Safeco Field Tour - April 20th, 2017

(from the Take Me Out To The Ballgame department)

Hi everyone,

My family and I got a rare opportunity to take a "behind-the-scenes" tour of Seattle's own Safeco Field.  We gathered in the gift shop, and walked out on the upper level:

After a quick introduction, we went down into the stadium to the Visitor's Locker Room:

Lining up prior to entry

Visitor's Batting Cage

Inside the Visitor's Locker Room

They allowed us to pose in front of one of the lockers.  I was pretty excited about it.  Rose - not so much:

Dana soon had her smiling though

Well - kinda

Dana sitting at the Visitor's table

From there - we went to the Visitor's dugout:

Okay - couldn't resist it.  Selfie time!

Heading back inside

One last shot

From there - we gathered at a room where they hold press conferences:

Homeschooling press conference

We headed to the outer deck and a gorgeous view of Seattle:

(Google Panorama)

(Sony Panorama)

(Sony Panorama)

Then we headed to some of the 300 level seats:

(Google Panorama)

From there we went to the 200 level to visit the corporate suites:

All of the suites are named after Hall Of Fame players.  The first suite we entered was the Lefty Grove suite:

Lefty's jersey on the wall

We went through a few more suites - I took pics of some of the jerseys:

Rogers Hornsby

Micky Mantle

This is the founder's suite:

Hiroshi Yamauchi - Nintendo President and Owner of Seattle Mariners

From there we went to the press box.  Interesting note - they open the windows during games - and it's right behind home plate.  Foul balls can - and do - go in here all the time:

They framed where the ball hit the wall

Some of the promotional materials throughout the years:

Finished our tour at the entrance to Safeco Field.  This is the Chandelier of Bats:

The compass rose down below.  It includes northwest items in its matrix.

And that was our tour.  Our guide was really good about telling us Safeco Field trivia.  Sadly - I don't remember a lot of it - except that they keep the grass at 57 degrees.  There's an entire plumbing and heating system underneath the natural grass field.  This insures that it keeps growing year round - even during the winter.

If you ever get a chance - I highly recommend this tour.  It was a once in a lifetime trip for me - I've been to Mariners games ever since they started at the Kingdome, and I'd get free tickets if I were on the Honor Roll at school.  I'm really glad I had a chance to share these memories with Dana and Rose.

Cheers,
Paul