at or near the bottom of the league in home runs surrendered. There were a pair of home runs in this game, but both of them would have been long gone in any stadium.

For the second time on this trip, I saw the woeful Florida Marlins play. In fact, I witnessed two consecutive starts by Marlins pitcher Brian Moehler. After getting rocked in San Francisco six days earlier, he was much more effective in this one. Meanwhile, the Padres sent their ace, Jake Peavy, to the mound. Peavy was not having a particularly good season though and 2006 probably wound up being the worst season of his career to date.

The Padres struck first in the bottom of the first inning. Three hits, an error and a wild pitch led to a pair of Padres runs. Brian Giles knocked in the first run with a single, scoring Mike Cameron who bowled over Marlins catcher Miguel Olivo. Adrian Gonzalez also added a RBI single in the inning. Peavy surrendered the lead in the next half inning though. Olivo connected for a two run single to tie the game. It was the first of four hits on the afternoon for Olivo.

For the second consecutive game on this trip, an intentional walk proved to be very costly. Peavy gave a free pass to Miguel Cabrera to put two men on with two outs in the top of the fifth. Cody Ross made the Padres pay for that decision, launching a towering three run home run into the upper deck in left field. This gave the Marlins a 6-2 lead. Peavy didn't make it past the fifth inning, yet managed to strike out ten Marlins in addition to the eight hits, three walks and six earned runs.

Moehler, on the other hand, had a nice outing. He only surrendered those two first inning runs in seven innings of work. Dan Uggla capped off the scoring in the ninth with a solo home run to the top level of the Western Metal Supply Co. building in left field. Taylor Tankersley pitched 1 1/3 innings to record the save. The Marlins won by a final of 7-3.

The Padres dropped to 32-31 after this game and found themselves in third place. However, the NL West was quite weak this season and the Padres wound up winning the division with 88 victories. They lost to the Cardinals in the '06 NLDS.

As I mentioned before, my only regret about this trip was that I didn't plan more time in the beautiful city of San Diego. Petco Park fits in very nicely with its surroundings in downtown San Diego. The entire 2006 California trip was a blast. Along with my first major trip in 2003, this was definitely one of the best baseball trips I've done and one I would highly recommend to others.

That's it for 2006. This brings me to 2007, when I crazily flew all over the country going to the remaining ballparks.

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Next stadium: Chase Field, Phoenix