Day One of the Fan Cave Top 30

Since posting will be slow this week while I do Fan Cave related activities and since it’s largely due to your votes that I’m even in Arizona, I thought it would be a good idea to give you a quick update on some of the things that are going on for the Fan Cave Top 30.

Some important things of note:

Our hotel is located across the street from a Stuffington Bear Factory. While I’ve yet to take the tour, I can only imagine that the basement floor is a terrifying hellpit.
I’m incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of really intelligent and funny baseball fans.

Coming into the week blind, we picked up our itineraries and credentials this morning, getting our next couple of days mapped out for us. I think this should also get me access to the highest levels of military clearance, too:

Next, we boarded the bus for Chase Field, signing in with a “First Impression Specialist” before moving on to the deeper layers of the stadium. Once we were there, we had to do a bunch of top secret MLB activities involving a) eating lunch, b) chatting with really great people that work for MLB c) redacted and d) definitely redacted (though hopefully you’ll be able to watch it soon).

Fortunately, we also got a tour of the stadium and though I wasn’t allowed to go searching for the Legend of Curly’s Gold, I did stumble upon quite a bit of Craig Counsell-related images. Which, while everyone else was crowding around Randy Johnson perfect game memorabilia, I was able to quickly snap. The fools:

Well, who’s coming with me to Craig Counsell Field next year, otherwise known as Baseball Mecca?

A few interesting notes about Chase Field, but it is actually loaded with lots of art and memorabilia from baseball’s history, including the Diamondbacks’ division rivals. I think it’s actually very cool of them to include all of this history rather than fabricate a larger tapestry than 15 years of the team’s existence can provide.

In addition, the field was also half-naked with new sod being laid down as January sees Chase Field converted into a Monster Truck Rally…fest? Zone? What do you call a place that holds Monster Truck Rallies? For how little time the grounds crew has had to work with, the playing field looks phenomenal, if only half there.

Oh yeah, and if you ever have the chance to pee in a nearly empty stadium, take it. It’s amazing how relaxing it is when you don’t have dozens of drunk and screaming fans jostling for position.

Tomorrow will see us split into smaller groups and head out to some other stadiums, even seeing some real live Major Leaguers. Hopefully I’ll have some more stories to share even though there will be 95% fewer mentions of Craig Counsell. What can I say, life can never be perfect.