Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Touring Oriole Park Part II

A continuation of yesterpost...

Our tour continued to the press area and the main operations room for the ball park. A massive trail of wires on the ceiling shows the way!

The ball park was clearly built before the wifi craze

The main computer room controls all the lights and screen in the park, along with what's shown on the big scoreboard.

The "brains" of Oriole Park

Even the technicians get a view of the game

The press gets a good view of the game from behind home plate, though that does mean they are prone to foul balls flying in (the windows have no glass in them). Usually the press is more defensive of their lap tops than their persons, according to our tour guide.

Press desks

The press room also has the line ups and stats from the previous game on a whiteboard.

A close game!

We took an elevator down to the lowest floor, where all the players arrive and hang out.

The underbelly of the park

Do you have proper identification?

The Jamie Parker Room is where the mascot gets dressed before going out onto the field.

Mascot dressing room

More of the hallway

Next, we had the most exciting part of the tour--going out onto the field! The taller of us had to duck under the nets protecting pedestrians from stray balls. My youngest ducked too, though he didn't have to.

Going out onto the field

View of the stands

View of the field

We sat in the Orioles dugout while the guide told us not to go on the grass. A lot of hard work goes into maintaining the grass and he claimed he had to confiscate shoes in the past.

In the dugout

The dugout includes the typical phones to other parts of the stadium when the manager or a player needs to get in touch with someone else.

Press Box, Video Replay, and Bullpen phones

I was surprised by how plain the bat rack was.

For the bats

Our tour guide

The big scoreboard has two orioles as wind vanes. The only problem with the design is the warehouse building, which is slightly taller than the scoreboard so wind from the west won't turn the birds. The tour guide said that the blocking of west wind makes all those home runs reach Eutaw Street.

Scoreboard

Mostly helpful windvane

View of the park from the dugout

One part of the park has all the retired numbers for the team in orange. The final blue number, 42, is for Jackie Robinson, the great player who broke the color barrier of the major leagues in 1947.

Retired numbers

We noticed a black ribbon on number 20, which was Frank Robinson's number. He died on February 7, 2019, so the ribbon commemorates his recent death.

Baseball's loss

We took three last pictures before heading up into the stands.

My sons on the field

Home plate

One last shot

Many of the chairs have an old design from the previous stadium on the end.

Inspired by the first field

We went back up to Eutaw Street for the end of our tour, looking back into the stadium and seeing the flag poles for all the baseball teams.

Another view

Flagpoles

The tour guide asked the younger tour members which year was the first World Series victory for the Orioles. Another boy guessed wrong then my son piped up with "1966." The guide gave him a ball that was found in the stadium, probably a foul ball that no one picked up.

Checking out the game ball

We got home and looked at it closer--it was an opening day ball!

Proof

The tour was excellent and we highly recommend going for it. My youngest now wants to see a game so I am sure there will be a family excursion this summer.

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