Here it is for real on a game day. Pretty close to the rendering, but the tree on the left didn’t make it and the cell tower near the middle did.
Globe Life Field is actually in Arlington TX, but I put Dallas in the headline of this page because Dallas has more panache than Arlington. I was planning on hitting the new Globe Life Field in April, 2020, when the Red Sox were scheduled for their first series there against the Rangers, but the pandemic broke out just in time to ruin that. Only cardboard fans got in during that regular season, but the 2020 World Series between the Dodgers and Rays was actually played there to very limited non-cardboard fans. With the pandemic and COVID dragging on I didn’t get there until September 2023, for the one Red Sox visit of the season.
When you’re Deep in the Heart of Texas them nights can get purty hot so the Texas Rangers owners, Ray Davis and Bob Simpson, decided they was gonna get theirselves a damn roof. Globe Life Insurance pays a million every year for naming rights. They were already doing that with the old place, so thatbwas renamed Chocktaw Casino (you remember that name from Ode to Billy Joe, right? Choctaw Ridge is where then Tallahatchee Bridge is). The new ballpark cost 1.2 billion. The City of Arlington agreed to pay $500 million of the cost. That’s just under half. Where’s the extra scratch coming from? Arlington added a 1/2-cent sales tax, a 2% hotel tax and a 5% car rental tax. Oh, and a ticket sales tax and a parking revenue tax. Yeah, let them out-of-towners foot the bill.
This was my third Rangers ballpark. I went to Arlington Stadium in its final week in 1993 (it was Nolan Ryan week) and to the first night game at the Ballpark at Arlington in 1994. George W Bush, who was a Rangers owner at the time, threw out the fist pitch. In was back there two more times and the park had a different name each time: The Ballpark at Arlington, Ameriquest Field and Globe Life Park. The new one is distinguishable by the name Globe Life Field. That brand spanking new ballpark only lasted 26 seasons, but that’s more than Turner Field, which lasted from 1997 through 2016. Only 20 seasons. Meanwhile back home, Fenway Park is planning to kick off its 112th season next April.
Game: Wednesday, September 20,2023. It was an afternoon game so my brother Peter Kelley and I flew to DFW on a jetBlue morning flight, Ubered to the ballpark and back and returned that evening on an American Airlines flight. Meaning that…Arlington got nothing from us in terms of rental car tax, parking revenue or hotel tax. Just a ticket sales tax.
It’s a very nice ballpark…as all the new ones are. Roomy, comfortable seats, excellent sight lines, lots of concessions (including in-seat delivery – we didn’t know about to until we’d already gone to concessions). The Red Sox were eliminated from playoff contention and on their way to a last-place finish for the second straight year and third in the last four years. The Rangers, meanwhile, were headed for the ALCS to face Houston – the first ever all-Texas playoff series.
Spectacular scoreboards that constantly remind you to make noise when there are two strikes on an enemy batter.
Justin Turner thinks about swinging at a 3-2 pitch but holds up. The catcher asked whether he went and the umpire said that no, he didn’t went. Turner walks and later scores on an Adam Duval homer.
Surprisingly, there were few “Texasy” touches. When I went to the two earlier Rangers’ stadiums…and to Minute Maid Park in Houston…they’d play “Deep In the Heart of Texas” (clap, clap, clap, clap) between innings and everyone would clap clap clap along. Not at Globe Life Field. They didn’t do the Kiss Cam or a mustard and relish race, but they did have a Hot Dog Cam where the video screen would do a closeup on someone eating a hot dog.
Not as entertaining as college girls dancing to “Sweet Caroline” at Fenway, but waay less obnoxious than the Oblivious Cam where they zoom in on someone who’s paying no attention to the video screen. Maybe they came to watch a game, not the screen.
Lots and lots of people wearing Rangers swag of different colors and logos. At first I thought In was the only person wearing Red Sox stuff (Peter was wearing a Texas hat he had from an earlier business trip), but eventually I saw quite a few.
There’s an easy chair deck over left field. If you head to the nosebleed section there are old folks rocking chairs. Maybe you can whittle during slow moments.
Sometimes when the home team is getting blown out only the fans who flew in to root for visiting team are still there for the 9th inning. This was definitely not the case in this game. Top of the 1st Adam Duvall hit a 3-run homer. Top 2 Bobby Dalbec hit a solo homer. Starting to look like a rout. It was, but not for Boston. In the bottom off the 2nd alleged ace-of-the-fututre Brayan Bello gave up 6 runs, then two more in the 3rd. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Neither was Nick Robertson, who took over and gave up five more over 2 innings, then John Schreiber gave up another two. It was 15-4 after 6. Rafael Devders went hitless and guess what? He committed an error. His 18th of the year.
Things actually settled down after that. Texas didn’t score again and Boston added a meaningless run in the 9th. Damage Done, as the 2018 Red Sox used to say, but this was all Texas damage. Starter Jon Gray only went 2.1 innings (trailing 4-0), then Martin Perez pitched a scoreless 4.2 innings. Why can’t we have guys like that? Oh, wait…we did have him in 2020 and 2021. He was horrific. 7-8 with a 4.75 ERA and have up 19 homers. Batting average against was .296! Marcus Semien, Josh Jung, Leody Taveras and rookie Evan Carter all had multiple hits for the Rangers.
Right across from the Globe Life Field south parking lot is the new $1.3 billion Dallas Cowboys stadium, one of the most expensive stadiums in the world but it only beat Globe Life Field by a measly million . AT&T has naming rights.