All photos of Grapevine, Frisco, and Riders Field available on Flickr.
Our 15th Anniversary Tour commenced this past weekend in the steamy Dallas-Fort Worth metro area after much anticipation and over 2 years of pandemic-related delays. There's really no great time weather-wise to visit Texas during the baseball season, as you're contending with either triple-digit heat, torrential rain, or even the start of hurricane season as it was during our visit. But we lucked out with the weather with no rain, a nice steady breeze, and never touching above 90° for all 4 days we were there. We both got early starts to the festivities and both landed at DFW early Thursday morning. I killed some time caffeinating myself to combat my 4:30 AM wake-up call in a coffee shop at a beautiful remodeled train station in nearby Grapevine while waiting for Erik to arrive, and by about 11:30 we were off to Frisco.
We had a rental car for the first day of our trip to make the drive out to Frisco, which is about 20 miles north of the airport. After a lunch and a couple flights at a local brewery called Union Bear, we checked into our hotel and walked to the ballpark which was conveniently just across the street. Thankfully, gone are the days of us finding cheap motels on the outskirts of town to save money. We were in Frisco for this 24-hour excursion to see the RoughRiders, the AA-affiliate of the Rangers. Texas has no shortage of ball options when we were looking at how to assemble this trip, and we ultimately decided on Frisco due in large part to it being one of the most unique ballparks in all of America. It was famously designed a little over 20 years ago by David M. Schwarz (who is the Chairman of the Yale architecture school) and the concept behind it was to create a "park within a park." It features a very welcoming and well thought-out set of interconnected pavilions that sit between the street edge/gates and the various concessions and suite structures of the ballpark. These pavilions both serve as great gathering spaces that make use of what is typically dead space, as well as refuge from the Texas heat as they are almost entirely in shade during a typical game. At the time this stadium was constructed, this was the first building in what is today a 70-acre development, so it had to be able to stand on its own before the rest of the development could catch up, and the "park in a park" concept only reinforces that by having a series of out-buildings that hold the street edge as well as visually connecting the inner pavilions to what would become future plazas outside the ballpark. It is also the type of park where the concourse is on street level and the field is sunken below, which was done for budgetary and schedule reasons primarily but also greatly strengthens that visual connection to the street. The entire building material choice is also quite unique, done entirely in a fiber cement residential-type siding, giving it more of a quaint, intimate coastal vibe or even a Churchill Downs aesthetic rather than an albatross ballpark. This all again gives it an appropriate sense of scale that holds the street edge, and helps make it seem like this ballpark has been in town forever and successfully creates an urban feel in a suburban area. All in all I was very impressed with how what seem like simple (and quite frankly cost-saving) measures really give this park a style all of its own, while still not shying away from the massive scale and grandeur you only find in Texas.
Following the game, we had a few drinks and apps at a bar called Wild Pitch next door to our hotel and called it a night. Let's just say that Dallas is the "breastaurant" capital of the United States and was one of the few non-sports things we enjoyed about our time in Texas.
best food - tacos
field dimensions - 335/409/335
touch with baseball when his childhood heroes Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, and Jim Gantner retired but the Great Home Run Chase of 1998 reignited his passion. As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Erik became involved with the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. With this group Erik traveled to Portland, OR and Baltimore, MD to work on construction projects and help the group raise $25,000 to partially sponsor a house in Milwaukee. Also at UWM, Erik met Peter Nagel. The two attended their first Brewers game together during Opening Weekend 2003. Despite their failure to ignite the coals at their first tailgate, the two had a blast and were soon making weekly trips to the ballpark. Erik has gone on to several colleges and changed careers several times, and has moved all the way out to New Hampshire, but has always stayed true to his baseball roots by holding part-time stadium usher jobs. To this day he looks back fondly on his incredible cross-country journey.
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