PETCO Park

It's time to finally get some more pictures posted. The first of the three stadiums we visited on this leg of the trip was PETCO Park, home of the San Diego Padres. Ed and I both really liked it. He'd been there before, but it was my first time. We both agreed that the stadium itself isn't all that schnazzy. It has no distinguishing features (except perhaps for the Western Metal building), and an average scoreboard. But it has a good overall feel and it's in a great location--near numerous bars and clubs in the historic Gas Lamp District.

Pictures after the jump...

Here's what PETCO looks like from the outside:




These pictures might not show it that well, but PETCO is integrated right into downtown San Diego. Some of the city buildings are actually located inside the grounds of the park. The fact that it meshes so well with its surroundings gives it a unique feel. Another neat aspect of the stadium is the so-called 'Park at the Park' where kids can run around the bases on a mini-field


and families can sit on a grassy hill to watch the game.


I asked an usher how much admission to this area was, and found out you don't need an expensive ticket; it's only $7. Ed said that this lower-cost option came about in response to protests when the stadium was built, since it was going to displace many of the area's homeless population. It's actually not a bad place to watch the game from--especially if you have kids that would want to run around. Here's the view of the field from the hill.


Note the jumbo screen that you can also watch the game on. If you have a ticket for inside the park, you can head over to a section that is part bleachers (with grass rather than concrete underfoot) and part sand box:


Here's the view from our seats:










After a while we roamed around, scoping out views of both the park and the city from the upper concourses. I'm really starting to like the looks of ballparks under the lights at night:






That's it. Like I said, Ed and I really like this park. I'm not sure exactly where it would rank among the others we've visited, but the phrase "top five" was getting thrown around a lot.