Night at the ballpark

With apologies to Alabama and their country song extolling the view from out there, please, as a favor to the Spokane Indians Baseball Club, refrain from referring to the bleacher seats down the left- and right-field lines as “the cheap seats.”

“We call them Reserve Bench Seats,” senior vice president Otto Klein laughed. “All of those seats are reserved. We found that there’s more value to the customer if they have the comfort of having a specific seat.”

Call them what you will, the seats down the lines at Avista Stadium are the best entertainment value in town. At $6 for adults, $5 for kids, a night at the ballpark costs less than any other comparable outing.

“Price is really important to us,” Klein said. “We want to make sure that we stay a family-affordable event. We compare ourselves to other entertainment venues – Silverwood, a night at the movies.

“Same with having a $2 hotdog and a $2 pop. It’s about keeping the game affordable, especially these days.”

Prior to last season, the club and county invested $2 million in renovations.

“We replaced a lot of concrete out there, and we upgraded the seats,” Klein said. “We put in The Grotto about four years ago.”

Baseball is a whole different game out in the che … uh, reserve bench seats.

You won’t see many scorecards out there. Fans in these seats don’t hang on every pitch the way they do in box seats, especially those directly behind home plate. Fastballs and curveballs look the same from that angle.

Instead, fans relax and jump at the crack of the bat. Because they’re closer to the field and to fielders, there is a louder appreciation for the great defensive play.

And there’s a sense of anticipation down the lines.

“There is a different atmosphere out there,” Klein said. “For one thing, you’re more likely to get a foul ball out there. Since we redesigned the screen behind home plate, you’re more likely to get balls hit into those seats than you are, say, behind the dugouts.”

For Saturday’s series finale with the Everett AquaSox, the atmosphere was festive.

Kids lined the railings, mitts at the ready, waiting for a chance to run down any ball hit in their direction. One youngster, wearing a Mariners jersey, positioned himself in the farthest corner down the left field line. Between innings he would either gaze wistfully out at the green grass of the outfield or practice catching imaginary foul balls by leaning out over the top rail.

Across the field, youngsters lined up at The Grotto, taking practice swings with an oversized plastic bat inside the batting cage. Younger kids gathered in a corner next to the Kids Club, creating chalk art on the concrete.

Whenever Otto, the big, blue dinosaur that serves as the team mascot made an appearance, he would draw an immediate crowd of youngsters clamoring for a hug while parents jockeyed for position to make sure there were photos to preserve the memory.

“It’s so much fun watching the kids,” Klein said. “I have a couple kids myself. We try to make sure that the mascot gets out there every game. I think half the fun of sitting out there is watching the kids.”

Those value-oriented seats are where a ballpark gets its energy.

Legendary baseball owner and promoter Bill Veeck, the man who gave the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field its distinctive ivy-covered walls and its classic hand-operated scoreboard, was famous for sitting in the bleacher seats to gauge the pulse of the fans.

The Bleacher Bums, the home-team faithful who started the tradition of throwing back home runs hit by opposing teams, got their start in the outfield seats at Wrigley Field.

“You still get that kind of energy out there,” Klein said. “We had a group of stadium entertainers who went to all the ballparks come in here – the Blues Brothers. They told me that if you really want to get a stadium fired up, you do it out in the bleacher seats. That’s where the fans are having the most fun.”