So I just got back from a quick jaunt to the Bay Area for an extended weekend and my family's annual trip to two ballparks. This year, we visited some concrete structure in Oakland and AT&T Park. Read on to find out what I, ahem, liberated during my tour of AT&T Park.

Warning, this is crazy long. And no pictures, yet. And this is just the first part, since, you know, I'd like to get to bed soon.

So as some of you may know, my family endeavors to visit two ballparks every year. Thus far on our quest, we've been to:

• Dodger Stadium - blech
• Angel Stadium - Hooray for cheapish beer!
• Chase Field - Probably should have been an airport hangar
• Safeco Field - Nice field, douchey fans
• Old Yankee Stadium - Surprisingly OK from a fan experience perspective, but old
• PNC Park - I don't care how bad the team is, I'd watch baseball there every damn day

Here's how it works. Every year, once the Padres release their schedule, we look for a road trip were we may be able to swing a multi-city visit. It doesn't always work out that way, but traditionally we've seen one Padre game per trip. With the Padres slated to play the AL Central in Interleague play next year, we're hoping to catch Progressive Field and New Tiger Stadium.

But I digress. We lucked out this year when we discovered the Padres would be playing in San Francisco during Labor Day. Get to see our boys and not have to take as many days off of work? Hell yeah!

So we arrived in San Francisco on Saturday morning. We rented a car with the express intent of driving over to Oakland to catch a game there on Saturday night. Inexplicably, the good people of the bay area decided a holiday weekend was the ideal time to shut down the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland. Yet my family and I persevered and managed to figure out how to take the BART over to Oakland. There's a stop at the Colliseum, which is great.

First Impressions of Oakland

Getting off the BART, all I could think was that this place is ass. The BART station is across the street from the Colliseum, but is connected by one of those long, hideous overpass walkways. You know the kind, like those sketchy, shitty looking things in Lemon Grove that go across the 94. Yeah, those ones. The kinds that people end their miserable lives on. So far, off to a brilliant start.

Crossing the giant overpass to the Colliseum, I had the overhwelming sense that I was visiting Qualcomm. I know some people feel nostalgic about that place, but it gives me the creeps now. It just feels oogy. Anyway, we finally get to the great mammoth concrete structure around 3 o'clock. Of course, they don't offer tours on gamedays and we needed an hour to kill before the gates opened. With that in mind, we headed down one of the great concrete ramps to the "main ticket office." Again, the similarities to Qualcomm came flooding back, as the ticket windows were just a series of little windows set into the exterior walls. As my dad went to procure tickets for the night's game, we ventured into the A's team store.

Now I know a lot of people (myself inlcuded) complain about the lack of interesting merch at Petco. If you've ever visited another modern park (say Angels Stadium or AT&T Park), you realize how awesome our merch could be. With that said, I feel really, really, really bad for A's fans. They're main team store is maybe 1/4 the size of the Majestic team store and has precious little in the way of variety. It was really sad to see. That said, their elephant logo totally kicks our friar logo's ass.

Inside the Behemoth

After killing an hour of time sitting out front of the Colliseum, we finally ventured inside. The similarities to Qualcomm kept coming as we were routed through a claustrophobic concrete concourse. The A's do get points for how they've done their best to dress up the place by trying to create a boutique feel for each of the different concession stands throughout the concourse. I especially appluad their variety of beer, but they get seriously knocked for not taking credit at many of these places (I mean, WTF, it's 2009!).

We made our way over to our seats just past the visiting dugout on the first base side, about 10 rows up from the field (don't remember numbers off the top of my head). We were able to get these tickets on game of day for about $50 a piece, a complete steal. Now, even though we were 10 rows back, it was like being about 30 back at Petco. People really aren't joking when they comment about the foul territory in that place. It's crazy huge. It's like minor league park huge.

