Tour 2025: Oracle Park

All photos of San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, and Oracle Park available on Flickr.

The final stop of our trip was the day I was the most excited about - Oracle Park in San Francisco!  I was pumped for a few reasons: 1) we were getting out of the 90° heat, 2) this was my first time back to SF since the original Tour in 2007, 3) we had amazing seats in Levi's Landing, 4) we had an amazing hotel, and 5) it was an afternoon game, so we'd in theory have a free evening to explore, which we rarely do - more on that later.  We were on the road before 9am and it was about a 90 minute drive west through the Diablo Mountain Range.  These certainly were not tall mountains, but when juxtaposed with the flat valleys near sea level on either side, it was a stark contrast.  I'm no geologist, but I assume the mountains are part of what keep the valley hot and the Bay Area cool, because the temperature dropped about 15 degrees as we passed through them on I-580.  The drive through Oakland over the Bay Bridge was breathtaking, and it was hard to concentrate on the road as we descended into a foggy San Francisco.  We dropped off the car at our hotel in the SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood and it was about a 3/4 mile walk southeast to the ballpark.

It's hard to believe that Oracle Park is already celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.  It has this interesting duality to it where it still feels like a completely modern ballpark, but at the same time, it feels like it was meant for its site and has been there forever.  As a 42-year old, I barely even remember a time when the Giants played anywhere else.  It has a real sense of permanence and place to it and has a seamless fabric with the surrounding area.  There are many urban ballparks that are retro style just for their own sake, but the sense of scale and texture and rhythm of the masonry at Oracle Park ties into the street front very well.  We circumnavigated the stadium before gates opened and began our walk heading east from Willie Mays Plaza, and it almost felt like we were walking around Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, in the sense that this was truly a ballpark that was an integral part of a neighborhood, and not just randomly plopped somewhere downtown.  Part of Oracle Park's mystique and perfect fit with its site is of course derived from the fact that it is surrounded by water on two of its four sides.  This park is right up there with Pittsburgh and Seattle as one of the most beautiful sites in all of MLB.  McCovey Cove is on its southern border and empties into San Francisco Bay on its eastern edge.  Turning south from King Street onto 2nd street, we passed rows and rows of boat docks, a yacht club, and a seal statue commemorating the old San Francisco Seals baseball team.  Even on this side, which I would consider the "back" of the stadium if you can even call it that, there was the same attention to detail paid to security gates and loading docks as there was at every public facing façade.  Our walk continued west on a promenade running along the cove, and we then crossed over the Lefty O' Doul Bridge, which had a massive concrete counterweight hanging over the street and we had a fun time speculating how the hell this bridge actually worked.  The bridge takes you to the other side of the cove and features a statue bearing the cove's likeness, Willie McCovey.  This statue is within China Basin Park, which is a spunky little park that hosts gameday events, including a Pride Day celebration on this day.  We watched some performances for a little while before making our way back to the O'Doul Gate to get in as soon as gates opened at 11:05.

We barely got inside and my immediate thought was that I had no idea why I ever had this ballpark ranked so low.  I think I had this at 8 or 9 in my rankings prior to this visit, and I pushed it all the way up to #2 right behind PNC Park.  When Erik and I were last here 18 years ago, we were so focused and excited to watch Barry Bonds potentially break the homerun record that I don't think we allowed ourselves the time or attention to truly appreciate this park.  We also had upper deck seats back then, which offer a really nice view of the bay, but are nowhere near the experience as the main level is at this park.  The designers of this park could have just phoned it in and let the waterfront view do the talking, but all of the unique corners of this building and attention to detail really make it sing.  One of my favorite parts of the building was the concourses were designed to feel like a street.  The concession stands had a "storefront" look to them, the gritty concrete framework was accented with brick pillars, and I loved the touch of giving the concourses jogs and nooks to allow for places of aspect and refuge and to visually break up the long aisle, just like every great street does.  Every square inch of the concourse had purpose and really made it feel "lived in," just like the exterior does.  This park does an excellent job of feeling authentically retro yet not kitschy, and that is really, really hard to pull off.  

