On a Gloomy Day, He Dreams of Fields

Rainwater puddled up in the Anaheim Stadium parking lot. Up above, it appeared that Anaheim might be leading the league in slate-gray clouds. All in all, it would have been a good day to have Edgar Allan Poe read the anthem. An easygoing, lonesome security guard patrolled the outside of the stadium on foot, ostensibly to question the looky-loos, but there wasn’t much business. Checking out the 150-foot crane or the 8-foot-high dirt mound outside Gate 4 or the pile of debris beyond the left field wall apparently isn’t high on the average Orange Countian’s list of things to do on a wet weekday morning.

Fine with me. The gray of the winter morning and the relative solitude made it all the more fun to project to this summer--a balmy July night in the middle of a pennant race--and to imagine how noisy and picturesque the new stadium will be.

They’re reviving the Big A just in time. It’s only 30 years old but has managed to embody the worst of both worlds--looking more lifeless than ballparks built 80 years ago and those built two years ago. It would be nice to start all over, but that’s financially impractical, so the new Disney Co. owners settled on refurbishing the inside and doing some bits-and-pieces remodeling on the outside.

Because the Freeway Series with the Dodgers begins March 29 and Opening Day is April 2, the pace now is around-the-clock and on weekends too. “We’re on schedule,” says Bill Robertson, the spokesman for the Angels. “Everybody here that’s involved feels this is their home, because we’re spending as much time here as we are at our homes.”

The calendar is winding down on this construction job as surely as it does on a team’s pennant chances. By late March, construction crews--now averaging 100 workers a day--will have rebuilt the press level, built dugout-level suites, removed the old football press area, removed outfield seats and relocated the Jumbotron.

The capacity for the ’97 season will be around 33,000--with no outfield seating--making the park as cozy as the revered Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago. For the ’98 season, the permanent capacity will be somewhere from 45,000 to 46,000, Robertson says.

Right now, the ballpark looks like a salvage yard. Inside Gate 1, I watched three workers try to remove stacks of long aluminum panels used to help shape the cement beams. I asked one of them, Kenneth Ziegenhohn, if he was excited working on a new ballpark. “Not really,” he said. Yes, he’s a baseball fan, but of the Dodgers, not the Angels. But surely, I said, you’re going to enjoy coming back and basking in your contribution to the new ballpark. “Not unless they give me free tickets,” he said, laughing, before going back to work.

Oh, well, we all have our aesthetic boundaries. In fact, of several people I talked to at the park--from construction workers to Anaheim city inspectors--all said renovating the ballpark was “just another job.”

Later in the day, I phoned Robertson and asked him why he thought that was, and he attributed it to the hectic construction schedule, which will continue to a second phase during the season. The third and final phase will begin during next off-season.

Salvage site or not, I already like the new park better than the old one. Disney is touting the fact that fans will be able to see out of the ballpark, but I think it’ll be just as exciting to look into it. Maybe it’s not a sunset over the Pacific Ocean, but check out the view this summer from the Orange Freeway into the ballpark, with thousands of fans illuminated under the lights.

I think we’re going to like it.

The renovation is costing $100 million, with Disney paying most of it. For my money, even when the construction is done, one order of business will remain.

I draw my inspiration from comedian George Carlin and his dissertation on the many differences between baseball and football. With every comparison, he pointed out football’s coldness and baseball’s warmth. “Football is played in a stadium,” Carlin intoned darkly. “Baseball,” he said, merrily, “is played in a park!”

Sitting in my car in the deserted Big A parking lot Thursday morning, the winter wetness in the air, I knew I was in a stadium. I longed to be in a park.

I wanted to tear down that cold “Anaheim Stadium” sign and replace it with the warmer “Angel Park.”

Or, “Halo Field.”

Will anyone second that motion?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.