Looking around the stadium, you're immediately struck by the gargantuan concrete structure in the outfield. This repulsive, hideous collection of suites and bleacher seats was allegedly commissioned by Al Davis upon the Radiers' return to Oakland. It may be good for football (I doubt it), but it absolutely bastardizes any semblance of a baseball park. What's worse is that almost the entire structure is not even used during baseball games. The rows of luxury suites are empty and the top level of bleachers are completely tarped off. In fact, every section of the top level at the Colliseum is tarped off during A's games except for a few sections behind home plate. I know people have knocked Petco for lacking personality, but this place is absolutely lifeless. It's utterly depressing to see how the stadium kills baseball there, but it's true.

As pre-game festivities rolled on, I was struck by how little fanfare there was before the game began. Petco at least has a good thirty minute of video packages and pre-game stuff to run through before a game. Oakland has no such thing. They are further hampered by ridiculously small video boards that are way up in the air, at the end zones of the stadium's football configuration. But alas, the festivities ended and the game began.

For the most part, it was utterly unremarkable. I don't remember much about the game, but it was cool seeing Scotty Hairston again. We ended up leaving after like six innings because we'd rather get trashed at the hotel room. We took the BART back to San Francisco without incident and readied ourselves for the tour of AT&T the following morning.

The Ballpark Tour - Phantom Gets a Souvenir!

We awoke Sunday morning and drove over to AT&T Park after first hitting Dynamo Donut (woot bacon donuts! Thanks Food Network!). It was fairly easy navigating to the park, and after some searching, we found the main parking, located across the bridge and McCovey Cove. We finally ended up parking by a small Giants Community park. We scoffed at the so-called Barry Bonds field and started heading toward the park. As we began walking toward the bridge, we first saw the statue of Willie McCovey hanging out next to the mini park. Upon further inspection, we found plaques commemorating each Giants Opening Day roster since their move to SF that were flanked by bricks from fans (similar to the Tony Gwynn pavillion and brick area outside of the team store at Petco). Each of the bricks bore McCovey's 44, which was also pretty cool.

Heading over the bridge to the park, you immediately realize a couple things not immediately evident on TV. One, the "Splash Hits" don't actually land in the bay like I always thought. They instead land in so-called McCovey Cove, a fairly narrow tributary that runs a few blocks into China Basin from the bay. The second thing you realize is how small this patch of water actually is. It looks ginormous on TV, and it would probably take you all of five minutes to swim across it. No joke. It's tiny.

Once we got across the bridge, we approached the Park along its first-base side. We ventured into the Giants Dugout, their two-story, uber team-store. This place flat-out puts Petco to shame. The team store features a smorgasbord of orange and black paraphanelia and a satisfying amount of Beat LA merchandise. Sure it had an SF logo, but I still almost bought one of them out of principal. The store had literally everything you could want, from customized cell-phone battery doors with San Francisco logos to Giants-branded golf sleeves that you can throw on your arms when it's cold. It was just amazing to see.

As luck would have it, the store was where we needed to be to start the tour. We waited along with the twenty-five or so others who would take the tour and our very old, very quiet tour guide finally began the tour. I don't want to get too detailed in my review of the tour here, but let me first say something. If you're going to host a ballpark tour, you should probably be able to project your voice. On top of that, it's probably not a great idea to give critical information about your ballpark in front of a busy street. Semantics, I know, but it's worth remembering.

Our tour began in the Giants suite entrance. We later realized that this isn't so much a suite entrace as it is an area that anyone with a ticket in the Dugout Club can access. The Dugout Club, unlike Petco, refers to all seats in the section closest to the field between the dugouts. This area features a nice array of concessions ranging from your standard ballpark fare to made-to-order Mexican and Asian-inspired dishes. More on this in Part 2.

From the suite entrance deal, we headed to the Visitors Clubhouse. Now, I need to say something here. At some point, when I could actually hear our tour guide, he made a very big deal out of saying how great security and camera coverage at AT&T Park are. We were told that security could "see the color of your eyes no matter where you were at." Scary stuff. And possibly true. But not in the clubhouse, apparently.

