The Rangels and The Toadies...Game Day in Texas

Arlington is a funny little city. Just west of Dallas, this suburb has no practical public transit (there is very limited commuter service and a paratransit service) and the area we're staying in has basically nonexistent sidewalks.

This presents a problem as we came here to catch a baseball game. Our hotel is just a hair under a mile from the ballpark but there is no way to walk this walkable distance without having to go onto a very busy street. There is no public transit, either.

Watch the Video!

There is a private trolley service that local hotels use, however. It's also wheelchair accessible but you must book (for free) with the hotel's front desk first. We're given three passes for the bus and head out to the street behind the hotel to wait for our appointed pickup time.

Here's where it starts getting a bit interesting.  The Rangers are playing the Angels tonight. We're die-hard Halo fans and this is only the second time we've gotten to see them play on one of our road trips. We're definitely going into enemy territory when we show up in our blood red Angels shirts and a busload of people in blue Texas shirts are waiting there.

We endure quite a bit of good-natured ribbing while we wait for the bus and on the ride to the stadium. The driver points out where we're supposed to catch the bus after the game and we head on in.

The entrance here is at left field and our seats are behind home plate, shading towards first base. We get to our section but I can only find stairs up the one level we need to go. An usher says we can use the press box elevator.

When opened, I see an Angels team executive already on and give him a high-five. We have a need to see our fellow fans and team members feel welcomed in this opposing stadium.

To get to the accessible seats, we have to go through the private, home plate club.  I wish we could stay but our spot is just outside the door. There's a big overhang, pillars obstruct the view, and my knees are pushed into the seat in front of me. These are premium seats, by the way, about $30 more each than the cheap seats in the outfield.

The game gets started and the wind starts blowing. What had been a hot and humid day...with us wearing shorts and t-shirts...turns into a windy 40 - 50 degrees at game time.  It's chilling us to the bone, especially is this very drafty section of the stadium.  Oh, how I wish we could get on the other side of that door, into the climate-controlled home plate club.

It's not to be, however, and neither will it be for the Angels.  They lose, the only loss of their series in Texas. Of course, it had to be the night we had tickets.

After the game, local rockers The Toadies put on a concert for the fans.  You might know them from their hit 'Possum Kingdom.'

Unfortunately, the stadium acoustics are just crap tonight so after waiting five or six songs for their hit, we cut our losses and head outside where the shuttle bus we were supposed to catch never shows up.

Wondering what to do, I decide to book a Lyft ride back to the hotel, get the car, and come back to get Letty and Tim. Luckily, we found a sidewalk vent blowing out warm air they could stand on until I got back.

The Lyft driver cancelled the ride, the second one called me and said security wouldn't let her approach the stadium so I had to leave Letty and Tim there while I walked two blocks to find her.

She was very nice and when I explained what I was doing, she asked if Tim's wheelchair folds up.  In fact, his travel chair folds up quite nicely, so she had me call them and ask them to walk to the nearest corner where I could guide them to the car and she'd drive us all back to the hotel (she had a nice, big Honda Pilot).

While I was waiting, she asked what was going on inside and I told her about the concert. She'd never heard of the band, I explained they were kind of a one hit wonder when I heard the lyrics of that one hit wafting out of the stadium.

"That's what they're playing now!"

Still didn't ring a bell.

Letty and Tim roll up and it's time to put us and this trip to Dallas, Arlington, and Fort Worth to bed.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

Photos by Letty Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

FIELDS OF DREAMS: Angel Stadium - Anaheim, California

Los Angeles had the Dodgers but Major League Baseball thought the region could support another team. Enter the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. In addition to being a singer and and actor, Mr. Autry was a pretty astute businessman. He had bought a radio station - KMPC - and a TV station - KTLA - and was looking for some exclusive content that would generate big ratings. The timing worked right for an expansion team in the region.

While the Angels...taking its name from the city of angels, Los Angeles...at first shared the stadium with the Dodgers (who made them call the stadium "Chavez Ravine" when they played there), it was soon determined that they would need their own place to call home.

A bit south of L.A. in Orange County, the city of Anaheim was poised to bloom after Walt Disney opened his theme park there.  The city paid for, and still owns, the stadium with the Angels as their major tennant since opening day in 1966.

The team has always been looked on as an underdog, playing second fiddle to the boys in blue up the freeway. After a few looks at the playoffs, the team...under former Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia...finally made it all the way to win the World Series in 2002 against a Barry Bonds-infused San Francisco Giants.

Many superstars and hall of famers have passed through the clubhouse including Nolan Ryan, Bobby Grich, Francisco Rodriguez, and Reggie Jackson but none claimed the Angels after they left. That changed this year when former outfielder Vladimir Guerrero entered the hall of fame as an Angel, the first player ever to do so.

