The Rangers released their 2008 schedule yesterday, and it has one major problem for me that I do not like at all.
Evening games are back to 7:05. This is a big problem for me, and that decision alone will probably keep me from going to more games than I’d like. The reason for this is I live and work in Garland, and am done work at 6PM. This means I have to fight rush hour traffic through the Dallas mixmaster to get out to the park, and rush around like an idiot just to make it in time for first pitch. If I have to spend as much money as it costs going to a game, I want to damned well ENJOY MYSELF, and not stress about all the flippin’ traffic I have to get through to get to a game. I want to see some of batting practice, check out the gift shop, and make it to my seat and get ready for the game. 7:05 game times pretty much tell me this will NOT be happening.
I’ll still go to a few games, but 2008 will be the first time since 1996 I have not had some sort of season ticket plan, or at least purchased one of the 10 packs. It’s too expensive, and now at 7:05, it’s pretty darned inconvenient, too.
Of course $12 gas for one game, and $12 parking, not to mention dealing with the hassle of the Glorypark construction nonsense won’t be any fun, either. Any of you guys remember what parking was like at Arlington Stadium when they were building The Ballpark in Arlington? It wasn’t any fun. It’ll be like that again I would imagine.
Anyway, rant over. I’ve taken the schedule and put into an .ics file (more info on ics), which you can download here if you want. This can be imported into a bunch of things like Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, Outlook, or anything else pretty much that has a calendar based function.
Download the zip file, uncompress it, and import. The TV schedule isn’t available yet, when that is available, I’ll update with that. I probably will not put the promotions schedule in there, as even though they make that available before the season, things get added a lot during the season, so it’s somewhat flexible, and makes it hard to schedule ahead of time.
Anyway, if you find this file of some use, please email me back (or comment here), and let me know. I don’t want anything for this, I just would like to know if someone is actually using it.
Joe, you are not alone in your skepticism over the Rangers’ switch back to 7:05 starts. Honestly, I’m surprised at the results of the fan surveys: I would have thought that the later starts would have been more popular among the fanbase, but apparently not. I imagine part of the reason is that people don’t particularly enjoy not being able to get out of the RBiA area until 11:00-11:15 or so, assuming that a 7:30 game lasts three hours. Tack on a 30 to 45 minute drive back to wherever, and you’re looking at not getting home until perhaps 12:00 at the earliest.
I do have a question for you, since living in Tyler limits my yearly trips to the Temple: just how much congestion has the Glorypark project added to the entire traffic situation surrounding the Ballpark? I’ve heard it’s getting pretty nasty, but I’d love to hear more on it.
When I was last out there, Glorypark hadn’t yet started construction. I imagine by the time the new season rolls around, it’ll get ugly.
I’m told parking in 08 will be quite different. If you look at the Glorypark site, you’ll see what all the new buildings they’re adding are.
This will kill most of the really close parking to the stadium. I predict major suckage.
So entire chunks of season parking spaces are getting taken out, from what I’m gathering from this map?
Yeah, that’s a good way to embrace one of your biggest revenue streams.
That’s what it looks like. The same kind of “let’s make big money and screw the guy who makes real money” move it was when they put that Siemens office building in the middle of the parking lot.