Estadio Calimax
From Ballpark Roadtrip
Estadio Calimax
Tijuana, Mexico
Tecolotes de Nuevo Laredo @ Los Potros de Tijuana
July 12, 2008
Contents |
The Road Trip
At this point we were based at the psycho-killer motel in San Diego. Getting to Estadio Calimax first involves getting across the border. We drove down I-5 to the San Ysidro crossing, the busiest border crossing in the world. There are plenty of parking lots right on the boarder. You park in the U.S. and walk over to Mexico.
You will quickly encounter a bunch of kids on the streets trying to sell you Chicklets. The best advice you can give them is "permanezca en la escuela", "stay in school". There will be a bunch of cabs right at the border but downtown Tijuana is an easy walk from here. The central area is called Revolucion and there are bars and restaurants and souvenir stands everywhere. If you appear remotely not-Mexican, you will be hounded by barkers from all of these places. We found a restaurant and stopped for some beers, typically $5 for a six pack bucket, gets a little more expensive at night.
From this downtown area we hailed a cab to get to the stadium. It was suggested to look of a "Taxi Libre" which is suppossed to be cheaper than the other, non-Libre taxis. If you can speak Spanish, negotiate the cab fare ahead of time. First thing to do is make sure the cabbie resets the meter when you get in. Then hope that you have a cab witha working meter. If you want to get to the stadium just say "Potros baseball", they have no idea what Estadio Calimax is. In our cab, the meter kept pausing and the cabbie kept whacking it to get it going again. Once we gave a slight indication that we were conscious of the dollar amount on the meter, the cabbie unplugged it! We thought for sure we'd get ripped off but later verified that his declaration of $20 as the fare when we arrived at the stadium was spot on.
The stadium is right next to some sort of trash heap volcano looking thing on the outskirts of Tijuana. It's about 15 minutes by cab and definitely, NOT walkable. After the game there is a taxi stand outside the main gate and you can go back to "Revolucion" and walk across the border.
The Park
Enjoying a beer at the Potros game, a five step process.
Step 1: Rim the glass in a red, spicy, grainy substance which is most likely carcinogenic.
Step 2: Pour a Tecate Beer into the cup, being careful not to wash any of the toxic substance into the beer. Note that the cup is much, much bigger than needed to hold that beer. It's a mystery be haven't been able to solve but, perhaps, if we spoke Spanish, we'd be able to figure out how to order a "topper".
Step 3:Attempt to drink your Tecate Beer without turning your face into a Latino Inferno.
Step 4:Proudly display your Joker smile and don't forget to clean the residue off your face when you get home!
The Game
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Road Journal
7/13/2008- Potros de Tijuana vs. ??
Took a cab to the estadio de Calimax (grocery store). The meter was "broken".
Bought 4 tix for 16 USD.
Bought some sort of hot dog wrapped in bacon. Hats are 25 USD.
Seating is general admission.
They serve beer in a cup about 3-4x the volume of the beer with the rim coated in some sort of spicy mixture preumably to make you drink more.
They offer pistascios, cigarrttes, spicy popcorn in-seat. Some little kid comes around with a menu to bring you some sort of prepared hot food.
They had a lengthy moment of silence for some reason in the 5th, but no 7th inning stretch.
Gogo dancers every half inning on the dugouts.
They had a guy named "pat o' sullivan" who was the only caucasian on either team and the called him the "bufalo blanco"
