Well, so much for saving some of the best stadiums for last. Tampa is a great town. I've been there a few times years ago. Too bad their baseball team has to play in a huge crap hole of a domed stadium.
We were supposed to see a game on Sunday, but instead went to the game on Saturday. It was 50's night at the ballpark and the stadium looks like that's when it was built. On the outside, it looks like a big sideways beanie. It's all concrete and it's ugly.
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| The view from the outside. Yuck! |
On the inside, things are worse. The walkways are narrow. It's impossible to walk from one side of the stadium to the other without making detours. The air conditioning inlets are filthy. The scoreboards in center field is blocked to the upper deck by a scaffold. The scaffolding itself is ugly. The acoustics were horrible. The scoreboards are awful and when you look toward the ceiling, it's a big concrete ugly old thing. Speaking of ugly, I still can't figure out what the heck their mascot was. The big attraction in the stadium is the ray tank. Whoo hoo! There aren't any cup holders and the food is pretty lame too. The place opened in 1990 but it looked like it was older than other awful domed stadiums from the past like the Kingdome. Tropicana Field is the only closed domed stadium in the entire major leagues and for that reason alone, it should close down. Then, to top it off, when Michael and I left the park, it was POURING down rain. Overall, it was a bad night for this park.
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| The Rays' mascot. What the heck is it? |
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| Michael in the right field stands trying to catch some batting practice. |
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| There you have it. The Tropicana Field roof. That is ugly. |
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| The ray tank. I think it's the best part of the park. |
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| The view from our seats. |
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| As you can see, the scaffolding impairs your view of the scoreboard. |
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| Me and the main man. |
All of this is too bad because the Rays are actually a good young team. They smacked around the Cardinals that night 5-1. The people that worked there were actually pretty nice. I hope at some point soon that the Tampa/St. Pete area gets a new ballpark. Overall, I give it a 2/10. If you can believe it, Michael actually disagreed with me and thought the stadium wasn't as bad as I did. Here's his take:
Hi everyone, it's Michael. I thought Dad was a little tough on Tropicana Field. I liked the domed stadium. It was nice inside while it was really hot and humid outside. I liked when the Rays hit a home run the big orange in right field lit up. That was cool. I also liked how they had a beach along the left field line just like in Petco Park in San Diego. On the other hand, the scoreboard was small and the sound system was pretty bad. I liked the ray tank. You can pet the rays. Overall, I give it a 5/10.
Well, there you have it. It's not like we ever care to come back to St. Petersburg to see a Rays game again. We'll report what we did on our final day in Tampa tomorrow and our trip to New Orleans. Tomorrow, we take off from New Orleans to Houston to get a tour of Minute Maid Park. We hear it's pretty good. We'll see.
