Chase Field, Home of the Diamondbacks

Opening Day.  I love all sports, but my favorite has to be baseball.  I am probably one of the few people who don’t think the baseball season is too long- ask me the day after any of the 162 games of the Red Sox season and I will be able to tell you who won, who pitched, who scored the runs, and probably a few other random facts.  I’m obsessed.  I look forward to Opening Day all winter, and by an awesome twist of fate, Arizona was hosting one of the few Sunday Opening Day games (most teams started Monday).  They were chosen because, along with Tampa Bay, it was their 20th season since joining the league.  Their opponent was division rival San Francisco Giants with their ace Madison Bumgarner.  We were not optimistic about the quality of team Arizona would field- they’d struggled in recent years- but the Giants were always good, right?

The Seats

One of Joel’s best friends and his family were down in Arizona for the weekend, so we met up with them and they hooked us up with AWESOME tickets.  We were behind the backstop to the right, so basically between home plate and the dugout about 15-20 rows up.  We had a great view for Bumgarner hitting not one but two homeruns (who said pitchers can’t rake?) and the Diamondbacks battling and never really going away.  Then, once Bumgarner was pulled, they took advantage.  They were down 4-3 going into the bottom of the 8th and scored 1 to tie.  Unfortunately for the home team, they gave up a run in the top of the 9th, and things looked desperate.  But they came out in the 9th and tied the game and then… walk off single!  The crowd went wild and we did too, although we still at that point figured they’d just gotten lucky. 
We were wrong.  The Diamondbacks would go on to have a great season where they exceeded everyone’s expectations and made the playoffs.  Bumgarner would later in the season get hurt riding a motorcycle and miss most of his starts while the Giants would by and large struggle.  I still need to make it to Fenway for opening day, but we checked at least one event off our bucket list!

The Eats

Before the game, we met up with Joel’s friend and his family at Coach’s Corner grill, which is right near Chase Field.  It claims to be the number 1 sports bar in Phoenix, and it definitely lived up to the billing.  We had a few drinks and I got a chicken sandwich, which was delicious, as were the appetizers that the table shared.  It’s pretty packed and had the people we were with not gotten there pretty early, we likely wouldn’t have gotten seats, but it’s worth the stop if you can get there early enough!
Inside the stadium, there was a pretty good variety of food and drinks.  We weren’t hungry, but they had an apple ale option that I sipped on during the game.

Other Deets

Again, this stadium was within walking distance from the apartment we were staying in, so we didn’t have to deal with parking, but there are lots of garages in the area.
Our schedule made it so that we did this stadium a little backwards- game first, then stadium tour.  I like doing it the other way so you can notice the stadium quirks during the game, but I still had a great time and appreciated the experience all the more after the tour.