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Photo du Jour 501
Tommy Craggs' brilliance is back. Hurray!, is right. Now writing for Deadspin, the former SF scribe has a nifty new feature, "Why Your Stadium Sucks." And he starts things off with San Francisco's twee AT&T Park. Some of his problems with the park known more for its garlic fries and artisan coffee than for its team? It's a throwback ballpark, for starters. "These throwback ballparks are the brick equivalent of a Ken Burns documentary ... a window not on any actual history but on how baseball wants its history to be seen. It's a lot of infantilizing crap," clarifies Craggs. Another point of contention? AT&T Park chronically claiming that it's the first privately funded ballpark in the U.S. Which is true, he goes on to say, "if you don't count an estimated $25 million in municipal fire, police and garbage services; $33 million for the land itself, donated by the city; $83 million in property-tax exemptions; and on and on." Anyway, he has more excellent points that make his case. (Spot-on stuff, Craggs.)
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Maybe if AT&T stopped checking everyone's drink bottles for the seal, we'd all get in the damn ballpark faster. It pisses me off when I want to bring in a McDonald's or a Starbucks drink and you can't get past the damn gate.
Dude is obviously not a baseball fan. And that was an awful lot of words used to make about two solid points.
Not saying the park is perfect, but that post is pretty far from, itself.
Craggs is an enthusiastic, intense baseball fan. And a great writer as well.
Sorry, Brock, but I think your dewey-eyed (that's dew, right?) man crush is clouding your judgement. I read neither baseball knowledge nor "great" writing in that post. More like cranky trolling?
If he were concerned with the baseball game, he would have maybe mentioned something like sightlines, or even some of the froufrou stuff that affects one's enjoyment of the game, like music and chants between every batter.
This post boils down to "I don't like retro-styled parks, cities bend over backwards for baseball teams, and Joe Morgan is an idiot," which are one personal taste and two givens.
thejosephboys is much more spot on if you want to criticize a stadium as a baseball fan. Shit, I saw some guy playing WoW on a laptop before a game once. If you're there to enjoy a ballgame, a bunch of popped collars from Marin schmoozing at a wine bar on the Club level isn't going to prevent you from doing so.
I caught a fly ball at the game this weekend. Gave it to my girlfriend. She was thrilled. We had a great time.
Craggs, why you gotta take a good thing and piss all over it?
You could have caught a ball at a SJ Giants or any number of Little League games. It's not Craggs' fault you picked the yuppie bunghole to do it in, so quit yer whinin'.
Do they have WiFi? Pinot Grigio?
"$33 million for the land itself, donated by the city"? I think that's false, since the Giants pay $1.2 million rent annually to the San Francisco Port Commission.
yeah this article had a few problems, including devoting a quarter of the critique to his hatred of Joe Morgan which was unrelated to the Phone Booth, and also attaching the bad moral character of the owners of the team (the bonds stuff) to the stadium itself.
And donating the land was a wise investment since mission bay and the housing around there needed an anchor tenant. Which means revenue for the city. And relying on the lazy stereotype of wine sipping, email reading, harvey milk bobblehead having effetes, is so....
But if you accept it in the light-hearted manner it was written then it was fine.
/takes article way too seriously
I like the part where he's wrong about everything.
I'm the one who sent this in yesterday and while, yes, it's a pretty park and blah, blah, blah, it's not a place to see baseball. It's an outdoor patio with live entertainment that people largely elect to not pay attention to. I honestly can't remember the last time i saw someone filling out a scorecard there. A's fans, on the other hand, fill out scorecards; like 'em or not. (I'm neutral. I'm a Royals fan.)
While we're at it, this photo is downright embarrassing. Gimmie a break, people..
really? I always see people who under a hat filled with garish pins, are listening to radio, keeping score, and brought their own peanuts/sunflower seeds. Doesn't matter if I'm in the bleachers, club, or that one time I got way down close to the field.
A's fans are great too. the ones that actually go.
Huh, you should go to a Diamondbacks game if you think SF fans are clueless.
I'm a yuppie who likes artisan coffee and organic grapes or whatever, and you know what? I still don't go to AT&T Park.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Craggs.
I'm a fan (and I love the park) and I really don't understand the keeping score thing. I'm watching the game; I know what happened; I can go back and find out exactly what happened every pitch of the game if I want. What's the deal with the score cards?
P.s. Brock AT&T park is the opposite of a Ken Burns documentary in that it's the opposite of nostalgia, no? The ghosts are outside, the living people are inside.
Most baseball fans are obsessive-compulsive statistics freaks. They're all over the sport world, to be fair, but they really seem to be drawn to baseball. Tediously so. But anyway, in their universe, seeing lots of people at a game who aren't doing a Baseball Rainman is just strange. People going to a baseball game for enjoyment? Inconceivable!
Dog Bites hasn't been any good since Lauren Wellmen left. Just saying Brock.
I went there for the first time a few months ago, it was only my second ballgame ever but I loved the place so much it almost made me a baseball fan.
A throwback stadium? Sure, maybe-but it seems like the sport could do worse than learn from it's history.