With the summer coming up, it made me start thinking of road trips. And let's be honest, the best road trips are the ones where you get all the guys together, check out a foreign stadium, and root on your squad as they wear the visitor grays. So here are my personal top 10 athletic venues that I've been to.
1. Fenway Park (Boston)
Fenway being ranked #1 is pretty common on many other lists that you see. For me, it has a personal side to it because when I was a kid it was the location of the very first sporting event I ever went to. I don't know if there's anything better than sitting in the same seat where someone watched Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams and Yaz play. Plus the atmosphere around the park before the first pitch can be just as much fun. The streets are closed around Fenway giving it an almost carnival type atmosphere. There are bars surrounding every corner of the park and the excitement of the people waiting for the game to start is indescribable.
2. Ohio Stadium (Columbus)
This is what college football is all about. You have the tradition of one of the most storied programs in college football history, playing in a stadium that dates back to the 1920's. Even though it's been remodeled throughout the years, when you walk in you still don't know if you're attending a football game or seeing the Christians be fed to the lions. It's probably one of the loudest stadiums I've ever been in, and when you have over 100,000 people rooting against Michigan, the intensity is unreal. Even before the game starts, tailgating around the stadium is insane. People start lining up around 6:00 in the morning to get a good spot, with the real diehards showing up the night before. And let's not forget about Hang on Sloopy. This song was adopted as the state rock song for Ohio (I still don't get that), and is the anthem that really gets the crowd rocking.
3. Notre Dame Stadium (South Bend)
Also when you talk about history, you feel it as soon as you walk through the gates. I've been there pre and post renovation, and even though they added more seats, pre-renovation I'm convinced was louder than post. The student section is probably one of the most dedicated when it comes to knowledge of the team and rituals during the game. There are two things that make me laugh about tailgating at Notre Dame. First, right next to one of the big lots near the stadium, there is a liquor store. It couldn't be any more perfect in case you run out of the essentials before kickoff (however, I understand from inside sources that the lot is not being used right now because of some sort of university expansion project, ugh). The second is the diversity of the people. You have the seniors and first year grads cooking burgers and brats on a small Coleman grill right next to a giant RV that is making shrimp and filets (I'll let you guess which one I was at).
4. Soldier Field (Chicago)
I went to Soldier Field before the renovation and saw the Browns play the Bears there. You may remember that was the game where the Browns were up big late in the game and the Bears sent it into overtime by recovering and onside kick and throwing a Hail Mary pass as time expired. The Bears would win in overtime by picking off Tim Couch and returning it for a touchdown. What I liked about Soldier Field pre-renovation was it was shaped just like a college stadium on the inside. It was one big bowl. Here was my favorite part though, the sausage. When you get a sausage sandwich there they don't just give you one, oh no, you get two sausage in there. And it was at that moment that the Saturday Night Live skits with Chris Farley made complete sense.
5. Wrigley Field (Chicago)
I'm going to stick with the Chicago theme and go with Wrigley Field at number five. I have a buddy that use to live in Chicago about one train stop down from Wrigley, so one summer weekend we flew out there to see him and check out a Cubs game. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, bleacher seats were out of the question. We tried, but it just wasn't happening. So we walked up and bought standing room only for $7.00 each. Not bad. We were able to stand right in back of home plate. Always enjoy going to the classic stadiums, even though there are only three of the left in baseball. The weekend we were out there it was also "pride" weekend (not that there's anything wrong with that). During the bottom of the 8th inning, they played YMCA over the speakers, and you would have thought it was midnight on New Years Eve. The place went crazy.
6. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
In this era of new parks trying to look like old parks in baseball, I will give the designers of PNC Park a lot of credit; they did it right with this one. They cut the attendance down to around 38,000 which creates a more intimate feel throughout the park. The way they also set up the outfield was genius. They didn't build an extra deck or seating, so you get probably some of the best views of the city by just looking out to dead center field. Pittsburgh is also the only city I've ever seen where they tailgate before a baseball game. At the park they also have one of the best food deals in all of sports. You can get a giant plate of fish and chips for only $6.00. It's a steal if you ask me.
