My first and last trip to US Cellular Field

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, so last night I went to, for the first time, US Cellular Field thanks to a buddy who scored us incredible seats in the 7th row behind opposing dugout and passes to the Stadium Club. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a recovering Sox fan (having chosen the Cubbies once I reached the age of reason). We arrive by taxi, walk a block and a half to the Stadium Club entrance, and enter into what can only be described as a cruise ship lounge with a great view of a baseball field. Hundreds of people are waddling around with giant trays of food, there’s a man in a giant Chef’s hat at a carving station, a buffet full of various artery-cloggers, and a full bar with every drink you can imagine at the tips of your fingers, doled out by nice, if not somewhat curt staffers in Sox jerseys. This is at the ballpark.

We decide it’s not for us and head down into the actual confines (which aren’t necessarily as friendly as I’m used to). Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s an impressive structure as structures go. It’s relatively convenient, the bathrooms are nicely done and navigation is easy enough to manage in the unlikely event you’re over-served. Still, it’s odd. Like a mall with an infield. It strikes you, sitting in the seats we did, that there isn’t a single place that the eye can land without some logo being in view.

So, the game starts like every MLB game I’ve ever been to, with the singing of the National Anthem. Beautifully done by a precious little Greek girl (it was Greek Heritage night) to thunderous applause, as expected.

Then, things got weird.

First, there was the dramatic instrumental classical music, two songs worth, while Sox highlight films played on the jumbotron. Then, the announcement of the night’s roster as they made their way to the field, to even louder applause, then fireworks, then a little AC/DC (thunderstruck again?) and some other basic hard rock song that I can’t recall. Then the announcer bellows “PLAY BALL” which is standard, which flashed on all the little LED boards and blinked and twittered the message until the first pitch was thrown, then, it was back to the adverts.

Between each batter, a 2-3 second snippet of music played.
Between each at bat, some little contest was held as the players tossed the pill around. These included several trivia contests, a race between three kinds of pizza on the jumbotron, a kid in some other location in the park hitting a t-ball home run, the handing out of shirts and the singing of “take me out to the ball game” albeit weakly, at the 7th inning stretch. There were a million things to see and do except watch the game. It’s kind of like leaving the TV on when you’re trying to do your taxes, you want to concentrate on what you’re doing, but you’ve never seen Alton Brown DO that with chicken, so you’re distracted.

Then a home run by a player, is followed by fireworks. Huh?

It’s a circus atmosphere with expensive food, beer, and snacks (more expensive, I might add, than Wrigs) and more things to see and in some cases do, than is generally necessary. It seems that the game is secondary to the ‘stuff’ at the field. Are we so hungry for the minutae of adverts and sponsors that we can’t be bothered to watch the actual game? To be fair, Wrigley is a social event too, especially in the bleachers, some fans don’t even find a seat and just drink beer in the sunshine on the deck and from time to time, act like fools.

All that said, 3,252,462 came to the friendly confines in 2007, as opposed to 2,684,395 visitors to The Cell. That’s a difference of 568,067 that year alone. Granted, Wrigley holds more, but dramatically more people come to every Cubs home game than Sox games (the last Cubs game I attended at 1pm on a Thursday was attended by 40,000+, last night’s game was attended by just over 26,000). I can’t help but think that the reason has something to do with Baseball.

It was a decent experience and I thanked my buddy for the opportunity to watch from such a grand seat, but there isn’t anything short of a Cubs/Sox World Series that will get me to the gates of that park again. It was, aside from the baseball and cold beer, an experiment in concentrated generica. I was genuinely rattled by the experience.

2

I take it, then, that you’ve never made a road trip to watch the Cubs play in any of the other new National League parks? All feature logos, recorded music, shops, and a concourse much like US Cellular Field.

