FanPost

Observations from an NDer at an A's game



On January 31st, I wrote a FanPost asking ANers for advice about how to get from Fisherman's Warf to the Coliseum with a 5 month old child. This is my follow-up FanPost with my thoughts about the area and about my experience at the A's game.

First of all, my wife had a work conference and since North Dakotans can't always make it out to the Bay Area, we thought we'd make a vacation out of it. I'll stick to the A's game after this comment: the Bay Area is amazing and we had a great time doing all of the touristy stuff.

We stayed at the Sheraton Fisherman's Warf so we took a cable car to the nearest BART. Our daughter. Harper, did not like the cable car ride, though my wife and I thought it was neat. The BART was easy enough to navigate and we made it across the bay to Oakland.

Here we are ready for the game... the Sunday, April 3rd game (first win!).

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My daughter, Harper, was the navigator.

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My first impression was: wow, the A's need a new stadium. At the risk of offending anyone, and please know that it's not my intention, I have to say that the area around the Coliseum is very dumpy. If the BART station hadn't been connected to the stadium, I'm not sure I would've felt comfortable walking the streets with my wife and daughter.

The Coliseum itself, from the outside, looks like nothing more than a molded pile of concrete, though it was pretty much what I expected.

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We sat in section 115 on the first base side of the plate. As bad as I think the area surrounding the Coliseum is and as awful as the concourse is, the field is beautiful. It's much better than I thought it was from watching the A's on TV.

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The following are a few of the action shots that my wife took 205500_10150162030257446_517557445_6552510_5232961_n_medium

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The service at the game was horrendously slow. I cannot believe people put up with it. If you want a hot dog, you have to skip a full inning of the game. And it's not like the stadium was full either.

Overall, it was an awesome experience, especially since I've been an A's fan stuck in North Dakota for 20+ years and this was my first chance to attend a game in Oakland. I've seen the A's play in Minnesota (I actually saw the game that snapped the 20 game winning streak) and Kansas City, but this was the best one. But I can't help but think about what it would've been like if the A's park was AT&T park.