Citizens Bank Park

New York Mets @ Philadelphia Phillies
May 31, 2004

Mets 5, Phillies 3

W: Orber Moreno
L: Brett Myers
S: Braden Looper
HR: Jason Phillips (NYM), Pat Burrell (PHI)
Attendance: 43,620
Time of Game: 3 hours, 2 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Philadelphia, PA
First Game: April 12, 2004
Capacity: 43,500
Type: Open
Surface: Grass

My summer baseball trip of 2004 took me back to familiar territory: the Midwest. However, a month prior to my main trip of the summer, I knocked out the first new ballpark of the year on Memorial Day in Philadelphia. I was in Philadelphia for a friend's party and went to the Phillies game the following afternoon with a bunch of people. I had done the same thing the previous Memorial Day when I saw my first and only game at Veterans Stadium. However, I didn't bother counting that as an official stop on my stadium tour since I knew I would be returning for a game at the brand new Citizens Bank Park the following summer.

As has been the case for most Memorial Day weekends since I moved out east, the weather didn't exactly cooperate on this day. There was rain throughout the afternoon, including prior to the game. A pre-game rain delay pushed the start back more than an hour. On a positive note, this gave me more time to explore the new park.

Citizens Bank Park is a huge improvement over Veterans Stadium. It is an outstanding ballpark in the South Philly sports complex. The complex includes Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles), Wachovia Center (76ers, Flyers, Villanova) and the old Spectrum. The Vet was also in this area. So all of Philly's professional teams play within a couple blocks of one another, unlike any other four sport city in the country. The location is pretty good too: easily accessible from major highways and not too far from downtown Philly.

I really like the design of Citizens Bank Park. There are great seats throughout the park. There are plenty of lower level seats in the outfield and a neat second level in left field below the large scoreboard. There are three levels surrounding most of the field, including right field, creating a little more of an intimate feel than a few of the other similar parks. The concourses are another strong point of the park.

There are plenty of other places to watch the game if you don't like your seats. There is a popular standing room area above the bullpens in center field, which is ideal for hecklers... and in Philadelphia there are no shortage of those. You just don't know for sure if they will heckle the visitors or their own Phillies.

Our seats were in the second level in left field. These would have been pretty nice seats on a normal day, but not so great in the rain. If you need proof of our inability to avoid the raindrops, just see the cover of my program below which was exposed to the elements. Later in the game, we moved to dryer grounds on the concourse during the second rain delay and the later stages of the game. Some of our friends were lucky enough to move down behind the Mets dugout after the delay, but I did not.

After the pre-game rain delay, the game finally started with Brett Myers on the mound for the Phillies. Cliff Floyd put the Mets on the board early with an RBI double in the top of the first. Matt Ginter pitched three scoreless innings for the Mets, but would not figure in the final outcome due to the second rain delay. After the third, the umpires called for the delay. It took the grounds crew a considerable amount of time to get the tarp over the infield in the pouring rain.

Two and a half hours later, the game resumed with the Mets ahead 1-0. Obviously, the new park has a great drainage system, because it appeared for a while that the game might have to be postponed. The crowd thinned out considerably during the lengthy delay, but we stuck it out.

Jason Phillips promptly hit a home run for the Mets in the top of the fourth to make it 2-0. A Todd Zeile double in the fifth made it 3-0, before the Phillies finally got on the board in the bottom half. Chase Utley reached base to lead off the bottom half as his grounder went threw the legs of catcher, turned first baseman, Mike Piazza. After the Phillies loaded the bases, a base hit by David Bell cut the Mets lead to 3-2.

The Mets got back to work in the top of the eighth. A two run double by Mike Cameron gave the Mets a commanding 5-2 lead. Pat Burrell hit a home run in the bottom half, his second home run on my ballpark tour. However, the Mets hung on for a 5-3 victory. Orber Moreno picked up his first major league win in relief. Braden Looper pitched a scoreless ninth inning to record the save.

This was a rematch of the Phillies/Mets matchup I saw in Shea Stadium the previous year, with the visiting team winning each game. Much like 2003, this season was much better for the Phillies than the Mets, however the Braves once again won the National League East. This game was early enough in the season where both teams were very much in the hunt. It probably would have been an intense crowd for this rivalry game, but the rain delays put a damper on things (pun intended). By the end of the game, there couldn't have been more than a few thousand of us remaining, despite the game being a sellout.

It was unfortunate that the weather did not cooperate, but it did not hurt my opinion of the ballpark. Citizens Bank Park is definitely in the upper echelon of stadiums. Probably better than Philadelphia deserves (just kidding... sort of). Surprisingly, I haven't made it back to another game since this one. I'm sure I will go there again soon though since its a pretty easy trip up I-95.

