T-Mobile Park

What is interesting about the field

T-Mobile Park, aka Safeco Field, is a Seattle-based baseball stadium opened in 1999. It has a sliding roof that can shelter 47,000 seats from the weather. In addition to professional games, the field is also used for school championships and football competitions.

At the design stage, the architects had a desire to give the stadium a retro style, which they tried to maintain in the future. T-Mobile Park has a brick façade similar to many 1960s stadiums. According to an old tradition, it is located in a densely populated area, and not outside the city.

Old-fashioned solutions are combined with more recent developments such as a retractable roof and a range of corporate hospitality suites. The roof itself keeps rain and snow out of the pitch so matches can continue even in adverse weather conditions.

The scoreboard system is among the most impressive of all Major League Baseball stadiums. The field features 11 different electronic screens, including an HD LED display that was installed in 2013. In addition, there are two game boards and several auxiliary displays, as well as a manually operated scoreboard.

T-Mobile Park is the largest of all MLB stadiums, with a total area of 11,000 square feet. The playing field is a modern field with a specially designed drainage system and a 4-grass surface for excellent friction.

Story

Until the 1990s, the Seattle Mariners baseball team played their home games at the old Kingdom Stadium, but over time it became apparent that it was outdated and unable to cope with the requirements of modern safety standards and regulations.

The team's owners went so far as to threaten to kick them out of Seattle rather than play on an obsolete field. But in the end, the state of Washington threw in some money for the construction of a new stadium, which began in the spring of 1997 and ended in July 1999.

Sports fans were delighted: from their seats, they could not only watch the game of their favorite team, but also see the center of Seattle, and next to the stadium was Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains. The guests had a beautiful view of the field from almost all places. And, unlike Kingdom, there was a well-developed infrastructure for food, logistics and toilets.

The long-awaited stadium quickly proved its worth. Attendance for the first two seasons topped 6.6 million, the best in the Major Leagues.

Even during construction, the rights to name the stadium were sold for $40 million. At first, the building was called Safeco Field, but after 20 years the rights expired and the field was named T-Mobile Park.

Facts

• Safeco Insurance paid a hefty sum of money to have the field named after itself, and was the main sponsor of the games until 2019.
• The one-of-a-kind retractable roof is designed to cover, but not completely cover, a baseball stadium, thereby preserving some of the open sky. The roof covers almost 9 acres, weighs 22 million pounds and contains enough steel to build a 55-story skyscraper. Three mobile panels slide on 128 steel wheels powered by 96 ten horsepower electric motors. Pressing a button closes or opens the roof in an average of 10-20 minutes. The roof can withstand 6-7 feet of snow and winds up to 70 miles per hour.
• The new 56×201 inch high definition LED screen is one of the largest in professional sports. The scoreboard displays current game results and event summaries to help fans keep track of what's going on. Four auxiliary boards display information about key players, their pitching rates and additional information about the progress of the game.