A Nice New Home, for a Fixer-Upper

The redesigned and renamed Edison International Field isn’t the Anaheim Stadium you remember from when you were young. It’s the ballpark you wish you had when you were young.

Think of it as your parents leaving the home you grew up in and moving into a nicer place. It might hurt to abandon the memories, but that new house looks so great you’ll forget all about the old one.

It’s a trade-off. No, you can’t look out and see the same Big A backdrop that framed Nolan Ryan’s no-hitters. On the other hand, you don’t have to look out to center field and be reminded of the spot where Dave Henderson’s home run landed to deny the Angels a spot in the 1986 World Series.

Now the area behind left-center features a re-creation of the rugged California coastline, with cascading waterfalls and back-lit geysers.

Wrigley Field has its ivy-covered walls, Yankee Stadium has its monuments and Edison Field has its rocks. Hey, give it some time. Tradition doesn’t come overnight. Even in Orange County, where “old” is anything built last week.

In the hours before the ballpark opened for the first time for the Angel-Dodger exhibition game Friday night, it still needed some of the basic baseball ambience.

When you walk into a ballpark you’re supposed to smell newly cut grass, not fresh paint. And you’re supposed to hear the crack of the bat meeting the ball, not the sound of hammers and power drills.

But already it seems as if the old memories have been wiped clean. The upper deck in left field where I sat for my first Angel game doesn’t exist any more. It has been torn down, part of the renovation project to undo the football stadium transformation of 19 years ago and return the stadium to its baseball roots of its 1966 opening.

The good news is there was plenty that needed to be changed. Anaheim Stadium used to be the blandest place around. Even before the Walt Disney Co. bought the team in 1996, the stadium felt Disney-clean--to the point it was sterile. Totally devoid of personality.

Now it evokes words like “cozy”.

“I think they’ve done a heck of a job with it,” said Angel batting coach Rod Carew, who played for the team from 1979-1985.

“I think this stadium has come a long way from the time it was built. It was a nice park. I liked it until the Rams came and they had to put those seats [in]. It became kind of a drab atmosphere. Before, it was wide open, you could see the mountains and the freeways. It was nice then.”

Two years of work and $117 million later, it’s nice again.

The redesign was handled by the same company that created Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards and Cleveland’s Jacobs Field earlier in the decade. It evokes the same old-time baseball feel, to a time when fans would show up to games wearing suits and hats. (Perhaps someday in the future we’ll reflect back on these golden days when fans showed up to games with cellular phones.)

There was a greater challenge here. Camden Yards incorporates the warehouse beyond right field. Jacobs Field fits in with the industrial environment of downtown Cleveland.

Edison Field doesn’t have a neighborhood. The only way it could interact with the surroundings is if they built an on-ramp from center field to the 57 Freeway.

So what it has become is a destination unto itself? It will have live bands outside, beer gardens, interactive games. The well-to-do can dine in the Diamond Club restaurant, which also has tables in a patio area 18 rows behind the field.

This has to be the only stadium in the country where a pitcher can see people dining al fresco while he looks in to get the sign from the catcher.

Forty yards from home plate can’t be the most relaxing place to dine. At any moment, a foul ball could come crashing down on the table. (“Waiter, there’s a pop fly in my soup.”)

A small army of 30 workers was wiping the padded, $34.50 seats behind home plate before the game. These have to be the nicest outdoor seats around. But all of the seats are a welcome improvement.

One of the first comments people made was how the green seats make the ballpark look nicer. And they do. But anything would look better than the orange seats Anaheim Stadium used to have. Face it, the only thing that looks good in orange is an orange.

The players walked onto the field for the first time and had a wondrous look in their eyes, like when people first see alien space ships or dinosaurs in a Steven Spielberg film.

“This is awesome,” shortstop Gary DiSarcina said.

“It’s a gorgeous park,” Manager Terry Collins said. “I tip my hat to everybody that helped to get this stadium ready.”

Now it’s time for Collins and his players to do their part. One of the reasons no one shed tears over the changes to the old stadium is because there weren’t enough magic memories, and certainly no World Series appearances.

The other component to making this a special place is the fans.

“One of the things that makes Jacobs Field Jacobs Field is that people would come out and get behind the team,” said pitcher Jack McDowell, who signed a free-agent contract with the Angels this spring after playing the previous two seasons in Cleveland. “I’m hoping that that’s going to happen here.”

Even cynical reporters had trouble finding faults with the place. A couple were trying to make fun of the fountains--or “Outfield Extravaganza,” as the Angels call it--and Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi shot back with, “That thing is cool, and you know it.”

And you know what? It is.

The folks at Disney have yet to prove that they have mastered the business of running a team, but they sure know how to build things.