10 things fans will notice about Globe Life Field while watching Texas Rangers on TV
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: The Texas Rangers will be playing their first games this season, and maybe more, without fans at Globe ...
Ok. So you’ve heard that Globe Life Field, all $1.2 billion of it, will be empty outside of baseball personnel and a limited gaggle of media.
Thanks a lot, coronavirus pandemic.
But thanks to the advent of live television, fans will get a peek inside the Rangers’ new home this season, beginning Friday at 7 p.m. with the delayed 2020 season opener on Fox Sports Southwest.
But cameras won’t do the place justice.
Forget all the yuks about the unsightliness of the retractable roof.
The beauty of it lies within, along with some unique features sure to make a fan wonder what they are.
Here are 10 of them:
The roof
Obviously.
While cameras might not directly capture the retractable roof, the effects of it are noticeable. A day game won’t look like a day game played outdoors, and the field during a night game looks brighter than one played outdoors.
Cameras will have multiple opportunities to capture the flight of popups and flyballs, and in the process will show viewers the many trusses that help support the 5.5-acre, 24-million pound roof.
And that could lead to some to wonder what happens if a batted ball hits a truss.
There are four possible outcomes:
▪ A batted ball is live and in play if it hits the roof, a roof truss or a roof cable over fair territory: The batter is out if caught by a fielder, and runners advance at own risk.
▪ A batted ball is live and in play if it hits the roof, a roof truss, a roof cable or any cabling over fair territory and lands fair.
▪ A batted ball is dead if it hits the roof, a roof, a roof truss, or a roof cable over foul territory.
▪ A batted ball is foul if it hits the roof, a roof truss, a roof cable or any cabling over fair territory and lands foul.
The turf
The synthetic playing surface designed specifically for Globe Life Field by Shaw Sports Turf looks more like grass that other artificial surfaces, and even looks like the real stuff at a casual glance.
On TV, though, it tends to lose the authentic look.
The infield cutout, though, is au naturel. However, ground balls might get past infielders more than usual because of the way the ball isn’t slowed as much by turf as grass. The Rangers are making some adjustments in how they position their infielders.
One other giveaway: The cloud of brown dust that a batted ball produces when it lands in the outfield or when a ball being thrown from the outfield bounces on the infield turf.
That dust is the Geofill — a layer of crushed coconut from Sri Lanka or India, which are the world’s top suppliers in coconut coir fibers.
Who knew?
Distance markers
The measurements the Rangers chose to display on the outfield walls weren’t the product of some math nerds.
Baseball nerds? Yes.
Start in the left-field corner, where there are two — 329 and 334. The 300 is for 300, but the 29 and 34 represent the jerseys worn by Adrian Beltre and Nolan Ryan.
All five Rangers to have their numbers retired are honored with a logo high above left field and a distance on the wall.
The 407 sign is a nod to Hall of Fame catcher Ivan Rodriguez, No. 7.
Michael Young gets two at 410 feet.
Manager Johnny Oates is in the right-field corner at 326.
Good news: The Rangers can easily add manager Ron Washington at 338 when they retire his number.
Then, there are the distances in the power alleys. The 372 in left-center marks the Rangers’ first year in Arlington, 1972, and the 374 in right-center is an ode to the first winning team the Rangers had in 1974.
Scoreboard
One of the first things players notice, aside from the roof, is the massive videoboard in right field.
At 111 feet wide and 40 feet tall, it’s hard to miss, even for TV cameras.
And it hangs above right field. Now, it’s 134 feet above the playing surface, but that hasn’t stopped first baseman Todd Frazier from wondering the same thing a fan might.
“I’m going to be excited to see if Joey Gallo or Rougie [Odor] or Danny Santana, to name a couple, can hit that JumboTron,” he said. “It’s literally in right field. It’s beautiful. It feels like it’s on top of you but it really isn’t. That’s a feature that is spectacular.”
If a player hits the videoboard, which technically is possible, it will definitely make the TV broadcast.
The Rangers also have a videoboard high in the left-field corner and an out-of-town scoreboard in center field.
Are those people?
Yes and no.
Once MLB intervened and didn’t allow fans for the first homestand, and possibly longer, the Rangers gave fans an opportunity to submit a picture that the club would then turn into a cardboard cutout.
The team called them DoppelRangers.
The cost was $50, and the proceeds went to the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation.
There won’t be one in all 40,300 seats, but there will be enough — 2,700 as of Thursday — that cameras won’t be able to miss them.
Here’s hoping for some really goofy ones.
Those have to be people
Yes, photographers are people, but because of the MLB safety protocols, they are unable to take their usual posts in the field-level camera wells.
Instead, there will be groups of no more than four stationed on the lower concourse behind the visiting team’s dugout on the third-base line and behind and just beyond the Rangers’ dugout on the first-base line.
Scouts are also people, and the Rangers have had some of their scattered in seats on the lower level from dugout to dugout.
But that’s it. Well, almost.
The parents and fiancee of Colorado Rockies outfielder Sam Hilliard, who went to Mansfield High, will be seated at the top of section 118 on the mezzanine level on Opening Day. His parents live in Fort Worth, and his father is battling Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Sweet seats
One of the primary shots of any baseball broadcast is looking in to the plate from center field. But not every ballpark has the kind of seats behind home plate that Globe Life Field has.
The field suites are closer to home plate than the pitching rubber and give fans who shelled out the coin for those premium seats a field-level view. Suite holders also have access to the tony Home Plate Club.
But for the next couple of months they will remain empty, though a baseball official might be spotted there occasionally.
Players will be using the field-level clubs past third base and first base as auxiliary dugouts to ensure social distancing.
The Bridge Seats
There are three levels of seats in right field and left field, though the third level in left field are detached from the two beneath.
The Rangers are calling them the Bridge Seats, roughly 1,000 of them. Some have called them opera seats in the past.
Whatever you want to call them, they hang from the upper concourse and might look to some as if they are floating.
Like the videoboard, it would be a shock if someone reached them with a home run.
What’s with all that netting?
For now, the netting that extends off the backstop to both foul poles will be protecting empty seats. Once fans are allowed, though, they will be better protected from foul balls.
MLB strongly urged all teams to install the netting after a series of scary incidents in which fans have been struck by hard foul balls. Netting had gone only so far as the end of both dugouts.
The decision comes after a 2-year-old girl was struck by a foul ball at Minute Maid Park in Houston, causing a fractured skull, and another 2-year-old was hit in the face at Yankee Stadium by a foul ball traveling 105 mph.
Windows galore
Congratulations to whoever scored the window-washing contract at Globe Life Field. With all those windows, that has to be a lucrative gig.
And a time-consuming one.
The most prominent windows from inside the ballpark, and the ones cameras are most likely to capture, are in left field above the Bridge Seats. The windows are part of a 1,000-foot long glass-curtain that runs along the entire north facade of the ballpark and is made of multiple 60-foot by 80-foot window bays.
That north facade has 63,000 square feet of windows. The ballpark has 171,000 square feet of windows, and the typical window panel is six feet, three inches wide and 12 feet tall.
Grab a squeegee, everyone.