7.Ralph Wilson Stadium (Buffalo)
Ralph Wilson made my list not so much for the stadium itself (pretty typical concrete, nothing exciting), but for the atmosphere. Me and my buddy Dave drove up there in December of 2001 to see the Patriots play the Bills. I think it was one of the coldest games I've ever been to, and I really contemplated why I would drive three hours to sit in the cold to watch football. Now we had always joked around that everyone in Buffalo smokes and that was the running joke throughout the drive. As we get close to the stadium, we decided to try and find an AM station to catch some pre-game. The very first commercial we hear is about a discount tobacco store. Very first one. I thought I was going to roll onto I 90 I was laughing so hard. The location reminded me of the old neighborhood ballparks, because we were driving down this street and it went house, house, house, stadium, and house.
8. Cleveland Municipal Stadium (Cleveland)
Even though this great structure by the shores of Lake Erie has been torn down and replaced, it was always an adventure attending a game there. The parking lot atmosphere has not changed from the old Municipal Stadium to the now corporate Cleveland Browns Stadium. In a massive parking lot that runs along side route 2 and is just a couple of minutes walk to the stadium, the lots become packed with fans barking and grilling up brats and burgers. It's quite a scene, especially once a fan with a visiting team jersey strolls through. That's where the real fun begins. The old Municipal Stadium had some character to it, unless you were in one of the seats that were right in back of a pole. This was a place that was made perfectly for football, even though when you looked at the field and saw the teams coming out of dugouts it looked a little strange. It could be sunny and 60 degrees outside, as soon as you walked in, it was overcast and in the 30's with the possibility of precipitation. It was the kind of stadium that truly intimidated an opposing team's fan base to stay away, or pay extreme consequences. My favorite example of this was back on New Years Day, 1995. The Patriots and Browns were playing in an AFC wildcard game. The Pats were trailing at the end of the 4th quarter, and miraculously recovered an onside kick with about a minute left. I started jumping up and down, and was almost immediately pelted in the back with a snowball.
9. Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor)
I've been to Ann Arbor twice for football games, and of course one of them was for an Ohio State game. A problem I have with going there is the traffic. For a noon kickoff against Ohio State back in 2003, we got into Ann Arbor at 8:00 in the morning. We finally moved out of traffic and parked around 9:30. So many traffic tie ups and all it does is test every bit of patience you have when you're dying for a beer. When you see the stadium from the outside for the first time, you start wondering how they fit over 100,000 people in there because it's not that tall. Once you walk in you realize how far down below the street level the stadium goes. It seems like there are about 90 rows, and probably half of them are below street level. The stadium itself is a big open bowl and it reminded me of what the Rose Bowl looks like, with no second or third decks. The plus side of the concessions is the stadium is one of the few places I've seen where you can still get Little Caesars Pizza which was a nice surprise. Here's a quick side note about seeing a Michigan-Ohio State game there. I've seen this game played at both stadiums, and it definitely seems that Ohio State games take this game a lot more seriously than Michigan fans do. Yeah there was intensity and the name calling as you walked around, but it was nothing like the atmosphere when the game is played in Columbus.
10. Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center (Kent)
To round out the top 10, here is my nod to the Mid-American Conference. It was between this and Anderson Arena in Bowling Green (which is the only other MAC arena I've been to), but they got bumped off because behind one of their baskets, they have a section with only 2 rows of seats. Sorry BG. There's nothing flashy about this arena, and that's probably why I enjoy watching games there. The seats are all close together, with student sections underneath both baskets. It also has a pretty low ceilings which when the place is packed, can make it a very loud arena to play in. The town is a typical college town, with some fun bars like the original BW3's and Rays. If you're at Rays, you may get lucky one night and find yourself drinking beers that were bought by Drew Carey. The former KSU student likes to come back every once in awhile to visit his old haunts.
So what is everyone else's top 10 look like?
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