I really thought the Dodger Stadium would continue to stand out as the worst ballpark other than perhaps one of the New York ones, which we go into with bad taste due to the ticketing experience. However, I was totally disgusted with the handicap seating situation at Rogers Centre. Now it is not exactly a horrible ballpark and it is not the worst if you are part of the general public going to the game, but boy are they the worst by far when it comes to accessible seating to the point it is hard to believe this is among the modern generation of ballparks. Maybe, it is just the culture of Canada, but I doubt that is it because the campground has better accessible facilities than most we have stayed at in the United States and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday was even accessible despite being in an old house. Let’s just leave it at do not go to the actual park if you are in a wheelchair and I will go into more depth on it and the possible alternate accessible ways to see a game at Rogers Centre when I get around to the Accessibility Review for this park.
The seating situation kind of left me majorly negative about the park from the start, but it did not turn out horrible just not worth the extra $120 Canadian (sure its Canadian, but it is still a big non-planed expense in US$) to upgrade to where Mik could actually see the game. I was also not impressed with the concourse feel of the park. It just seemed cluttered with a bunch of concession carts rather than built in concession stands. It really got bad as the game began because the lines got pretty bad, especially when you notice that there were not that many people at the game. Boy would it totally stink to try to get concessions during a sold out game if that ever happens here.
The game itself did not improve the ballpark experience at all unless you were a Phillies fan, which there were probably more of than Blue Jays fans today or at least close to the same. The Philies totally dominated beating the Blue Jays 10 to 0. I really wanted to the Blue Jays to win since the Phillies are on top of the Nats division, but that hope was soon gone with them scoring 4 in the top of the first with 2 two-run homers.
The Blue Jays never really even had a chance with only four innings getting four men up to bat and that is the most they had up to bat in any inning. They had a few singles, but only one guy even got to second and that was on a double in the sixth. After that double the last 10 batters of the game were retired in order. The only interesting thing was the Blue Jays pitcher having a three up three down 2nd inning in which he struck out all three batters faced.
Overall second worst ballpark experience of the trip. Dodger Stadium is still the worst because the atmosphere ruined what could have been a good game and the seats were not cheap and were horrible. At least the more expensive seats we ended up upgrading to turned out to be almost worth the extra paid for them. We loved the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday, but we are ready to go back to the States as far as baseball road tripping is concerned. Sure there are some great things worth doing in Canada (i.e. Fishing!!!), but getting out of here as fast as we can on a baseball road trip is a must. I realy wish I had planned for us to drive to Cooperstown after today’s afternoon game and not tomorrow morning.
Update 6/28/09: Now have added photos from the game. Also, forgot to mention about the FedEx delivering the game balls to center field with the mascot signing before the game. Photos of that below. Might seem trivial, but Dad missed it and did not believe it happened because it was not like he left his seat. So, here is the photo proof.
