Second part of a west coast trip, following the Nats.  Enjoy!

PetcoPark is white concrete and sand-colored stone, like the stone walls of the Museum of the American Indian on the national mall.  The light towers are solid and look like light-colored adobe, giving the impression of bell towers at a Spanish mission.  The exception to the southwest colors is the incorporation of the Western Metal Company building in far left field – the corner of the building is the foul pole – which is a red brick historical building, probably offices and warehouse, which now houses pricey suites and a restaurant.  There are jacaranda trees outside of the park in many places,  and seeing those beautiful purple flowers in bloom was wonderful.

 While there is a fancy main entrance along the waterside, the most popular entrance seemed to be the Gaslamp entrance, behind left center field, from the local neighborhood (historical area first built about 100 years ago, lots of restaurants and nightspots).  This leads to the park and a grassy hill area behind center field where it is possible to sit and watch the game (a la being on the lawn at Wolf Trap) – at the center is a statue of Tony Gwynn.  There is also a large screen on the back of the batter's eye wall where the out of town games are broadcast for picnickers.  This lawn area seems to have been drawn from the setup of the original Pacific Coast League stadium, which has been replicated in a lot of the spring training camp parks.

 There is a brick patio at the left field entrance to the seats that has bricks with names on them, mostly fans but also lots for construction workers who built the park, each marked with a hardhat symbol.  There are groups of bricks, with a baseball term in a larger concrete brick, so your brick might be in the “dinger” square or “beisbol” square or the “hot corner” square.  We did not recognize all the terms, so wrote them down and looked them up at home in the baseball encyclopedia – such as “ducks on the pond” (runners on base) and “5.5 hole” (hitting a ball between the third baseman and the shortstop, which Tony Gwynn was particularly known for).

 Several events of interest took place during the series, including the 75^th anniversary of baseball in San Diego, starting from the Pacific Coast League in 1936 (and one player from that original team is still alive.) Ted Williams, who is from the area, played on the team while in the minor leagues, and he and Tony Gwynn are the most celebrated figures at the park.  Both the Padres and the Nats wore 1936 uniforms for that game.  Another night was the annual celebration of the Negro Leagues, and one of several player honorees was Chuck Harmon, who was recently featured in a nice piece in the local section of the Washington Post, about his great-granddaughter playing on a boys little league team in Capitol Hill.  We were also able to do breakfast in the park on Sunday morning, a regular event (we had oatmeal and a breakfast burrito) where we saw a lot of Nats fans, probably drawn by the novelty just like us.  Ordinarily breakfast can be eaten on the field, but in this case it was a big signature Sunday for kids, so tables for eating were set up on the wide sidewalks in the grassy area.

 The park and team are heavily tied into the local military, especially the Marine Corps, so there are big billboards about this inside and outside the park.  At the start of every  game before the national anthem all current and veteran military were asked to stand to be recognized, and we all applauded.

 This is a nice park, well managed and good sight lines – we sat along the left field line in both the club level and in the upper deck, and at about third base at the club level twice.  The ushers carry plaques (English one side, Spanish the other) asking that people not go to their seats during the at bats - and if the usher is at the entrance it is pretty effective.  There is also a big range of good ballpark food.

 My only criticism of the park is that there is no visitors’ bullpen.  The home bullpen is at left center field, but right center field is bleacher seats with a sandbox/beach at the bottom, for kids – nice idea, kids play in the sand while parents watch the game – but what happens if a homer is hit there and junior gets beaned – even Petco is not that assuredly a pitcher’s park. The visitors’ bullpen therefore is at the far end of the right field foul territory.

 A big memory from this visit will be Anthony Rizzo’s first major league game – he is going to be an important player for a long time.  In his first at bat one pitch from Livan Hernandez was a 58 MPH curve ball, looked like a high arching softball pitch.  I highly doubt  that Rizzo will ever see the like of it again.  Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

 Scoreboard information regularly included factoids about the players, which also gave context as necessary (thank goodness) – for instance, Rick Ankiel is the second player in the majors to pitch 25 games in a season, then later have 25 home runs in a season – first was Babe Ruth.  Padre Jason Bartlett (who looks a bit like Shane Victorino from his scoreboard picture) is one of three players of Filipino background playing in the majors – I did not recognize the name of the third player, but the second (to my surprise) is Tim Lincecum.