Comparing Ballparks

Now that I'm back in Chicago and getting ready to head out to my beloved Wrigley Field, I thought I'd jot down some comments about my impressions of Chase Field. Please keep in mind these are MY opinions. Those of you who were at the same two games I attended the past couple of days may have different opinions.

First of all, I have no complaints about the seats. We were lucky enough to have the same seats both nights, way up the third base line, almost at the bleachers. We could see just about everything.

The first thing I noticed was all the advertising. For me it's just way too much. I thought the Cell had over-done it until I saw Chase Field. There are too many ads around the scoreboard for my taste. Also, the ribbon lights around the stadium are really annoying. They're flashing ads or telling the crowd to stand or cheer louder or something. For me it was annoying and distracting.

The PA system is horrible. Worse than Wrigley! I didn't think that was possible.

The PA announcer is awful. Although it's so hard to hear him you have to strain to hear how awful he is.

I have a real problem with the fact that pitching changes or pinch hitters and runners were not announced or shown on the scoreboard for the Cubs, but they sure were for the D-backs.

Security needs to be improved. We had a situation on Thursday night where someone who was obviously on something sat in the seats ahead of us. We knew they were not his seats. He made me extremely uncomfortable. His eyes were glazed over and he kept moving around, blocking my view of the game, staring at me, at Soriano (I think), not watching the game. We went to get security and it took them 20 mintues to finally get back to us and take care of the situation. At that point I was close to having a panic attack because the guy was starting to "fight" with a little moth, rather than just shooing it away. At first I thought he was fighting with someone imaginary. I always thought that if you needed to get security, they responded immediately. Oh well. At least the situation was taken care of and I was able to sit back and watch the rest of the game.

I was surprised that the beer vendors carded NO ONE.

The game was not piped over radio into the restroom.

It appeared to me that the D-back fans needed to be prompted as to what to do -- like cheer, cheer louder, be told what to say. There was nothing spontaneous about their cheering, at least from my viewpoint.

There were a couple of things I did like about the park. It's domed. Thursday night we didn't have to worry about the rain.

I did like that on the scoreboard they showed what each player had done the previous time at bat.

Food choices on the concourse were better than Wrigley.

There were plenty of restrooms and they were clean.

When you get up from your seat, you aren't allowed back to it until a batter has finished his at bat.

Other than that, there's little I found to like about Chase Field.