The Texas Rangers are set to debut their brand new ballpark, Globe Life Park, this year. In the past several months they’ve shared a number of photos of the inside of the park and, as far as retractable-roof ballparks go, it looks fine. It looks a lot like Houston’s Minute Maid Park, many have noted, but Minute Maid Park as fairly attractive so it’s all good. There is only so much you can do with an indoor baseball stadium.
Here’s that inside view. Like I said, it’s totally fine. Certainly beats sweating in the 100 degree Texas sun:
BASEBALL IS BACK pic.twitter.com/Ln5BuSHAFc
— Globe Life Field (@GlobeLifeField) June 24, 2020
Yesterday, though, the Rangers tweeted photos of the exterior of Globe Life Park and that hasn’t gone over as well, Wait, actually, it’s gone over great because there is nothing people like to do more than make jokes, and the photos have led to a lot of jokes.
First, here’s and image that I’m pretty sure the Rangers tweeted and then deleted but which was nonetheless captured by a lot of people and has since made the rounds:
The new Texas Ranger stadium has all the charm of the worlds largest Home Depot pic.twitter.com/VV18fA985v
— Baseball (@baseballminutia) June 24, 2020
The primary issue most people seem to have with it is that it didn’t match up very well with the artists’ renderings which were widely circulated prior to construction. This rendering, for example, is still up on the Rangers’ website:
I get that artists’ renderings tend to gussy places up a fair deal -- they always show the surroundings of buildings to be more lush and calm than they usually are and almost always pretend that there aren’t any parking lots -- but this one seems to misrepresent building materials. Specifically, it makes it look like that facade where the giants Texas “T” is would be glass instead of something that looks a lot like aluminum siding of corrugated steel.
It’s that detail which has led to most of the roasting. To wit:
— Super Nintendo Chalmers (@tylerlaycock2) June 24, 2020
New look of the Rangers new stadium pic.twitter.com/zg5Eulwp4z
— Albert Rios (@A_Rios08) June 24, 2020
Zing.
Like I said: the inside is what really matters and it seems plenty nice. And will be plenty cool for fans in more ways than one, at least once fans are allowed inside.
I would like to know, however, what went into the decision on that siding. Because that’s a humdinger.