Cincy Rules

Great American Ballpark (named for Great American Bank), is easily the best ballpark we've seen so far.

Across the street from the Bengals new Paul Brown Stadium, GAB features terrific sightlines, a close proximity to the field, huge, wide open concourses, one of the largest scoreboards in the Majors, tons of concession options and pre-game festivities, and several nods to the history of the oldest team in baseball.

The first thing that strikes you is the various tributes to the Big Red Machine and even the Reds teams of the 1800's.
Statues of Reds greats greet you at the front gate, as do various murals featuring Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, George Foster, Tony Perez, etc., etc.
A huge Big Red Shop offers tons of cool (and fairly affordable) Reds memorabilia, and next to that is the Big Red Museum.
It costs $10 to get in ($5) with a ticket, and we didnt have time last night, so we're going to tour it today.

GAB has a riverboat theme, with a boat and misters in the outfield, but that really doesn't add or subtract from the park itself. Everything is red, giving it a distinct hometown team feel, and I've never seen a place that tilted the seats towards the action as much as GAB. It's very exaggerated - we sat down the third base line and were facing the mound straight on (Kyle Lohse pitched for the Reds and got hammered. Bad. Cristian Guzman hit a triple, that brought back memories).

Cincinnati is the chili capital of the world, and we had some really good chili dogs. There's also BBQ, pizza, tacos and even a cakes and cookies stand. I had 3 Buds and a margarita from the tiki bar. The prices were better than any place we've been so far.

There were about 31,000 fans (it was Bronson Arroyo bobblehead night), and most of them left by the 6th inning, at which point the Nats had a 9-1 lead.
The ushers didnt mind at all when the remaining fans moved down into the field level seats. We moved over directly behind home plate about 7 rows up in the 8th inning (the game lasted almost four hours, as the Reds came back a little before losing 12-7), and that was as close as I've probably ever been at a Major League game.

We'll be back tonight, hoping to hit the Reds museum before hand, then Friday morning we leave for St. Louis.