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From Philadelphia

Next stadium: Busch Stadium, St. Louis

Comerica Park

Cleveland Indians @ Detroit Tigers
September 4, 2003

Tigers 2, Indians 1

W: Gary Knotts
L: Jake Westbrook
S: Danny Patterson
Attendance: 11,371
Time of Game: 2 hours, 25 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Detroit, MI
First Game: April 11, 2000
Capacity: 41,000
Type: Open
Surface: Grass

We had a quick turnaround between the game in Toronto on Wednesday night and an afternoon game in Detroit, so following the Blue Jays game, we drove west for a couple hours through Ontario. On Wednesday morning, we completed the drive to Detroit, crossing the border from Windsor to Detroit. To be honest with you, we didn't save the best stop of the baseball trip for last, and it had nothing to do with Comerica Park. It was a late season, weekday afternoon game featuring two awful teams in quite possibly my least favorite city in the USA.

I don't want to offend my Michigan friends, but Detroit sucks. Of course, growing up in the Chicago area, I learned to dislike Detroit well before I ever visited there. Despite that, I don't think you will find many people outside of Michigan who speak highly of the city. From what I've seen, there are very few "nice" parts of Detroit. No downtown has more abandoned buildings. In these tough economic times, particularly for the Detroit auto-makers, I imagine conditions are even worse than they were on this visit.

Having said that, Comerica Park is one of the city's bright spots. In fact, the ballpark area, including neighboring Ford Field (home of the lowly Detroit Lions) is pretty nice. We took our chances and parked in a public lot several blocks away to save some money. Fortunately, my car was still there when we returned after the game.

Comerica Park might be the best park in baseball for kids. There are large concourses with a little bit of everything for youngsters, including a carousel and a Ferris wheel. For many years, these must have been nice distractions considering the awful team the Tigers had on the field.

I really like the design of this park too. The exterior is a traditional brick design, similar to most parks built around the turn of the century. There are concrete tigers perched over the entrances and all around the park. The single level outfield is spacious and open, with nice views of downtown Detroit. There are only two primary seating levels around most of the park, which keeps the upper deck seats a little closer to the field than in some other stadiums.

The other thing I like about Comerica is that it bucked the trend of new stadiums and is a great park for pitchers. Most of the newer stadiums are much more home run friendly. It actually takes a legitimate shot to hit one out of Comerica. When the park first opened, it was even better for pitchers than it is now. They moved in the left field fences in 2003. Prior to that, the left field and center field dimensions were unlike any other park.

Ever since leaving Boston, we tried to spend as little money as possible for the remainder of the trip, so we bought cheap seats in the upper deck all the way down the left field line. Knowing there would be hardly anyone at the game, we figured we would be able to sneak into much better, lower level seats. However, there were so few people at this particular game that the ushers had nothing better to do than to check tickets. So we trekked up to the upper deck for the game.

This September game featured two teams whose seasons had effectively ended weeks, if not months earlier. The Indians were bad, but the Tigers were downright pathetic. They had already lost 102 games at this point and were in jeopardy of breaking the all time record in futility. Jake Westbrook was the starting pitcher for Cleveland while Gary Knotts took the mound for Detroit.

To add to the less than intriguing matchup, the game was extremely boring too. Neither team scored in the first four innings. Westbrook had a no-hitter going through four, so I guess we had that going for us. However, the Tigers scored first in the bottom of the fifth. This is how one of the worst teams in baseball history scored their two runs... After two singles to start the inning, A.J. Hinch grounded into a double play, with the runner from third scoring. Ramon Santiago then singled, stole second and advanced to third on a throwing error by the catcher, then scored on a wild pitch. So in the inning, the Tigers scored two runs on three hits, but had zero runs batted in.

The Indians finally scored a run in the next half inning to cut the lead to 2-1, but did not notch as much as a base hit in the final three innings. The Tigers held on to win 2-1. Westbrook threw a complete game in a losing effort. The Tigers win improved their record to an impressive 37-102, while the Indians loss dropped them to 62-79. The announced attendance was over 11,000, but I can assure you there weren't more than five or six thousand people in the park. The Tigers went on to lose 119 games in 2003, the most losses in American League history.

The Tigers didn't have much going for them at that time, but have had success since then, highlighted by an American League pennant in 2006. Comerica Park is one of the nicer parks in the league. Its just too bad it has to be located in Detroit.

While this game concluded the baseball portion of our trip, we had a lot more to do. We met up with a friend in Lansing the night following this game and then headed to South Bend for the weekend to see the Notre Dame football season opener. As I mentioned in the first 2003 recap, this was probably my favorite summer baseball trip.