Going into the Visitors Clubhouse you first notice all of the locker plaques on the wall. The Giants' Clubbie for the visiting teams has made a habit of collecting the locker plates over the years and putting them back on the walls as a way to honor/celebrate all of the players who have come through. It's pretty neat scanning the literally thousands of name plaques to try and find Padres colors and players. We weren't able to find to find too many Padres players, but I was able to find something I wanted to take home.

As our oblivious tour guide was off showing us the Shaving Room (exactly what you think it is), I spied a binder-clipped bunch of papers hanging on one of the pillars in the middle of the visiting clubhouse. After some brief investigation, it became apparent that these papers were the travelling rosters/special instructions for each team. Rather than take them down after each team has come and gone, the current team's sheet was simply added on top of the stack. I considered asking about these papers, but ended up being urged by family members to liberate them outright. We later leafed through these papers and found some juicy little tidbits. More to come.

Our tour then took us up through the bowels of the stadium and out to the visiting dugout. Everyone took their share of pictures and listened to the tour guide when you could hear him. What immediately struck us is the wierd rubberized surface that lines the field. Whereas Petco (and most stadiums) features a dirt track, the Giants opted for an artificial surface. This must be a bitch to dive on. I understand that it's easier to maintain, but this is squarely in foul territory and could seriously impact the game. I don't know who would ever want to deal with this.

After more exploration of the field, we ended up touring some more areas of the stadium. I honestly don't remember too much since I couldn't hear the tour guide and I kept thinking that scary security types were going to show up at any moment to confiscate my treasure and kick me out of their park. What I do remember is that the park is gorgeous. I can elaborate more on this in Part 2, but it really is a phenomenal, beautiful park. The designers did a fantastic job and the place just feels like a baseball stadium (unlike Oakland, or even Arizona for that matter). The old brick with the all green seating surfaces just have a very comfortable feel. All of the signage at the field has a distinctively retro feel and it's a comfortable place with expansive corridors and open air at every turn. There are famous baseball quotes scattered throughout the park and the suite level features some amazing paintings of vintage park. They also get a billion thumbs up for letting you bring your own wine to the game if you've got a suite (corking fees do apply) and you can even take food home. This is a hell of a lot better than Petco's practice of removing food from the suite once the 8th inning rolls around, regardless of the game's length (we were in a suite during the 15-inning game Hundley won earlier this year and we really could have used some food in the 13th inning).

The tour ended back in the gift shop, and there they were. The security guards were posted at the store exit. I had been found, I knew it. As we approached, I fully expected gruff words and a Wiggins-esque ban from the stadium, but we were instead told to have a great day and come back soon. I had made it.

Tidbits from the Rosters

So we haven't delved too much into these rosters (and I haven't scanned them for your perusal yet), but here are the interesting things to note:

• It's fun to watch how these things change as the season progresses and teams make moves. Seeing a Padres roster from earlier in the year featured the likes of Jake Peavy, Jody Gerut, and other dearly departed members of the team. You can really track the evolution of the team's throughout the year, which is cool.
• Steve Quis isn't on the Padres travelling roster, which I heartily endorse. I hate that guy.
• The Dodgers had explicit instructions that Furcal and Ramirez were to locker next to one another. I guess Manny needed the steadying influence that only Rafael could offer.
• The Nationals had ginormous instructions that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE ANY KIND OF ALCOHOL TO BE PRESENT IN THE CLUBHOUSE. NO WINE. NO BEER. NOTHING. Flat out hillarious.
• Even though I was a rapscallion and I liberated the rosters, I have my limits. There are phone numbers for various people listed in this thing that will never see the light of day. Why on earth they would just leave this information exposed during their tours is beyond me, as anyone could have leafed through this thing or taken the bold step of rescuing it.

So there you have it. I'll go over my actual game experience at a later date if anyone cares. I know this is stupidly, unnecessarily long, but I hope you enjoy it. It was great to see us crush more playoff dreams and I couldn't wait to get home and write about the spoils of my trip. Let me know if you'd like a Part Two.