I was ten years old the first time I went to the Ballpark at Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers. It was 1994, and the park had just opened. My mom, dad, and I went with some cousins of ours. We sat in the center field bleachers, just to the right of the Greene's Hill, which serves as the batter's eye in the park.
The Rangers were playing the Seattle Mariners that night, and playing center field for the Mariners was my favorite baseball player, Ken Griffey Jr. Seeing him in real life blew my prepubescent mind. He was only fifty feet away from me. He could hear me shout at him that he was my favorite player, though I doubt he paid any attention at all.
The Rangers won that game, 17-9. Jose Canseco, the right fielder for Texas, hit three home runs. Griffey hit a home run, too. I've been hooked on baseball ever since. Here's me in the same center field section, twenty years later:
The bleachers we sat in back in 1994 have been replaced with actual seats, which are a little more comfortable. It's also a great place to catch a home run, if you can stand the sun that bears down on that part of the field until night falls.
I'm laying out all these memories here to help you understand that the Ballpark in Arlington is a great place to watch a baseball game.
And yes, I'm calling it the Ballpark in Arlington because that's what it was when I was a kid. Now it's called Globe Life Field, and before that it was Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, and before that it was called Ameriquest Field. I'm not interested in keeping up with corporate sponsorships so I'm sticking with the original name.
The first thing to know is the stadium is a giant box. It doesn't have the beautiful city skyline beyond the outfield like many stadiums do because there is no skyline in Arlington. Arlington is a tangled mess of highways and concrete. It's the very definition of sprawl. So the architects of the Rangers' ballpark had no lovely landmarks to work with when they built the place.
But the result is a unique and gorgeous stadium.
The right field porch is an homage to the old-fashioned stadiums built in the 1920's. The white-railed office building in center field reminds me of Old Yankee Stadium. There's very few bad seats in the park, mostly in that corner of right field behind the foul pole.
This photo is from the left field upper deck, where we wandered one game when the Rangers were getting shut out in epic fashion:
Like I said, as long as you don't sit behind one of the few columns in the park, you'll have a great seat.
There are a few interesting activities during the game. There's the Ozarka dot race, in which three people dressed in a red, blue, and green dot suit race from a gate in left field all the way to a finish line around first base. It's really as lame as it sounds.
There's also the Whataburger fry toss, in which two contestants try to earn free Whataburgers by tossing foam fries into a container. But my favorite between inning activity at this ballpark is that they let a little kid run from the left field gate and "steal" third base. The kid has thirty seconds to go get the base and bring it back. I've never seen a kid fail at this, though they all look completely gassed by the the time they're done.
Then there's the food. Come with an appetite and you won't be disappointed. In fact, you'll definitely be putting yourself at risk of diabetes after sampling the food at this game.
To the right is the Boomstick, a 24 inch hotdog with chili, cheese, and grilled onions. It fed my family of four, which should give you some insight into the filling power of this monstrosity. But it's not just huge--it's good. Sure, your arteries are going to get clogged in the process, but it's worth it.
At $27, it seems expensive, but when you consider that no one in your group will be hungry for the rest of the night, it's worth it. And God help you if you try to take this thing on by yourself.
To the left is the Choomongous, which is a....sandwich? It's seasoned beef with spicy coleslaw and sriracha sauce on a sweet bun. It's also 24 inches long.
This thing is delicious.
And God bless the Texas Rangers baseball club, they don't skimp on the beef at all. They pile the meat onto the bread. It's so filling that you won't need to eat again during the game.
The Choomongous is also $27, but it fed three of us, which included two teenage boys. In my opinion, it's worth the price tag.
Don't be worried about the sriracha sauce. It's not too spicy.
The thing with all these two foot long monster snacks that the Rangers serve is that the ingredients actually taste good. The beef and chicken were some of the best I've had in a restaurant or a stadium.
This food isn't like the barbecue brisket sandwich I had in an unnamed stadium that was really just a twelve dollar Sloppy Joe.
I recommend eating these snacks at a table on the concourse, because they're just too unwieldy to eat in the tiny stadium seats. They can get really messy, too.
There's a giant burger, as well, called The Beltre Buster, after Adrian Beltre, and a enormous quesadilla called the Rougadilla, after Rougned Odor.
I'm incredibly biased, because this is my hometown park. It's where I learned to love baseball. I'm sure there are some great parks out there, but the Ballpark in Arlington is my favorite place to catch a baseball game.
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