Arizona Diamondbacks 9, Los Angeles Dodgers 4, Chase Field, Phoenix, Arizona (11)
Image by Ken Lund
Jon Garland on the mound for the Diamondbacks.
Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark) is a baseball stadium located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and is the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball. It opened in 1998 just in time for the Diamondbacks’ first game after coming to Arizona as an expansion team.
Construction on the park began in 1996, and was finished just before the Diamondbacks’ first season began, in 1998. It was only the second MLB stadium at the time to have a retractable roof (after Toronto’s SkyDome, now Rogers Centre; others are now in Houston, Milwaukee, and Seattle). It was also the first ballpark to feature natural grass in a retractable roof stadium.
It hosted Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the 2001 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees. The Diamondbacks won all four games at Chase Field, then known as Bank One Ballpark, and won the world championship that year in dramatic fashion.
Chase Field was originally named Bank One Ballpark after Bank One of Chicago, giving rise to its nickname ("The BOB"). After Bank One merged with New York-based Chase, the name change was announced on September 23, 2005.
In March 2006, Chase Field played host to three first-round games of the World Baseball Classic.
Chase Field is to be the home to the 2011 All-Star Game.
Chase Field’s roof is opened or closed depending on the game-time temperature. When the decision is made to close the roof, it is left open for as long as possible before game time in order to keep the grass alive. Even when closed, the park’s design allows just enough sunlight to play in true daylight without overheating the stadium.
The roof is closed three hours before game time, and a massive HVAC system drops the temperature inside the park 30 degrees by the time the gates open. Originally, the HVAC system didn’t work above row 25 of the upper level, exposing fans in the higher rows to the full force of the often-oppressive heat typical of Arizona summers. However, recent changes keep virtually all of the facility in air-conditioned comfort.
Chase Field also has a swimming pool, located in right center field, which is rented to patrons for ,500 a game. The ballpark also features a dirt strip between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, one of only two current ballparks to do so (Comerica Park in Detroit is the other). This dirt strip was very common in old-time ballparks.
The park’s foul territory is somewhat larger than is the case for most ballparks built in the 1990s. With 80% of the seats in foul territory, the upper deck is one of the highest in the majors. However, the park’s luxury boxes are tucked far under the third deck, which keeps the upper deck closer to the action.
New in the 2008 season is a brand new High Definition scoreboard in centerfield. The new scoreboard is 46 ft (14 m). high and 136 ft (41 m). wide and it cost million. It is the 2nd largest HD screen in Major League Baseball behind Kauffman Stadium.
The stadium was once the home of the Insight Bowl, a college football bowl game from 2001-2005. In 2006, the bowl game moved to Sun Devil Stadium, to replace the Fiesta Bowl, which moved to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale. The football configuration was notable because of the lack of nets behind the goalposts and the dugout behind the south end zone. The final Insight Bowl played at Chase was between the hometown Arizona State Sun Devils and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
The stadium also hosts occasional concerts and international soccer games. For football and soccer, the field is set up with the end lines perpendicular to the third-base line and temporary bleachers added on the east side.
Chase Field has also staged nine women’s college basketball games. The second game, which was played on December 18, 2006, was shortened by rain with four minutes and 18 seconds remaining and Arizona State leading Texas Tech 61-45. Venue staff closed the roof in an effort to finish the game, but officials deemed the court unsafe. In 2000, ASU had played Tennessee at the same facility.
Chase Field was also the site of the "Challenge at Chase", a college baseball game between Arizona State and Arizona. Arizona won both contests. There was no game scheduled in 2008 and in 2009.
In February 2006, the Professional Bull Riders hosted a Built Ford Tough Series bull riding event at this venue. Chris Shivers won this event with a total score of 181.5 points on two bulls, including an impressive 93.75 (out of 100) points on Taylor Made bucking bull, Smokeless Wardance, in the short-go round.
Monster Jam comes to the field every year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Field
The Arizona Diamondbacks are a professional baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They play in the West Division of Major League Baseball’s National League. From 1998 to the present, they have played in Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark). Also known as the D-backs, Arizona has one World Series title, in 2001.