Currently one of the best players in baseball, Mike Trout, prowls center field for the team and Japanese pitching and hitting phenom Shohei Ohtani provides spark on both sides of the equation.

The team never never won for Autry. The chant was always "win one for the cowboy," who was a beloved owner. He died in 1998 and his widow, Jackie, sold her shares of the team to the Disney Corporation, who renovated the stadium into today's version after being damaged in the Northridge earthquake of 1994. 

The Disney era ended in in 2003 when Arizona billboard magnate, Artie Moreno bought the team. He is still the owner today.

Here are the stats: 

Opened: 1966

Surface: Tifway 419 Bermuda Grass

Construction cost: $24 million

Capacity: 45,477

Field dimensions: Left field - 347 ft; Left center - 390 ft; center field - 396 ft; right center - 370 ft; right field - 350 ft.

Home teams: Los Angeles Angels (AKA California Angels, Anaheim Angels, and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) 1966 to present. Los Angeles Rams 1980 - 1994

Games Attended: 100+

Although it was completely renovated around the beginning of the ADA era, Angel Stadium has not been a wheelchair friendly stadium under the watch of the current ownership. Most accessible seats are at the top of the Field Terrace section, which sit under a large overhang that blocks the view of the scoreboard. There are accessible seats at the top of the right field grandstand, which sit in the hot full sun during daylight hours, and at the top of the shorter left field bleachers. The left field seats behind the bullpen are the best, moderately priced seats for wheelchairs in the park.

There are a number of accessible seats in the very expensive Diamond Club, behind home plate, and two spots on the club level where there is one wheelchair seat and one companion seat. 

Due to litigation, the team has set up a program for discounted seating for wheelchair users in the Diamond Club to make up for lack of seating in the club level. The discounted Diamond Club Tickets can be purchased on-line through the Angels Ticket Office by emailing a request to diamondclubaccess@angels.com and providing verification of the need for the use of a wheelchair.

Ushers here do a good job of keeping standing fans out of the way of wheelchair users.

(Full disclosure: we, and others, opened litigation against the team for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act with their wheelchair seating policies. That process has been completed and the team is now in full compliance with the law.)

Ticketing is much easier than it used to be, now go to angelsbaseball.com, click on 'Tickets,' 'Single Game Tickets,' choose the date you want, then click 'real time ADA seating.'

Public transit to the game consists of Orange County transit buses, Metrolink Commuter and AMTRAK trains which disgourge passengers at the ARTIC station on the other side of the 57 freeway from the stadium. It's a bit of a walk from there.

If you're driving, traffic can be daunting but we've found it's easier to deal with on the third base side of the stadium, entering and exiting from State College Boulevard.

The food is not, nor has it ever been spectacular. It's serviceable and while owner Moreno made a name for himself by slightly lowering beer prices after he took control, they have now creeped back up to normal ballgame prices.

We usually buy our own food on the way to the game and bring it in. 

Our favorite is Portillo's in nearby Buena Park.

The concourse is open with TV monitors to follow the action. Lines are manageable and move quick. Fellow fans are friendly even if you're rooting for the opposition.

Overall, the stadium is showing it's age and the current management team has not really shown much of an interest in catering to those in need of accessibility over the years. They could also show more effort in fielding a winning team rather on resting on some tired laurels they've accumulated over time.

As it's our home team and we're destined to be their fans, we'd really like to see this one improve and climb our list.

Darryl Musick

Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

No Sitting Together at the Ballpark, Not for You Wheelchair Boy: The Great Companion Controversy of Anaheim and the ADA Resolution That Followed

The curse started for me over half a century ago when my dad took me to my first Angels game at the brand new Anaheim Stadium in 1965. That game impressed upon me so much that they became my team and I was an Angel fan for life.

Sure, they were the second tier team in town. Walter O'Malley had brought his Dodgers to Los Angeles a few years earlier from Brooklyn. They owned L.A., and still do to this day. Although I enjoyed seeing Dodger games in L.A., they always seemed a bit uptight to me and didn't quite click

It was the Angels with their underdog status and the team's laid back approach to pleasing their fans at the stadium that somehow wooed me. It sure wasn't their winning ways...the team was a perennial loser, no matter how much money the team's owner, singing cowboy Gene Autry, would throw at a superstar in the twilight of his career to come play here...but it was still a great place to go see some baseball and have a good time.

"Win one for the cowboy" would just be an empty phrase as long as he was alive. Sure, they came within striking distance, making the playoffs in 1979, 1982, and within one strike of going to the World Series in 1986 until closer Donnie Moore threw a beach ball to Dave Henderson who knocked it out of the park. 

After the Cowboy died and the Disney Corporation took over the team, they finally put it together to win their lone world championship in 2002.

