Go Team

I went to a Phillies game today. It was an afternoon game and they were playing the Colorado Rockies. Now as much as I enjoy going to a baseball game, there are several things that are really not well thought out about the whole experience. And by the way, the Phillies won this game, but not without some drama in the top of the ninth.

My first issue is with the stadium. I have been to several stadiums and they all seem to be very similar, at least in term of layout. This layout, however, is actually quite awkward. For starters, there is one escalator instead of two side by side. This means that for the first eight innings the escalator is going up, and after the eighth inning the escalator is going down. So what if you want to go down during the game? You cannot use the escalator. Instead, you have to find one of several poorly marked flights of stairs or wander over to one of only a few ramps. There is also the elevator, too. The point is that the stadium is not set up to allow people to move easily between tiers and sections. And since the vendors are disproportionately dispersed among the tiers it affects your access to the vendors.

My second issue is with the parking. Now I understand that it is difficult to organize parking for a full stadium, especially when you are talking about over forty thousand people. But you would think that there would be a better flow for traffic both before and after games. There should be better signage and alternate routing of traffic on game days to minimize the collateral congestion caused by the attendees.

The third issue is with people being able to get to their seats. There are apparently certain rules as to when people are allowed to go to their seats. These times include after a ball has been hit. This seems strange, especially since this would hinder the view of people sitting down. Why not let people go to their seats before the pitch is thrown? Or right after an unhit pitch? There is certainly some reason for it, but I have yet to find that out.

This is not to say that I dislike going to baseball games. I still rather enjoy it. It just seems like a rather coarse operation these days.