Edison Field

From Ballpark Roadtrip

Edison Field

Anaheim, CA

Cleveland Indians @ Anaheim Angels

July 19, 2004

Contents 1 The Road Trip 2 The Park 3 The Game 4 Next Stop: Oakland!

The Road Trip

Rolling out from Phoenix wasn't too tough. Making our way to Anaheim was a little longer than expected. You get a little disoriented if you're not fully aware of the geography. This is the second time that underestimation of the geography happened on this trip and we've only driven two legs so far. Going from Denver to Las Vegas more than a couple of us forgot about Utah, or at least how big (wide) Utah is. Some of us probably thought gong Phoenix --> LA would be like going from Las Vegas to LA, which if you've been following, we've done a few times. The trip from Phoenix to the LA area is a bit longer, a bit more desert and a bit more 'boring' in the sense that it's just that much more of the same.

All this driving gave Lumpy a chance to catch up on a some work he hadn't completed before leaving the east coast. Lumpy was in graduate school and his thesis was due about a month before defending. His defense was scheduled for August 4th, 2004. Already a little late, Lumpy worked on the final draft on the road and now needed to get the document to his thesis committee. As we emerged from the desert, we started looking for the nearest Starbucks. Pulling into some strip mall, we found the coveted Starbucks and Lumpy hopped out. Pulling up a chair, he paid the HotSpot fee, logged onto his email and sent the file to four professors back at UMass and his external committee member at Harvard.

Drive 17 hours from Oakland to Denver: Check
2-hour rain delayed Rockies Game: Check
Drive all night to Vegas: Check
No sleep to Phoenix: Check
Email PhD thesis to committee from Starbucks somewhere between Phoenix and LA: Check, Check

Once in range of greater LA we called up another college fraternity brother of ours: Nowell. At the time, Nowell was living in the area and he took us to a few bars that he liked to frequent. Nowell introduced the east coasters to a bar game, which Lumpy described as "the real life version of that video game Shufflepuck."

The Park

The park is pretty cool. It's in Orange County, which makes a nice contribution to the neighborhood of this park. Disney currently owns this franchise (rumor has it that they're trying to unload it) and Disneyland is about three blocks from the park. The proximity to Disneyland doesn't really factor into the experience, but it's a unique feature. The park has a few other notable features, including a giant "A" with a halo in the parking lot. This landmark is an original holdover from the early days of the franchise. Also outside the park is a giant pair of ballcaps. Fun stuff.

Inside, the park is pretty well laid out. The outfield has its hallmark rock fountains that react to a home run with fireworks. The view over the outfield is very nice, minus the smog obstructed clarity of the scenery. Non-baseball related, the former LA Rams used to play here back when LA had a franchise. Supposedly, when the Rams were looking into a venue and this field became a candidate, the stadium owners added a few thousand seats to accommodate football games. This renovation resulted in losing view of some of the mountains.

The Game

I think the consensus of the group was that 2004 Angels fans rank at least in the upper quartile of fandom. This is based on weighting the fact that we were in the LA area, especially Orange County and we were kinda surprised by the fact that the fans were actually paying attention to the game, sat in their seats more than they were out walking in the aisles and reacted to the action on the field rather than the ringtones on their phones. Some of us speculated that the ownership leveraged their marketing savvy to redirect fans' attention to the field by coming up with several participation incentives:

1) The Rally Monkey
The Rally Monkey will likely go down in baseball marketing history as one of those WTF moments. The original Rally Monkey consists of a pirated loop of video from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. They've since 'hired' a capuchin monkey to play the roll of real-life Rally Monkey.

2)Thunder Sticks
The 2000 introduction of the Rally Monkey had formed the core of hypnotic fan participation. In 2002 the club domestically popularized the use of a new noise-generating tool: the Thunder Stick. Two years before we arrived, the Angels were on their way to becoming MLB champs. Fearful that the Rally Monkey could only carry the team so far, enhancement of the rally reaction was tasked to the the Thunder Stick. This carried the Angels through the playoffs and into win the World Series.

3) Babooshka Doll Collector Series
With a two year pattern forming, the Angels were due for another marketing blockbuster. On the night we visited Edison Field they were handing out souvenir Troy Glaus nesting babooshka dolls. Fans eventually figured out that if you twist the two halves, a piercing 'squeaking' noise came from the doll. The snowball effect was fast and eventually the whole stadium was filled with this high-pitched babooshka squeak. This proved to be the beginning of the end of the Angels streak of innovative tools to draw in fans. Ed's ears are still bleeding today.

Next Stop: Oakland!