My wife and son caught the dreaded Angel fan bug from me. We used to go to about a dozen Angel games a year. We had no problems with wheelchair and companion seating until Arizona billboard magnate Arte Moreno bought the team in 2003. After that, since they’d recently won a World Series and (in their words) tickets were at a premium, they enforced the companion seating policy as was written in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) at the time...at least one companion seat for each ticket sold upon request. They would not sell a third and I could not even get an extra ticket anywhere close.

I complained to the team and we had several long discussions with them about it and they wouldn’t budge but they were within the letter of the law so what could I do?

When the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) was asking for suggestions on how the ADA could be modified and refined in 2008, I sent them a letter about this...how could it be OK for an able bodied person to buy as many tickets as they want together but accessible seating was, in effect, limited to two tickets? Thus, my suggestion was heard and a new modification to the ADA went into effect...teams and other public performance venues now had to sell at least 3 companion tickets to each wheelchair ticket when requested. 

Once this was coded into the ADA and the date had passed so that it was in effect, I tried to buy a wheelchair ticket and two companion tickets to a game. I was told only one companion seat would be sold, just like before. It’d been years of wrangling with them. I was through, I turned it over to the DOJ.

You could imagine my surprise when they assigned it to an attorney that worked down the hall from me at my office where I worked at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. It caused a little consternation at first because I was a DOJ employee but I reminded them that I didn’t give up my rights when I came into work. 

They agreed and did a ‘soft’ litigation...basically informing the Angels of the law. The Angels said a mistake was made when I tried to buy tickets and that they were in full compliance. The attorney asked if I could go to a game and report back to him what happened.

(At this same time, the Angels had just settled a full blown lawsuit that a fan filed for the same reason because they only built in one companion space for the only two wheelchair seats that they had in the club level, a popular premium level for fans)

I went to buy tickets as was told that in the section we wanted to sit in (left field, cheap seats), that we were required to buy their “all you can eat” package. I argued but that’s all they would sell me. We went. There was a snack bar ten feet behind our seats. I went. Was told the “all you can eat” snack bar was in another location on the top deck of the stadium...three levels above us.

Back at work, I informed the attorney. He unleashed some hell on the team and also found out that in the section we were in, only the wheelchair row was required to buy the food package.

That was the last time we went to a game there, four years ago. The DOJ got the Angels to stop the food package practice and all compliance had been adhered to...so they told me.

Today will be our first time back. We’ll see how it goes. We'll let you know in this week's Fields of Dreams post on Wednesday.

On a side note, the team fired their VP in charge of ticket policy and sales. They also fired their attorney who, as was unofficially told to me by very informed sources, cost the team over $4 million in fighting these various actions. I’m told he now is the team attorney for the Jacksonville Jaguars football team.

Always try to work it out ahead of time but if it comes down to it, here's a link that tells you how to file an ADA complaint.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

CLASSIC TRIP - Phoenix, Arizona 2001

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia

In 1990, we took our first vacation with a wheelchair. Our son, Tim, was three at the time and had just graduated to a chair from a stroller. This was also a time of very limited budgets so we stuck close to home and visited Arizona.

What really stuck in our mind from that trip was the Pointe hotel. For an unbelievable $59 per night we got a beautiful 2 room suite, full breakfast, evening cocktails, and full run of the resorts many amenities. There were many swimming pools to chill out the extreme desert heat, a fantastic golf course, and even stables to go on a desert horseback ride.

Ten years later, the Pointe is again on sale. AAA members can receive a rate of $84 a night from May to September. We decide to take them up on it and see if a weekend at the Pointe is still as magical as we remember.

Friday morning: we load up the van and head out on a 6 hour drive from L.A. to Phoenix. Mostly high-speed desert freeway along the way. At 3:00, we pull into the Pointe at Squaw Peak (note: last time we stayed at the Pointe at Tapatio Cliffs...there are three Pointe resorts in the Phoenix area).

First we stand in line for 15 minutes to check in and am presented with a paper to initial saying I’ll accept a rate that is $10 more than what I had reserved. When I question this, the desk clerk tells me that is an add-on fee for local phone calls, unlimited in-room coffee, miniature golf fees, fax service, and other business office services. I tell him I’m not interested in that stuff and he crosses off the extra charge. I’m glad of that but was not happy that the bill was just presented to me as if it was already a done deal. An explanation first as to what I was initialing would be helpful...this seemed a little underhanded to me.

At this point I should also let you know that the last time we were here, the Pointes were under independent ownership. Now they are a part of Hilton Hotels.

Next...that delicious breakfast and cocktail hour? Gone. OK, the worst part’s over. Now on to our room. Before we left for it, the desk clerk apologized because of our accessible room saying it was all he had left. I directed his attention down below the counter where he could see Tim in the wheelchair and let him know it was OK...we really did want the accessible digs.

