Ballpark experience number one: Anaheim (most definitely not Los Angeles)

I recently went to the USA to do a bit of a food and baseball tour. I tried to combine the two for a little bit, but quickly realized that baseball stadium food is almost always overpriced and mediocre. I will write some posts about this trip!

So Anaheim is home to the Los Angeles Angels, who were formerly the California Angels and then the Anaheim Angels. I think they did some kind of naming deal with the city of Anaheim to get their stadium there, so for a while they were the bizarre "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". But whatever they are called, their ballpark is a concrete monstrosity very, very far away from downtown Los Angeles. This is what it looks like from the carpark:

So I needed to take the subway to get to Union station, so that I could take the train (a proper train, like an Amtrak train), so that I could walk for several hundred metres through carpark, so that I could finally arrive at my seat and sit down...only just over two hours later. 

I did grab a beef short rib grilled cheese sandwich on the way to my seat. A bit of google research showed that this was one of the best things on offer at Angels Stadium (which apparently is not one of the better MLB stadiums for food). Here is what it looked like:

You know what? It was actually not bad. It could have done with more beef, but the cheese was nice (proper cheese). I washed it down with a red coloured lemonade drink:

This was pretty refreshing.

The main problem I had was that I was sitting in an uncovered area in the outfield seating. I was not wearing sunscreen and the sun was pretty darn fierce. 

I did manage to (perhaps foolishly) gut it out for 4 innings. This doesn't sound like much, but Jered Weaver was pitching for the Angels and each inning was taking an interminably long time. I don't think there were many people staying out there to watch every pitch. I suspect Angels fans are on the whole, a lot less hardcore about baseball than the fans of some other teams (this is not necessarily a bad thing...I hate you Boston).

So my trip started off with me travelling two hours each way to watch an hour and a half of baseball while getting burnt to a crisp. I would say that the overall experience was slightly negative, but I am going to put that on me. It was a bit idiotic to buy a cheap bleacher seat and then sit out there without sun screen. Madness... I will probably never return, because Angels are the hated division rivals of my beloved Seattle Mariners...and because it is such a pain to get to.