Safeco Field

From Ballpark Roadtrip

Lumpy's outline/notes: -Story about boozin' granny -Story about beer-pager Scooter -Cowgirls Inc.

Safeco Field

Seattle, WA

Oakland Athletics @ Seattle Mariners

July 21, 2004

Contents 1 The Road Trip 2 The Park 3 The Game 4 Next Trip: 2005

The Road Trip

After the Oakland game we crashed at Ed's place again. We built in some major recovery time given the aggressive driving schedule early in the trip. We left Oakland and made what ended up being about a twelve hour drive from the San Francisco Bay area up north to Seattle.

Upon arrival, we checked into the hotel then headed out to investigate the bar scene. We serendipitously stumbled upon a bar called Cowgirls, Inc. Absolutely epic. Reminiscent of the Coyote Ugly bar in NYC, Cowgirls, Inc. featured a huge bar area served by scantily clad women who were just one notch under the professional model radar.

After hanging out with the Cowgirls, we headed back to the hotel to get some rest. The next day, we grabbed some of the famous Seattle coffee and went to pose as tourists.

Seattle's a great town, which some of us described as a 'west coast Boston'. The comparison is drawn because of the architectural similarities, (lots of colonial, European-like brick) the weather (albeit less snow, much more rain, but just as depressing), and the intellectual openness. The standard sights were in the plan: Pike Street Market and the surrounding areas. We saw the Space Needle from a distance since it wasn't too far from our hotel.

The Park

Without the bias introduced by Fenway, Lumpy declared Safeco his favorite park at the end of the 2005 trip. The park itself is in a great location, just outside the busiest parts of downtown Seattle, but still very accessible to anyone in the area. It's situated near Seahawks Stadium, so it makes the area a year-round sports Mecca. Safeco has a retractable roof, but it's not a conventional roof that's attached directly to the rest of the park. Safeco's roof is positioned on tall supports that allow the park to be 'open air' regardless of whether the roof is open or closed.

Seattle and now Safeco are infamously friendly to Japanese. This is partially due to Seattle being a major west coast seaport, conducive to the Japanese lifestyle. The other part is due to the Mariners signing of Ichiro Suzuki as the first Japanese position player to make it to the MLB. These two factors created an instant magnet for Japanese attention. Soon, stories of Japanese written ads on the Safeco facades appeared. Nintendo was already a major sponsor of the M's with the US headquarters in Redmond, WA. Nintendo president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, bought a share of the Mariners in 1992. Now, there's even a variety of Nintendo video game kiosks for guests to try out. The arrival of an elite Japanese player in Seattle was virtually guaranteed.

As one might imagine, this opened the opportunity to introduce some Japanese baseball culture to the U.S. An obvious choice is to offer sushi at the park. And so, the Ichiroll was born. Beyond the sushi, Safeco offered some of the best food and beer that we've seen in any of the parks we visited. The Seattle area has some of the better microbreweries in the country and many of them were represented at the park. Even the more commercialized beers were well represented.

The Game

With Seattle anchoring our fifth trip, we're getting the hang of sizing up the fans. We sat in some pretty good seats at Safeco. Without remembering exactly how we got the tickets (scalp vs. window) we ended up in box just off the 3B line. Surrounded by some season ticket holders, we quickly realized the Seattle fan base was acutely aware of their franchise's standing in relation to the rest of the division and league.

During the game we got to know a few of the locals. Notably, to our right, was a couple of ladies who were regulars at Safeco. We never got their names, but we did find out that it was a mother-daughter pair. Mom was chauffeured to the game by her daughter, that much we knew. What we never found out was if it was because mom can't really drive, or if the daughter was the designated driver. Mom, or Granny as we were affectionately calling her, was giving the beer guy a workout. She'd order two at a time and slug back some swigs that would rival some of the brothers back at Florida Tech.

Even more impressive was that those two turned us on to Scooter. Not our beloved Scooter from Colorado, but Scooter the beer guy. See, Beer Scooter had this gig going where he handed out business cards. On the business card was his pager number. You just dialed up his pager, punched in your section number and he'd double time it down to you. I think either Granny had him on speed-dial or Scooter knew her pace. He was always there to make sure Granny didn't go dry.

It got a little confusing following the A's up the coast to Seattle because the A's use the third base dugout as their home dugout in Oakland. In Seattle, the Mariners use the first base dugout as their home dugout, putting the A's right back in front of us again. What's the deal with using the 3B side as home team dugout anyway? Doesn't tradition beckon that home team use the 1B side?

Next Trip: 2005