Austin Smith

                                                            The Park

            The bay area has many different attractions and landmarks to visit, but none more exciting then AT&T Park home of the Giants. The stadium is located in beautiful downtown San Francisco, and as you walk up to the front gates you can smell the garlic fries before you even have your ticket scanned to enter. My journey begins when I take my first steps into the stadium. With 40,000 people there you can feel the excitement in the air, everyone walking around trying to grab last minute food, and drinks so they can get to their seats and enjoy the game. As you walk around the stadium you will get to the right field wall, and you are so close to the bay you can literally jump off the wall into the water. As I look out into the bay you can see the bay bridge, and in the distance you can see The Golden Gate Bridge.

            Day or night it is the one of the most beautiful baseball stadiums ever build. As I was walking to my seat, and I started talking to one of the local fans Joe Banks. I asked him what was the biggest difference in environment from Candlestick old giants stadium, and AT&T. He laughed and said, “Pretty much everything, its newer, nicer, and in the best city in the world.” I ask the opinion of a non-local Padres fan to see a more realistic opinion of the park. I asked how this stadium compares to the others around the MLB, and she replied with, “This stadium and PNC Park are the best stadiums in baseball.” First pitch was thrown around 6:00 PM so as it started to get dark, and the lights turned on you could see the mist from the bay start to roll in. It looked like they had misters on all the lights, but the humidity made it not feel cold at all outside.

             The best thing about the Stadium is that out of 41,503 seats there is not a bad seat. From every seat you have a great view and can clearly see the game, day or night. The San Francisco Giants also have one of the most loyal fan bases in the entire MLB with a sell out rate of about 99% every home game. The home fans have their favorite players though, and one of them happened to be on the mound that day. Tim Lincecum has played for the giants for 8 seasons, and won three championship rings with them. A lot of memorable events have occurred in this stadium such as Barry Bonds breaking the homerun record, Matt Cain throwing a perfect game along with many no hitters thrown from various other players. From the first pitch to the last you can tell that these fans are intent and know what’s going on in the game.

            If you are a club member, or season ticket holder there are certain parts of the stadium that you are allowed to enjoy that the general public can not. The stadium has multiple gift shops, but the busiest of them all is the dugout store. When I was trying to walk through to leave I saw that the checkout lines went around the entire shop. They had Giants Jerseys, hats, shirts, just about anything giants they had it for sale. As I was walking out of the stadium and into downtown you finally realize how many people the stadium actually holds. All of the streets were full of cars, and people walking in every direction. For a stadium that is 14 years old it feels looks like it was just built. In Conclusion AT&T park has become not only a very popular destination point, it is a landmark in San Francisco. The locals believe that is the best stadium around the MLB, and many others have to  agree just based on its location, and design. Visiting this stadium was one of the best baseball experiences I have had.