We're doing a Texas baseball tour this year aka going to a Rangers game and an Astros game. First up was the Texas Rangers at their converted airplane hangar Globe Life Field. We parked on the other side of the old Ranger's stadium and let me tell you, the old stadium has that baseball character that you'd expect out of a ballpark. The new stadium is, well...clean. It felt like you were in an oversized high school sports stadium. Didn't feel like a very baseball-y atmosphere except the fact that there was a baseball field in the middle of the place. There were windows on the outfield side of the stadium that made it feel more open than it was, but the roof was shut today (on the plus side, they do have air conditioning, unlike T-Mobile). There were only a handful of concessions available and the ones that were all were for the same things so there wasn't any variety which is odd because the concourse is very spacious. Mid-day on a Thursday kept the lines down, which was nice, except when Jeremy wanted ice cream because then every other fan did too. I noticed they didn't have any vendors walking up and down the aisles selling snacks. Speaking of snacks, they had like 3 types of candy, popcorn, peanuts and that's it. We just happened to sit in front of a group of 3 Mariners fans who came down for this game and an Astros game too. They loved my Ryan Rowland-Smith jersey which pleased me. I know that if we end up crossing paths in Houston, they'll recognize me. The seats were fairly comfortable and not broken which is a plus. One complaint from Jeremy is that the cupholders are in a strange spot behind the seats. He kept putting his arm around the back of Jake's chair and dipping his finger into a stranger's beer. It was awkward to say the least.
One thing I found very unique to this experience was the fact that the Rangers have cheerleaders and before you ask, yes, they do use a t-shirt cannon to launch shirts during the breaks and no, they did not use them to launch hotdogs. The overall "fan experience" is somewhat lackluster. They wanted to get the crowd fired up, but it seemed like they only had 1 way to say "Get Loud" and that was exactly how they said it. With the roof closed, it was indeed loud in there and I can't imagine how much louder it'd get if it was actually full of fans. There weren't any fun sound bytes during the various situations the players found themselves in, which made for a boring time. Jeremy noticed they didn't have a place with a constant scoreboard or other team's scores so you'd have to wait until the inning was started to see where things were at.
How about that hotdog? Imagine you are at a company BBQ in early August and Jeff from accounting is grilling up Dollar Tree hotdogs, but on top of foil so they don't get grill marks. That's how they taste. Very generic and you can't tell which meat they were going for, is it beef, pork, bork...who knows! The standard hotdogs are like Ballpark frank size, but they do sell a 2 foot long hot dog which just seems unnecessary. The bun was reasonably soft and not stale so that was nice. Out of the hot dogs I've had thus far, I'd rank them on the lower side of average and definitely not worth the $7 we paid for one.
The Rangers played the Nationals on May 2, 2024 at 1:35 pm and we sat in section 223, row 10. The price I paid for the tickets to this game was $30 each. I want to say this was a reasonable price, but the "ballpark" was so lackluster that I felt like I was at an overpriced high school baseball game. Would I come back for another game? Probably not, sorry Texas.
If you want to see the box score, here’s a link
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