Visiting Chase Field

I've been slowly making your way through all 30 MLB parks, and by “slowly,” I mean, I've done about 12 now, and I'm trying to do one or two every year. A couple months ago, when I was in Arizona for spring training I decided to cross Chase Field off my list by taking a tour of their facilities. The tour cost $25 and took about an hour and a half. We had a pleasant and enthusiastic tour guide to brief us on all the fun facts regarding the stadium (did you know Arizona is the Copper State?).

Chase Field is kind of in the middle range as baseball stadiums go. I didn’t find the stadium particularly nice or inspiring, but it was a nice experience to be able to go into the Press Box, the locker rooms, and the dugout. We even got to go on the field, which was a treat.

One of the things that I did like about Chase Field was that there were little bits of the Diamondbacks history sprinkled throughout the stadium. When you're walking through the stadium you see little callbacks to key moments of Diamondbacks history blown up photos of Randy Johnson, the important plays from the World Series, and even action photos of current young players like Geraldo Peromo and Corbin Carroll. They even have a small museum where you can see the team’s Golden Gloves and Silver Sluggers, the World Series trophy and other artifacts from that 2001 World Series win. And of course, we also got to take a look at the famous Diamondback swimming pool.

What I like about visiting stadiums is that when you’re in a team’s home space its much easier to find the unique aspects of each team, their fans, and their history. After visiting Chase Field, I definitely feel like I know more about the Diamondbacks, and I look forward to visiting more stadiums in the future.