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From Detroit

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Next stadium: Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

SkyDome (Rogers Centre)

New York Yankees @ Toronto Blue Jays
September 3, 2003

Blue Jays 4, Yankees 3

W: Jason Kershner
L: Antonio Osuna
S: Aquilino Lopez
HR: Jorge Posada (NYY), Jason Giambi (NYY), Josh Phelps (TOR)
Attendance: 21,770
Time of Game: 2 hours, 57 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Toronto, ON
First Game: June 5, 1989
Capacity: 50,516
Type: Retractable roof
Surface: Artificial turf

The only significant break between games on the 2003 trip was following the game in Boston. We had two days to kill before going to a game north of the border in Toronto. On Monday, we left Boston, headed back to New York state, and visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. This was not my first trip to the Hall of Fame. I could probably write a whole article on this alone, but I'll keep it brief.

Cooperstown is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. There are no major highways going there, so we had to get off the beaten path a bit to make this trip. Unfortunately, our timing wasn't great for this visit. They were in the middle of some renovations at the Hall of Fame, which blocked off an entire floor of exhibits. Fortunately, we were able to see all the inducted player plaques as well as a variety of other interesting exhibits. The weather didn't exactly cooperate either. Due to a steady rain, we didn't spend much time exploring the quaint streets of Cooperstown.

After the Hall of Fame stop, we did a little more driving and spent Monday night in northern New York. Tuesday, we crossed the Canadian border at Niagara Falls. Since we had plenty of time to kill, we checked out the falls from both the American and Canadian sides. I was glad to be able to do this because my previous childhood Niagara Falls visit was dampened by constant pouring rain. That had been my only time spent outside the United States prior to this trip.

One thing I noticed driving on the major highways of Canada is that speed limits seem to be more of a suggestion than an actual rule. I felt like I was getting lapped by cars flying by me, despite the fact that the speed limits were actually lower than they are on most American interstate highways.

We arrived in Toronto early Wednesday afternoon. This gave us plenty of time to check out the city. I think we literally walked around the entire downtown area. We even decided to go on the tour to the CN Tower observation deck. SkyDome is almost right next to the CN Tower. Together, these two structures create a very scenic skyline right off Lake Ontario.

SkyDome was the first baseball stadium built with a retractable roof. It was quite a unique stadium at the time it was built. Besides the roof, the park also features an enormous video scoreboard, a hotel and a restaurant in the outfield. The hotel has a number of rooms with great views of the playing field.

The non-mobile part of the roof covers the center field area. However, when the roof is open, most of the stadium is exposed to the elements. The roof was closed when we entered the park, but opened shortly before the game started. It was pretty cool to see the CN Tower hovering over the stadium as the roof shifted to the open position.

SkyDome gave the Blue Jays franchise an immediate boost in its early years. They set single season attendance records and won two World Series in the ballpark's first five years. The novelty of the park has worn off a bit since then and the Blue Jays struggle to attract the same type of support. For this game, we bought cheap seats, but were easily able to move into unoccupied lower level seats. The seating area is pretty standard with three levels and a perfectly symmetric layout. Unfortunately, the playing surface is artificial turf, unlike all the other retractable roof stadiums. It is a multi-purpose stadium though, so the turf is not surprising.

For the third time on this trip, we saw a Yankees game. That was definitely not done on purpose. Mike Mussina started the game for the Yankees, the second straight start of his that we witnessed in person. Kelvim Escobar took the mound for the Blue Jays. The Yankees scored a run in the top of the third to take a 1-0 lead. Then came the eventful fourth inning. Jason Giambi led off the top of the 4th with a solo home run. Two batters later, Jorge Posada hit another homer to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead. They appeared to be on their way to their third win of our trip. The Blue Jays had other ideas though. Josh Phelps slugged a two run home run in the bottom half to cut the lead to 3-2. Three home runs were hit in the fourth inning, the only three of the game.

Both pitchers got out of jams in the fifth inning, leaving the bases loaded without any runners crossing the plate. Mussina got into more trouble in the sixth. The Jays loaded the bases with nobody out, thanks in part to an error by second baseman Alfonso Soriano. A Bobby Kielty sacrifice fly tied the game at 3, but Mussina somehow escaped major damage as no more runs scored in the inning. The Yankees turned to their bullpen in the seventh, but another sacrifice fly, by Eric Hinske, gave the Blue Jays a 4-3 lead. That would be the final score as the Yankees were unable to put anything together in the late innings. Jason Kershner got the win in relief for the Blue Jays, his first Major League win (of 3 total career wins). Fortunately, the Yankees didn't win all three of their games we saw on this trip.

The Blue Jays get the unfortunate distinction as the only team to feature an opposing player on the cover of all the game programs I have purchased. I have no idea why they chose to put Hideki Matsui on the cover, although it was probably a decent marketing idea since nearly half the crowd was Yankees fans. You wouldn't think there would be so many fans of "America's Team" in Canada.

Overall, I enjoyed my trip to Toronto. I like SkyDome, but it is probably my least favorite of the retractable roof stadiums because of the artificial surface.

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From Toronto

From Toronto

From Toronto

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From Toronto

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Next stadium: Comerica Park, Detroit