Part 15: The Fly Out
April 15th, 2019. The White Sox defeat the Royals 5-4 on Jackie Robinson day in Chicago
After a two season hiatus from our stadium tour we begin again in Chicago. The intention of this trip was to see Globe Life Field in Texas before it closes at the end of the season. When we were planning on our trip to Dallas we were going to fly from Toronto to Chicago and then to Dallas. Since the White Sox were in town we decided to spend some extra time in Chi town for a game before we fly out to Dallas.
We left Toronto around 3pm toronto time and arrived around 4pm Chicago time. We were staying by the Midway airport and opted to take a quick uber to the ballpark instead of public transport. This was the first time we had seen a ballpark with a designated ride share pick-up and drop-off area. It was super convenient after the game and I imagine many ballparks are doing something similar, eventually I can see all ballparks doing this with the growing popularity of ride sharing apps.
Guaranteed Rate Field is located in the south side of Chicago which is not exactly a great part of town. My wife and I have both been to Chicago before but never experienced this part of the city. We did not have very high expectations for “The Rate” but we were pleasantly surprised by how nice it is. Even the appearance of the stadium when approaching it from the parking lot was better than I would have guessed. The worst thing about Guaranteed Rate Field is probably the name Guaranteed Rate Field which is just is incredibly boring, cumbersome and super corporate sounding. The ballpark was formally know as US Cellular at the start of the tour which isn’t great either but considerably better. On the plus side “The Rate” is a half decent nickname and ultimately the ballpark name is more my own pet peeve and not actually important.
We waited for the gates to open and marched right to the shop to get our first ballpark shot glass in two years. We did a full lap of the ballpark before settling on getting some delicious tacos. We both noticed the ballpark had great selection of food options and there was many things that I would have wanted to try but I could only eat so much. I also had a helmet of Irish Nachos that were very good. The also served Goose Island beer which is the local Chicago beer that we have had before back home in Toronto and is very good. We found our seats for first pitch, we sat in row two along the third base line. White Sox tickets were very cheap. I think our tickets were only $30 and the seats were close to action and close enough to easily talk to the players going in and out of the dugout. Cheap seats means we were able to get even more food. During the game I got us some foot-longs, but for some reason the cut them in half. I know it’s the same amount of food but it was basically 4 regular sized hotdogs which was far more difficult to care back to my seat.
The game was alot of fun, I got to see some great plays by Tim Anderson who I had in my fantasy pool. It was also Jackie Robinson day which we didn’t realize until we got there. Great crowd as well, not so much in terms of quantity but in quality. The game was on a Monday night and they actually roped of the second deck so everybody was close together. This makes it a lot more fun when people can chat and heckle the players with strangers. Which we did. Now because we were on a trip to Texas and we try to pack as light as possible we weren’t dressed very warmly and it was particular cold that night. In fact Chicago had a snow storm the day before and it looked like it was still the middle of winter there. In the later innings it felt like it was starting to rain and we debated leaving early as we were flying out at 5:25am the next day. We ended up leaving in the eight inning and got an uber back to hotel. As we were leaving, the game finished and we saw a great display of fireworks celebrating the 5-4 win over the Kansas City Royals.
We didn’t get a chance to check out anything around the stadium but if you do visit Chicago there is plenty do see and do downtown. We had both been to Chicago years ago so we didn’t need to spend time there again and besides we know we’ll be back again to see a Cubs game together. It was so much visiting a new stadium after taking a couple years off and we are super excited about getting back into our stadium tour. We got a few hours and then flew out of Chicago to Dallas early the next day. If you are planning on seeing some other stadiums near Gauranteed Rate Field the closests is obviously Wrigley which you might be able to see the same day on certain days of the season. You could also drive north to see a Milwaukee game or south to see a St.Louis game.
Completed Stadiums: 13 of 30
To see the current completion status of our baseball stadium tour Click Here