Now we drive over to our room and yes, for the most part, it is accessible with wide doors and no steps. The bathroom is huge with plenty of room to roll. There is no roll in shower but the showerhead is on a hose and there are grab bars a plenty. After unpacking, we head over to tonight’s destination, the BOB (now known as Chase Field- Ed).

A view of the BOB Chase Field

Our local Angels are in town tonight playing the Diamondbacks. We called ahead for tickets and are looking forward to the game. Our seats are in section 105 in right field. We get to the top of the section and are about to take our seats when the usher tells us we’re in the wrong place...actually, we’re in the first row. Down we go to seats that are separated from Tim Salmon standing in right field only by a chain link fence. Another chain link fence on our left is all that keeps us from going into the Angels’ bull pen. I like these seats a lot.

Front row seats at the BOB...the umbrellas in the background is where the pool is

The stadium is practically brand new. It’s also unique in that it can be used in indoor mode or, with the retractable roof engaged, outdoor. When we take our seats, the roof is closed. Then, with serious sounding chanting music (think 2001 or a religious horror movie like the Omen) the roof parts revealing the desert stars and moon.

To our right is another unique feature of the stadium. The BOB (Bank One Ballpark) Chase Field is the only major league stadium with a swimming pool and spa. For only $4800 (in 2001) per game, you and up to 34 of your friends can splash in your own pool party while watching the game. The pool even has a lift to help disabled swimmers into the drink. And, if you’re a little sneaky, you can use the pool’s locker room’s roll-in shower since the hotel doesn’t have one! (The pool locker rooms double as the accessible restrooms for regular spectators)

The Angels lose even though we cheer our hearts out (and feeling very lonely in the midst of over 40,000 Diamondback fans) but we have a great time. The staff and the fans are very friendly here.

The next morning we have breakfast at a nearby diner. Then it’s on to highlight number 2 of our trip, the Hole in the Wall River Ranch. This is the Pointe’s very own water park right across the parking lot from our room. After slathering on a generous portion of SPF 30 sunscreen, we head on in.

There are several pools and spas here but for kids and the young-at-heart, there are also a big waterslide, a miniature golf course, and our favorite, the Lazy River.

Enjoying the lazy river at the Pointe

The Lazy River, where we would spend the next several hours, is a half-mile man-made river you float around on in an inner tube. It’s fun, wet, and very relaxing. The rest of the afternoon is spent with Tim swimming around the regular pool.

Another view of the lazy river

Dinner tonight is a decent t-bone steak at the Hole in the Wall restaurant, adjacent to the River Ranch. The next morning we return for breakfast and another couple of hours of tubin’ the Lazy River before checking out and going home.

-Darryl
Copyright 2001 - Darryl Musick

FIELDS OF DREAMS - Tempe Diablo Stadium, Tempe, Arizona

I find it kind of ironic that the Angels play in a stadium named after the devil, but that's their home facility for Spring Training.  In fact, when their pre-season games are televised, it's on Diablovision...that would be Devil vision for the espanol impared.

From Tim's Sports World come the stats:

Tempe Diablo Stadium

Tempe, AZ

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Brian Halvorsen under CC-BY 2.0 License

Opened: 1968
Renovated: 2002
Surface: Grass
Capacity: 9,315 (includes disabled seating, lawn seats, suites and temporary bleachers)
Field Dimensions: Left Field-340 feet, Right Field-360 feet, Center Field-420 feet, Left Center-400 feet, Right Center-400 feet
Home Teams: Seattle Pilots/Milwaukee Brewers 1969-1972, Seattle Mariners 1977-1993, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (MLB Cactus League Spring Training) 1993-Present
Events Attended: A morning workout before a game a couple years ago. All of the major stars were there, including Vladdy (Vladmir Guerrero - Ed).

Thanks for the info, Tim.

For wheelchair users, the rim around the top of the field level is where you'll sit.  It's a small stadium by Cactus League standards and the views are excellent.  You will find a ramp on both the 1st base and 3rd base sides when going in by home plate. 

1st Base Coach Alfredo Griffin Tosses Balls to the Spectators

If you go to watch the workout in the morning, it's free and you can get a pretty up close look at the stars but you'll have better luck getting autographs in the parking lot as the players move between fields for different workouts.  Sometimes the coaches will autograph shag balls and throw them up into the stands for the fans.

For Spring Training games, ticket prices range from $10 to $34.

The stadium is served by accessible public transportation via Valley Metro's 48 line bus.  The 48 bus also connects with the new light rail system at the Valley Way/College Avenue station.

Next week, the real fun begins...baseball season in the states starts on Wednesday (two games have already been played in Japan) and the Angels home opener in Friday, April 6th when Albert Pujols makes his official debut as a Halo when they host the Kansas City Royals.

-Darryl