Between 1940 and 1990, Phoenix jumped from the 99th largest city in the nation to the 9th largest. As such, it was frequently mentioned as a possible location for either a new or relocated MLB franchise. Baseball had a rich tradition in Arizona long before talk of bringing a big-league team even started. The state has been a frequent spring training site since 1946. With the large numbers of people relocating to the state from the Midwest and the Northeast, as well as from California, many teams (most notably the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers) have normally had large followings in Arizona.
The first serious attempt to land an expansion team for the Phoenix area was mounted by Elyse Doherty and Martin Stone, owner of the Phoenix Firebirds, the city’s Triple-A minor league baseball team and an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. In the late 1980s Stone approached St. Louis (football) Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill about sharing a proposed 70,000 seat domed stadium in Phoenix. It was taken for granted that a domed stadium was essential for a prospective baseball team to be a viable enterprise in the city. Phoenix is by far the hottest major city in North America; the average high temperature during baseball’s regular season is 99.1 °F, and temperatures above 120 °F in July and August are not unheard of, but have only occurred three times.
Bidwill, with plans already in the works to leave St. Louis, opted instead to sign a long term lease with Arizona State University to use its Sun Devil Stadium as the home of his soon-to-be Arizona-based NFL franchise. Since baseball-only stadiums were not seen as fiscally viable during that era, this effectively ended Stone’s bid.
In the fall of 1993, Jerry Colangelo, majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, the area’s NBA franchise, announced he was assembling an ownership group, "Arizona Baseball, Inc.," to apply for a Major League Baseball expansion team. This was after a great deal of lobbying by the Maricopa County Sports Authority, a local group formed to preserve Cactus League spring training in Arizona and eventually secure a Major League franchise for the state.
Colangelo’s group was so certain that they would be awarded a franchise that they held a name-the-team contest for it; they took out a full-page ad in the sports section of the February 13, 1995 edition of the state’s leading newspaper, the Arizona Republic. First prize was a pair of lifetime season tickets awarded to the person who submitted the winning entry. The winning choice was "Diamondbacks," after the Western diamondback, a rattlesnake native to the region known for injecting a large amount of venom when it strikes.
Colangelo’s bid received strong support from one of his friends, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and media reports say that then-acting Commissioner of Baseball and Milwaukee Brewers founder Bud Selig was also a strong supporter of Colangelo’s bid.Plans were also made for a new retractable-roof ballpark, Bank One Ballpark, nicknamed the BOB, (renamed in 2005 to Chase Field) to be built in an industrial/warehouse district on the southeast edge of downtown Phoenix, across the street from the Suns’ America West Arena (now US Airways Center).
On March 9, 1995, Colangelo’s group was awarded a franchise to begin play for the 1998 season. A 0 million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball. The Tampa Bay Area was also granted a franchise, the Devil Rays (to be based in St. Petersburg), at the same time.
According to the original press release from Colangelo’s group (which remained posted on the team website during the first few seasons) the chosen team colors were Arizona turquoise, copper, black and purple. "…Turquoise was chosen because the greenish-blue stone is indigenous to Arizona, copper because Arizona is one the nation’s top copper-producing states and purple because it has become a favorite color for Arizona sports fans, thanks to the success of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns."
In the earliest days, the Diamondbacks operated basically as a subsidiary of the Suns; several executives and managers with the Suns and America West Arena were brought over to the Diamondbacks in similar roles.
There was some talk (which actually persisted for a few years after the awarding of the franchise) about the Diamondbacks being placed in the American League West. Colangelo strongly opposed this, pushing baseball officials to allow the new team to play in the National League West. Colangelo cited the relative close proximity of Phoenix to the other NL West cities; the similarities between the two fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Denver (home to the Colorado Rockies); the long history of Arizona tourism to San Diego; the Firebirds’ long history as the Giants’ top farm team; and the fact that Dodgers, Giants and Padres games were broadcast in the Phoenix and Tucson markets for many years.