3

The between-innings nonsense of which you speak is pretty common – I’ve seen some variation at every MLB game I’ve been to in the last 15 years, which includes home games of the Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Nationals, Orioles, and Giants, but excludes Wrigley and Fenway. I will admit to laughing at the Nationals’ footrace between lurid puppet versions of the men on Mount Rushmore. Like the wurstathon in Milwaukee, it’s completely absurd.

I agree that fireworks for a home run is a bit much. The Mets have a very battered-looked apple slowly rise up out of a top hat; the whole thing looks like it could have been constructed for a 5th-grade play in 1925.

4

I go to a few sox games a year…I think you have to relax a bit. Baseball isn’t the purist sport it used to be. I agree that there is a lot going on, but it doesn’t have to distract you from the baseball. Frankly, one of the things I like about US Cellular is that even people who aren’t that interested in baseball can still have a good time. Which means my friends are less reluctant to go, which means I can go more often. Plus, it’s fun to watch your inebriated friends shouting “pepperoni! pepperoni!” at the pizza races. On a final note, I like the fireworks. (Except for the one time I had to leave a game early, and was talking to my mother on my cell phone outside the stadium just as the sox hit a home run. She thought I was in a gun fight…)

5

What’s the problem? The old Comisky Park had the original exploding scoreboard that shot fireworks after a WS home run. It’s a WS tradition from the days of Bill Veeck. Oh yea, the Cubs and Red Sox are allowed to have tradition and the WS are not.

As for the other crap, that’s the bain of sports these days. Get used to it or stay home. I tend to stay home.

6

You take it correctly. I only get to go to about 6-7 games a year, and none of them away from the Friendly Confines.

7

Let’s not just lay this on the National League, either. It’s the reason I don’t particularly enjoy going to Angels’ games in Anaheim – almost exactly as you describe at the Cell.

Dodger Stadium has gotten a lot flashier in the past few years, but it isn’t quite at that level of obnoxious yet. Hell, we still have a real organ player. :slight_smile:

8

Yeah, and I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. The WS have their traditions, no one should deny them that, but the fireworks have always been, to me, a little much. “Yay, you did your job, now run the bases you hero you!” Meh.

9

Hell, you should be glad for all the distractions. Otherwise all there would be to watch is baseball! :o

I went to the cell twice many years ago, and my experience was just about the opposite of yours. The stadium seemed a pleasant enough place, but in the end whatever entertainment it provided wasn’t enough to distract from the boredom that is baseball. On my last trip I recall making a reverse pilgrimage to yours, ending up in the stadium club where the game was not quite so intrusive to our drinking. :stuck_out_tongue:

10

What would you rather them do during the commercial breaks?

ETA: Serious question, not meant to be snarky.

11

In this day and age, everything - and I mean absolutely everything - is mined for revenue generating opportunities. Were the fireworks officially sponsored by somebody? Cuz I’d be shocked if they weren’t.

12

I started to read the OP, and my first thought was “That sounds just as bad as Cominsky Park”, and then I reallized that since I left Chicago, they changed the name. Same park.

10 years ago, my employer had season tickets and I’d score a pair about once a year. I decided back then that Cominsky was a shopping mall wrapped around a ball park. I could almost deal with that, by ignoring the shopping part, except the atmosphere at the games wasn’t at all about baseball. No one ever sat in their seats and actually watched the game. It was all wandering in and out of the bar or talking on the phone to someone not there about anything other then baseball.

This one always boggled me. Why does a baseball field had a pet check. You know, like a coat check, only you drop of Fido instead of the jacket.

For anyone interested, here is a map of the attractions at the field. Anyone else notice that the actual ballfield isn’t listed?

13

This, although I thought the scoreboard pre-dated Veeck. Then I remembered he’d had interest in them twice, looked it up, and sure enough: Sparty’s right.

