Despite being widely considered as among the more forgettable parks across MLB, I greatly enjoyed my experience at Angel Stadium of Anaheim, a park that doesn’t quite deserve all of the hate.
It’s been a week full of baseball for my wife and I as we continue our quest to visit every active MLB stadium, taking a long-awaited trip to Southern California to see the three stadiums in the region.
Of these three ballparks, two are renowned among baseball fans and routinely cited as among the best in the league. My expectations were sky-high for Dodger Stadium, and I can honestly say they may have even been exceeded. I can’t say my expectations for Petco Park in San Diego for tonight are much different, with that park being consistently cited by players, fans and media members alike as one of the league’s finest stadiums.
Yet mixed in there is an interesting case in a ballpark that is both one of the league’s oldest and most forgettable by the average fan. Originally opening back in 1966, Angel Stadium of Anaheim has been the consistent home of the franchise for six decades, having gone through a period of also hosting the Los Angeles Rams while undergoing several major changes over the years.
Despite its long history of being an MLB ballpark, it often finds itself near the bottom of fan-made ballpark rankings, with many critiques being levied towards its more cavernous nature and lack of walkability around the park.
I do want to say that these critiques are completely valid, and that I’m not about to go on a tangent about how Angel Stadium is one of the best ballparks in the league, because it is certainly not.
But I have a hard time personally putting Angel Stadium among the worst MLB parks I’ve been to, and I also have a good idea that there’s a park or two that I’ve yet to go to that I’ll rank Angel Stadium above.
Despite the expanses of parking lot that surround the stadium and a nearby highway that buzzes by the park and is visible from many of the upper deck seats, the landscaping around the park is fantastic given those drawbacks.
After walking along a lengthy line of oak trees to head towards the main gate, fans are greeted by one of the more recognizable gate gimmicks in the league with two oversized Angels helmets. The other side of the park also greets fans emphatically in the form of a towering A logo with the halo on top, making its presence rather conspicuous among the surrounding area.
Once getting inside, I felt like the concourse provided a modern twist to the classic concrete-clad appearance, with several large areas located outside the main stadium but within the gates to allow fans to walk around and find a place to eat – a pleasant inclusion that is not exactly commonplace across the league.
The complaints about the park perhaps being a bit too cavernous are certainly valid – especially when the larger-capacity Dodger Stadium does not give that feel all. The upper deck is massive and was mostly empty, and with an unremarkable team on the field, it’s tough to imagine what exactly gets energy into the building nowadays – a far cry from the atmosphere in Los Angeles Tuesday night.
Still, I didn’t find the park to be any more cavernous than American Family Field or Rate Field, with the lack of outfield views in both parks greatly detracting from the in-seat experience.
That is one category that Angel Stadium does not fall short on. While I’m sure our upper-deck seats towards the outfield on the third base side helped in this regard, many fans are treated to spectacular views of the surrounding landscape in Orange County, with mountain ranges visible in the distance to the east of the park.
While it’s admittedly pretty hard to fuck up having a nice view just about anywhere in coastal Southern California, Angel Stadium’s outfield is still a good deal more opened up than that of Rate Field or American Family Field – two similarly lower-rated parks.
It’s also worth mentioning the pleasant surprise of the evening, which came in the park’s food offerings.
Back in my days of eating meat, this would be something I’d be much more eager to dive deeper into and make a bigger part of my ballpark experience. Yet with my wife and I both being longtime pescatarians, the food available for us at sporting events wildly varies from delicious and pleasantly surprising to downright ghastly.
Beyond the fact that I wish more parks would implement seafood into their menus, there are still plenty of basic crowd-pleasers to be delivered on that go beyond the opaque plant-based dog that seems to be the standard offering.
Thankfully, this is where Angel Stadium delivered – and unlike many venues, they actually had the vegetarian offerings they were advertising on the menu, as it is all too common for stands to be out of a vegetarian item even when it is technically offered.
My wife and I both made out pretty nicely in this regard, as I enjoyed a great buffalo cauliflower Mac and cheese while my wife had a plant-based burger that was a noticeable improvement among what is typically offered at ballparks. I don’t want to factor the food too heavily into what I think of the park, but it was certainly a nice surprise that enhanced the experience.
While the scenery within the park could be better, it also could certainly be worse. There’s an added charm to seeing the waterfall feature in center field, which has long been a fixture of the outfield at Angel Stadium.
For as forgettable as many make the ballpark out to be, I came away thinking the stadium still did a great job at being distinctly Southern California, from the outfield views and landscaping outside of the park to the nods to the team’s history and surrounding region seen throughout the park.
The great thing about visiting MLB stadiums is that most of them are really good. You’re probably in for a solid experience just about anywhere you go – it’s just that a handful of parks stand on a different level due to either their scenery, history or a combination of the two.
I came in expecting to view Angel Stadium as a forgettable, underwhelming park – the takeaway that many fans on the same quest as my wife and I often come away with. Yet to me, this was just another fine MLB ballpark, a stadium that doesn’t deserve to be singled out for being particularly worse than most of the others.
I don’t know how I’ll rank this park once (if) we finally get to every stadium in the league, but I’m certain that Angel Stadium is not going to be in the bottom tier of the list.
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