From the beginning, Colangelo wanted to market the Diamondbacks to a statewide fan base and not limit fan appeal to Phoenix and its suburbs. Although every Major League Baseball team cultivates fans from outside its immediate metropolitan area, and even though the greater Phoenix area has 2/3 of the entire statewide population, Colangelo still decided to call the team the "Arizona Diamondbacks" rather than the "Phoenix Diamondbacks". Many in Phoenix were not pleased by this; they felt this move lent a "small market" tincture to the team’s name. However, fans in other areas of the state generally embraced the "Arizona" title as a positive move to help make the team a regional team for the entire state, rather than just for the state’s largest city and capitol.
Tucson, Arizona’s second largest city, located about a 90-minute drive southeast of Phoenix, was selected as the home for Diamondbacks spring training as well as the team’s top minor league affiliate, the Tucson Sidewinders. Radio and television broadcast deals were struck with affiliates in Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott, and Las Vegas; among others.
A series of team-sponsored fan motorcoach trips from Tucson to Bank One Ballpark were inaugurated for the opening season and are still in operation to this day (it is now known as the "Diamond Express"). The Diamondbacks are also known for the "Hometown Tour", held in January, where selected players, management and broadcasters make public appearances, hold autograph signings, etc., in various locations around Phoenix and Tucson, as well as many small and mid-sized towns in other areas of Arizona.
Two seasons before their first opening day, Colangelo hired Buck Showalter, the American League Manager of the Year in 1994 with the New York Yankees.
Their lower level minor league teams began play in 1997; the expansion draft was held that year as well.
The Diamondbacks’ first major league game was played against the Colorado Rockies on March 31, 1998, at Bank One Ballpark before a standing-room only crowd of 50,179. Tickets had gone on sale on January 10 and sold out before lunch. The Rockies won, 9–2, with Andy Benes on the mound for the Diamondbacks, and Travis Lee being the first player to hit, score, homer and drive in a run.
In their first five seasons of existence, the Diamondbacks won three division titles (1999, 2001, & 2002) and one World Series (2001). In 1999, Arizona won 100 games in only its second season to win the National League West. They lost to the New York Mets in four games in the NLDS.
Colangelo fired Showalter after a relatively disappointing 2000 season, and replaced him with Bob Brenly, the former Giants catcher and coach, who had up to that point been working as a color analyst on Diamondbacks television broadcasts.
In 2001, the team was led by two of the most dominant pitchers in all of baseball: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Arizona had postseason victories over the St. Louis Cardinals (3-2 in the NLDS) and the Atlanta Braves (4-1 in the NLCS) to advance to the World Series where, in one of the most exciting series ever, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City, they beat the reigning champions, the New York Yankees, 4 to 3, to become the youngest expansion franchise to win the World Series (in just their fourth season of play). That classic World Series is chronicled in Charles Euchner’s book The Last Nine Innings (Sourcebooks, 2006). The series was also seen as the beginning of the end of the Yankees’ stranglehold on baseball glory, as profiled in Buster Olney’s book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. All games in that series were won by the home team.
An estimated orderly crowd of over 300,000 celebrated at the Diamondbacks victory parade, held at Bank One Ballpark and the surrounding downtown Phoenix streets on November 7, 2001. This was the first major professional sports championship for the state of Arizona and the first for a team (in the four major North American professional sports leagues) owned or controlled by Colangelo, whose basketball Suns made it to the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993 but lost both times. (Colangelo’s Arizona Rattlers won the Arena Football League championship in 1994 and 1997.) Colangelo’s willingness to go into debt and acquire players through free agency would ultimately lead to one of the quickest free falls in major sports history when in just three years, the Diamondbacks would record one of the worst losing records in all of major league baseball by losing 111 games.
The team won the NL West Division Title again in 2002, but were swept out in the NLDS by the St. Louis Cardinals.
By the 2004 season, however, the Diamondbacks had dropped to a dismal 51-111 record, the worst in Major League Baseball that year and also one of the 10 worst records in the past 100 years of MLB, despite Johnson pitching a perfect game on May 18 of that season. Brenly was fired partway through the season and was replaced on an interim basis by coach Al Pedrique. Before the season co-MVP (with Johnson) of the 2001 World Series Curt Schilling had been traded to the Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series in 2004 and 2007.
By this time Colangelo and the other partners were embroiled in a dispute over the financial health and direction of the Diamondbacks (and notably including over 0 million dollars in deferred compensation to many players who were key