*In 1959, Veeck became head of a group that purchased a controlling interest in the Chicago White Sox, who went on to win their first pennant in 40 years, and broke a team attendance record for home games with 1.4 million. The next year, the team broke the same record with 1.6 million visitors to Comiskey Park with the addition of the first “exploding scoreboard” in the major leagues - producing electrical and sound effects, and shooting fireworks whenever the White Sox hit a home run, and also began adding player’s surnames on the back of their uniform, a practice now standard by 25 of 30 clubs on all jerseys, and by three more clubs on road jerseys. *

A little tidbit for the Northsiders, from the same article:

In 1937, Veeck planted the ivy that is on the outfield wall at Wrigley Field and was responsible for the construction of the hand-operated center field scoreboard still used.
Anyway…yeah. Haven’t all sports gone this way, to some degree? Ads are plastered all over the place, never missing an opportunity to sell something.

I wonder what the cause(s) might be. It could be basic greed, the owners cashing in everywhere they can, no matter how tacky some things might look. Or maybe the player salaries are a major burden (e.g. A. Rod’s) and they’re scrambling to pay them while making some profit.

Ironically I’ve attended two baseball games in the past couple months after staying away about 5 years. Both times, I saw minor league games. Much of the OPs description fits, except it wasn’t as expensive and the scoreboard didn’t explode.

14

I’ve seen these before, at popular attractions, and a friend of mine used to work at a pet check. The idea is that it’s better for Fido to spend time in the pet check with fresh water and a little room to run, than it is to leave him in your car in the parking lot, especially in the summer. Of course, you probably shouldn’t be taking Fido to the ballpark anyway, but according to my friend, it’s surprising how many people take their dog everywhere, even when they know the dog will be spending a lot of time in a parked car. So for these folks, a pet check makes sense; and it’s a lot nicer for Fido, if they insist on bringing him.

As for the OP, that seems to be how a lot of pro sports games are nowadays. I well remember watching the Blue Jays at Toronto’s Skydome (before it became the Rogers Centre), and there were the fireworks, the races on the Jumbotron, and other diversions; in addition to a raft of bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, and suchlike. Just seems to be what attendees (not necessarily fans) expect these days.

15

It’s what the NCAA wants for the CWS. Well, at least the open esplanade-type stadium. So, the traditional stadium at Rosenblatt is coming down and new modern events-oriented stadium is going up in its place.

16

Oh, I dunno. The groundskeepers were there for the watching, a live person was playing the organ, people were jumping up to take a leak. The Bleacher Bums are of course, self-entertaining. (I grew up going to Cubs games, and to even think positive thoughts of the Sox was sacrilege.)

A couple of weeks ago, I went to an Oakland A’s game, and was a bit taken aback at the multimedia nature of it all. Apparently, the “race” videos are at every park with a Jumbotron. In Oakland, it was racing BART trains. If nothing else, the audio fidelity of the train’s horn was striking, even through an otherwise thoroughly mediocre stadium sound system.

17

The Dodgers were doing the race thing with Chevy trucks as part of a weekly giveaway, but they seemed to have dropped it this year, thankfully. Now we have the Hat Shuffle and two fan interactive games (a Dodger history trivia question during the 6th inning and a Guess The Attendance game during the 8th). The other in-between inning activities are generally notices about other ongoing games or bloopers or whatnot.

18

Groundskeepers drag the infield, players toss the ball around, some of us in the cheaps will get up to have a piss, some will go get a hot dog or pretzel (or even peanuts or cracker jack) or a vendor might happen byand bring the aforementioned grub. All the rest of that crap is wholly unnecessary. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loves me a good multimedia experience, but for the love of everything holy, when I wander into the ballpark, I do so to escape the everyday electrical madness of our moden society. I don’t want bells, whistles, animated vignettes, trivia contests or gregarious mascots. I want baseball, green grass, fresh air, cold beer, some small conversation about this player or that or the team’s chances in the fall. I want to sit in those seats and take it all in, let it come to me, I don’t want to be assaulted by the experience and beaten into a consumer coma by pizza restaurants, vehicle manufacturers and the bloody electric company. It’s the decline of civilization, I tell you.