ADV Draft Baseball League Other

With this post, I've reached the point on these blog posts where I'm writing about games that I went to in this calendar year instead of games I attended two years ago. Neat!

For the purposes of my chase, this is the third ballpark I visited, although U.S. Cellular Field was the first ballpark I attended as a kid. Despite my pretty hazy memory of my early childhood, I was occasionally reminded of this by way of a small diorama-esque box that my dad constructed containing memorabilia from the game--a foam finger, a foul ball that wound up in our possession, and plenty of pictures. Thanks to Baseball Reference and its staggering amount of historical data, we can even take a look back in time to the specific game. I've always been pretty partial to the Sox because of this experience, and coming back on a solo trip to the park felt nostalgic.

This specific game was a part of the White Sox's $5 Tuesday promotion, so I was able to come in for cheap and walk around the stadium a bit. The combination of coming on a Tuesday for a day game and the fact that the game was combined with a previously postponed game seemed to create a lower-than-usual attendance--Baseball Reference says 12,542 out of 40,615 for a 30.8% capacity, but it certainly felt like far fewer. As a result of this low attendance, I was able to park directly on 35th street, which felt like a huge win. The stadium was so sparsely populated, in fact, that when I took my seat in the 500 level of the stadium I was flagged down and told that the 500 level was closed and needed to move down to either the 100 or 300 level. As a combination of guilt for paying for a $5 500-level ticket and not wanting to move too much, I settled on a 300-level seat down the third-base line. I was the only person in my row and one of a few in the section, so I was able to (literally) kick my feet up and enjoy the game.

I caught the final few innings of the first game of the double-header, where the Phillies handily beat the Sox by a score of 7-4. I was situated right next to the Sox's bullpen, where I saw Lucas Giolito warm up. He appeared to not throw a single pitch that would be called a strike during this warmup--so, using these two points, I bet a sum of money that I don't care to admit on a sportsbook that the Phillies would win the game. What I witnessed instead was Giolito throw six no-hit innings with one walk, seven strikeouts, and 67 strikes on 102 innings pitched. During those six no-hit innings, I also witnessed Jake Burger blast a three-run homer right past me for the only runs of the game, from both teams, as the Sox beat the Phillies 3-0. The Sox carried their no-hitter into the eighth, where it was broken up by Brandon Marsh for the Phillies' only hit of the game.

My thoughts on the park are rooted in nostalgia--a lot of things looked and felt similar from my 2006 memories, but there were also more modern parts of the park I was able to hit that I enjoyed. The 300-level seats connect to a nice lounge area, where there are plenty of armchairs and outlets to do work from (I saw a few business-looking people doing what appeared to be work from there)--inspiring me to perhaps do this in the future once I get back to Chicago and start going to more Sox games. The wheels above the scoreboard, which I distinctly remember being made of incandescent bulbs, were replaced by screens. Regardless, after the Sox's three-run shot and their eventual win, familiar fireworks were launched above unfamiliar spinning wheels on a screen, a nice mix of what I remembered and what was new about the park.

This game was the first baseball game I had ever attended on my own, without a group of friends or my family to soak in the experience with. This doesn't mean, however, that I was alone during the game--at around the sixth inning, a man that appeared to be in his fifties or sixties emerged from the door to my section, sat next to me, and started reminiscing about the 2005 World Series. I'm guessing my 2005 World Series sweater that I was wearing helped facilitate that conversation, especially since he also had a killer 2005 World Series jacket on. He had a packet of peanuts that he offered to share from, and talked about how he attended the 2005 American League Championship Series and sat in a 500-level section across the stadium, even pointing out the row he sat in. This is the first time I had ever had peanuts, and I ate the shells at first before I noticed him breaking the peanuts out of the shell (you know, like you're supposed to). After lamenting about how the current iteration of the White Sox weren't off to the best start, he went back to join the party he came with and left the bag of peanuts with me. Thanks in part to this encounter, I get a bag of peanuts at every stadium I go to these days--they typically last at least two full innings, taste good, and feel pretty integral to the "baseball experience" I'm chasing at these parks. It also reminds me of this nameless baseball Umarell I had the pleasure of talking to.

This was also the first park where I got food and started taking pictures of it for comparison purposes. My meal at Guaranteed Rate consisted of a normal-looking Vienna Beef hot dog and nachos. It tasted somewhere between average and decent. I've since come to learn that polishes are far better at the ballpark, and Guaranteed Rate has some of the best food in the majors.

To cap this post off, this ballpark experience was a combination of homecoming and the true beginning of a chase that would dictate my actions for the proceeding months. Guaranteed Rate Field felt like a perfect first park for me to begin my 2023 sprint at, and I know it is one that I will be attending plenty of games at to come as I plan to spend the coming years in Chicago (even if I do wind up moving north as I currently plan to, there is no way I am attending a game at Wrigley unless a team I like is in town).