Thursday, June 19, 2008

Ball Park Review: Angels Stadium (Anaheim, CA)



The other night, Mikah, my sister and I went to Angels Stadium in Anaheim, CA. This is the home stadium of the stupidly named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. This was the second stadium of the trip. As you can see from the first picture...they really like giant sized models of baseball items.

You can read my other reviews of my Ball Park tour here.

Parking/Access
If you are not aware already, going anywhere in Los Angeles takes forever. We left my sisters apartment around 5pm. The game started at 7:05 and the trip out to Anaheim (assuming no traffic) is about 45 minutes. We arrived at our parking spot at about 6:45. We crawled down "The 5" pretty much the entire way. It was awful. However, once we arrived, we pulled right into a lot next to the stadium and paid $8. That's a good deal. Much better than San Francisco's $30 parking. Leaving the stadium was theoretically going to be much better, but they were doing work on the highway. Therefore our return trip took about 1.5 hours. Yeah!!!!

Food

Once again, I got 2 hot dogs ($3) and Mikah got 1 pretzel ($5). The hot dogs were 25% cheaper than San Fran but the pretzel was 33% more. Both tasted about the same. There weren't as many different places to get food here, but they had all the standards.

View
Here you can see the view from our seat. The stadium was pretty big, although not full. The view from my seat was of the highway and the Amtrak station...which is classy. They also have a neat rock water fall thing in center field.



Jumbotron
They actually had two Jumbotrons here, which was nice. The main one was in right field, with a smaller one in left. This allows almost everyone to see one. Excellent idea. Neither was up to par with the San Francisco one...but I suspect I will not find one that is.



Misc
The most obvious random thing about Angel Stadium is the presence of the Rally Monkey. For those who don't know, back in 2002 during a late season game, they showed a monkey with an Angels uniform on jumping up and down...calling it the Rally Monkey. It worked. So they did it again a few days later. It worked again. They continued to use it all the way to the World Series, which they eventually won. I assume all due to the Rally Monkey. Well...now the Rally Monkey is the most important thing at an Angels game. They have in between inning videos starring the rally monkey. In one, the monkey sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" with Queen. In the other, the monkey starred as the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. But unlike 2002...the monkey had no effect on this game.

The team spirit wasn't all that high, certainly not as high as San Fran. A lot like a Reds game actually...except more people go to the games in Anaheim.

This game was played pretty poorly by both teams, but especially the Angels. Their base running alone made me think I was watching a C-ball game. Or the Reds. It was really that atrocious. The Mets actually played a pretty good game until they had to go to their bullpen, who almost blew the 5 run lead they had. But that's what the Mets bullpen does, so I guess it was business as usual. In the end, the Mets won the game 9-6.



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Labels: Ball Park Tour, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Posted by Adam Wilson :: 12:34 AM :: 0 comments

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