The outfield has an open-air concessions plaza with picnic tables that I definitely do not remember from last time (sort of like the area behind home plate at Warner Park) and this is where we ate our lunch for the day - decadent crab sandwiches.  They tasted almost like lobster rolls except with crab, on luxurious buttered toasted bread.  Left field has probably the most famous part of the park - the Coke bottle slide.  I was super bummed that the slide was only for kids 14 and under as I had been looking forward to going down it all week, but you know a ballpark is doing something right if even their kids area is cool.  One of the new areas of the park is a vegetable garden, which is down the stairs from the concessions plaza and directly inside the Marina Gate.  The stadium literally grows and uses this produce in some of their food, which could not be any more San Francisco.  This is also the area where the ballpark finally added bullpens (the park infamously forgot to include them in the original design) and there is a boardwalk-style arcade down here as well.  We ascended back up the stairs and ended our interior lap at Levi's Landing, which is where we had tickets and where I've always wanted to sit if I ever returned to Oracle Park.  It's literally only 3 rows of seats wedged between the tall right field wall and a 10' wide walkway, and then directly behind that walkway is McCovey Cove.  You feel right on top of the action here and I imagine it's what sitting on top of the Green Monster is like in Boston.  The only difference is, people park bombs on top of the Monster almost every game, but there have only been 106 balls ever hit beyond our section into the cove in the 25+ year history of this ballpark.  It almost felt like we were in a private club area sitting here surrounded by only a small handful of fans in our section, and we had a great time chatting with our neighbors during the game.  The couple sitting next to us stopped in SF on the way back home to Indiana from their Polynesian honeymoon just to log their 14th ballpark.  I didn't bother upstaging them by telling them we had already been to all 30, as they seemed too jet-lagged and madly in love to care.

Speaking of love, today's game was Pride Day at Oracle Park.  Almost every team has some sort of Pride Day, but it can sometimes feel like a contrived token gesture.  Going to Pride Day in San Francisco was a true celebration and held real significance, and it was very inspiring and emotional to be present for, particularly under our current administration that has made it an open mission to squash inclusivity of all kinds.  As a privileged, straight, upper-middle class white dude, it's easy to take for granted how cushy my life is, and I can't even imagine how marginalized people of the LGBTQIA+ community must feel these days, particularly outside of a welcoming place like San Fran.  I proudly clapped and cheered as an ally, I wore my giveaway Pride bucket hat in solidarity, I coughed up $40 for a souvenir sparkly margarita, and it was really fun to be in a progressive city again for a day.

On to the actual game, the Giants faced off against the Braves in this Saturday matinee.  The game ended with a walk-off, 2-out, 2-run homer in the 9th by Matt Chapman, and was an exhilarating way to end our final game of the trip.  The awesome pitching matchup of Bryce Elder and Logan Webb lived up to its billing, with the starters going 8 and 6 innings respectively with a combined 22 strikeouts.  As the Braves bullpen has been apt to do during their unexplainable freefall, they ruined a great pitching performance in less than an inning, as Pierce Johnson was the scapegoat in this game.  Former Brewers star Willy Adames started at shortstop for the Giants and went hitless out of the 6-hole, and still seems to be trying to hone his swing for this bigger ballpark as he's batting under .200 on the season.  Fan favorite Jung Hoo Lee was out of the starting lineup, but did strikeout in a pinch hit appearance.  Ronald Acuna Jr. continued his torrid start to the season for Atlanta since returning from injury by notching another hit and upping his average to .321 as of this game.  

It was yet another quick game at just a shade over 2 hours, and this afforded us what we hoped would be a long night on the town, but by the time we made the walk back to our hotel and checked in, we were dead tired.  We settled for a couple cocktails at our gorgeous rooftop bar at the Canopy Hilton, and enjoyed a rare sit-down dinner at a cute little dim sum restaurant a few blocks away.  Sunday morning was a familiar schedule of Erik waking up before dawn to catch an early flight while I slept in.  I was supposed to be on a 3:45pm flight home, but it got delayed so much that I was able to switch to an earlier flight.  I did still have enough time before heading to the airport to make one final tourist stop - the Golden Gate National Recreational Area.  This is part of the National Park system on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge and offers miles of hiking trails with several distinct ecosystems, but what most people go here for is to get stunning views of the bridge from atop a hill, myself included.  I figured I may never be out this way again, so I needed to make time to drive over the bridge, and I'm really glad that I did.

Another year in the books, and another year feeling grateful that Erik and I still get to do this all these years later.  We are now middle-aged and can't (nor want to) party like we used to - and these last few trips have made that very apparent - but we still always enjoy our common denominators of travel, baseball, and friendship.  We've already got an idea in mind for next year, but until then, Tour Molly is just 3 short days away!

park rankings and statistics

(see original rankings from 8/7/07):

aesthetics - increases to 10
views from park - 10
view to field - 7
surrounding area - 7
food variety - increases to 7
nachos - 8
beer - decreases to 6
vendor price - decreases to 6
ticket price - 6
atmosphere - 10
walk to park - increases to 7
parking price/proximity - 1
concourses - increases to 9
team shop - 9

kids area - 10 (best in MLB - Coke bottle slide!)

best food - crab sandwich, and garlic fries are a staple
most unique stadium feature - Landing in RF/McCovey Cove
best jumbotron feature - Giants team song in 5th which I had never heard before

best between-inning feature - drag queens sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" for Pride Day

field dimensions - 339/391/309

starters - Bryce Elder (ATL) v. Logan Webb (SF)
opponent - Atlanta Braves
time of game - 2:05
attendance - 35162
score - 3-2 W

Brewers score that day - 4-3 W