At 5:45 p.m. on March 4th, myself along with my friend Meredith pulled into the parking lot at Tucson Electric Park, home of Arizona Diamondback's spring training, ready for an exciting baseball game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Team Mexico. The sun was starting to set as we paid the $5 parking fee and made our way to the ticket office to purchase lawn seats. Upon arriving at the ticket office, the lines were so long they trickled into the parking lot, each line no shorter than 15 people. Meredith and I looked at each other and smiled as we both pulled our Borderbeat badges out of our bags in hopes of using them to enter the game. It is important to note that a couple days prior to this game, I called and emailed media relations for the D-backs in hopes of attaining media passes, but I never heard back. We never really thought our badges would work but we figured we had nothing to lose and it was worth a try. We went up to the main entrance, flashed our laminated badges like we owned the place and told them we were journalists with Borderbeat. The ticket-takers looked at us, looked at each other and then directed us to the "office" for further guidance. It looks like our plan was actually going somewhere...
At the office, we talked to the nice, older woman working the desk who was more than happy to help us. She called one of the guys who does media relations for the D-backs who wants to talk to one of us about our motives of obtaining press passes. Meredith willingly takes the call thinking it is going to be a piece of cake and proceeds to get yelled at about being "unprofessional" and not going through the proper process of obtaining a pass. He then tells Meredith that he needs to talk to our professor to make sure we are legitimate. Meredith handles herself beautifully as we scramble for our professor's, Jay, phone number. We finally
get it and Jay thankfully agrees to call in and vouch for us. Meredith and I patiently await the outcome, hoping that Jay can work his magic and talk this guy into giving us passes. After 15 minutes, the media relations guy calls back and wants to talk to one of us again. This time, I step up to the plate and confidently take the phone. He was pleasant and asked me what we kind of story we were hoping to attain. I tell him all about why we were there-to simply get a story about Team Mexico playing the D-backs. After hearing me out, he agrees to give us media passes. 30 minutes later, it's go time.
We enter Tucson Electric Park and to my surprise, it is packed. Fans are wondering the ballpark, purchasing T-shirts, eating hot dogs and sipping on a refreshing beer. Red D-backs shirt are lost in a sea of green Mexico jerseys. While this is supposed to be D-backs "home" game, there were by far more Team Mexico fans showing their team pride. Along with the Mexico and D-backs jerseys, many people were wearing the official World Baseball Classic 2009 shirt since Team Mexico would be representing for their country in the tournament which started Thursday.
Meredith and I circle the park and take a few pictures from the first baseline and decide to take full advantage of our passes and head to the press box. We walk behind the closed double black doors and take the elevator up to the third floor. A security guard checks our passes and clears us for the box. We enter the box which is next to empty, consisting of only six other media members and take a seat (but not before grabbing a complimentary water). The view from the box is unreal. We were seated between the third baseline and home plate, but more towards home plate. You could see the entire park from our seats. The lights were illuminating the field as fans were out of their seats cheering loudly for their favorite players and for their team of choice. Meredith and I sat in the box for the remainder of the game, bailing out a little early to avoid the traffic.
All in all, the game was a great time. It started out a little rough, but it was worth it in the end. The game was exciting as Team Mexico had 19 runs, beating the D-backs 19-4 and just being in the ballpark and experiencing the game up close made it that much better. The measures a journalist must take to get the perfect story are endless and on March 4th, we proved this.
Check out Team Mexico in the World Baseball Classic as they hope to bring home the championship. For a complete schedule, click here.
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