Ballpark: AT&T Park

AT&T Park has the reputation of being one of the most beautiful ballparks in the country and it certainly lived up to the hype. AT&T Park is downtown San Francisco, right on the bay, and accessible to the Muni, BART, and CalTrain. My college roommate Zac and I went to Giants vs. Braves game on Sunday May 12 (Mother's Day). The tickets were limited and expensive: we picked up a pair of standing room only tickets for $35 piece. I am not sure if this is the typical price or a special price because it was Mother's Day.

The ballpark itself was crowded. The concourses were narrow and concession stands, souvenir shops, and guest services offices. This made for a cosy feeling but the foot traffic bottlenecked in a few places. This made walking around the stadium difficult but it was well worth it. Beyond the left field stands, you could see the Bay Bridge and just beyond right field there were yachts and kayaks on McCovey Cove. There were tons of specialty food shops: sausages, brisket, garlic fries, and many more. I tried to buy a sausage but accidently bought any general hotdog. At least I did get a souvenir glass.

We ended up standing behind the 3 rows of bleachers in right field and got a surprisingly good view of the field for standing room only tickets. The scoreboard was clearly visible and provided all the necessary baseball information. Tim Lincecum started for the Giants and looked like pitcher who won back-to-back Cy Young Awards. He didn't allow a run in 7 innings of work. The Giants also had the longball working that day. They hit 3 home runs including Pablo Sandavol's solo shot into McCovey Cove: the 63 "splash shot" in the history of AT&T park. After each home run was shot into the air out of a couple water cannons behind us. The Giants ended up beating the Braves by a score of 5-1. The Upton brothers continued to struggle for Atlanta.

My take-away from AT&T Park is that is a beautiful new "retro" baseball stadium in a great location and with fantastic views. The baseball watching experience is also top notch. It is clearly the best stadium I have gone to thus far. The only thing that annoyed me about the experience was I overheard multiple fans proclaim the AT&T Park is unquestionably the best ballpark in the country. It may be true, but I will wait to make the decision until the fall.