Take me out to the ball game: The suite life!

This past weekend my wife and I got to do something very special. Actually, it was all thanks to @mrsbozz that we even got to have this experience!

About seven months ago she wrote a grant to the local Native American tribe to provide mental health supports for the staff at the building where she works. Since we are a public school, there are certain things that our state given budget can not cover. Believe it or not food (for staff) is one of those things.

Due to that restriction, it is often necessary to find alternate means to provide those types of incentives and rewards to the staff members. Frequently we will get donations from local businesses, or in this case, we seek out grants.

The grant @mrsbozz wrote was pretty substantial and thanks to the generosity of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe her vision came to fruition. She used the grant through the year to provide teachers and staff with treats via the "treat trolley", and she even had a coffee truck come for the morning and serve all of her staff members.

Then of course, there is the reason I am writing this post. The capstone to a great year of celebrating the staff... @mrsbozz rented a suite at Dow Diamond. This is the minor league ballpark near us where the Great Lakes Loons play.

They are a lower level affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers and we have been to the stadium for games many times, but never quite like this.

It's a really beautiful facility with plenty of room for people to spread out and enjoy the game. They have general admission lawn seats and then they have the standard box seats that you would expect from a ballpark.

They even have a playground area for children to hang out if they don't really care about the game. You can see it just to the left of the screen in the photo above. Around the outfield area, they also have gas fire pits so you can sit and keep warm on those chilly spring game nights.

As I said, this facility is quite modern and beautiful. They have several areas you can rent out and my wife looked at all of them before finally deciding on a suite. One of the things I love about ball parks these days is the fact that they have tried to elevate them.

In the past, I remember going to Tiger's Stadium and it was kind of dirty and there weren't that many choices in terms of food. These days, the bigger ballparks and the smaller ones have really focused on making the trip an experience. From craft beers on tap to out of the box food options that you wouldn't expect from a ballpark.

We traveled through the main concourse, past a security guard, and up the stairs leading to the private lounge and suite area. I didn't really know what to expect, the only other time I have been in a suite was at The Palace of Auburn Hills to see AC/DC in concert and that was a long long time ago.

We moved further down the hall and boom, there it was. Suite 10, our home for the night. The cost of the suite was $680 which gives you access for 20 people. Tickets beyond that up to 30 or 40 people were $13 a piece. You could easily split the cost between friends and have a pretty awesome night (assuming you know 20 to 30 people that you actually want to hang out with).

I should point out, that the food was not included in that price and @mrsbozz said that the food actually cost more than the suite! Still, if you had a group of 20 to 30 people you could easily have a great time for $60 a piece.

In reality, we ended up having more food than we actually needed, but you never know how hungry people are going to be. According to @mrsbozz, she could have also hired a bar tender for the night, but she felt that might not be a good look given it was the schools money.

The members of our party had to walk down the short hall to the bar area and order/pay for their drinks themselves, but I don't think anyone minded too much.

As you can see, it is a very beautiful area. My wife was wondering why you would spend your time sitting at the bar if you had access to a suite and I honestly couldn't answer that, because the suites were pretty sweet if you ask me.

Dow Diamond is built on the former site of some of the Dow Chemical office buildings. In fact, my mom used to work in one of the buildings that they demolished when they built the stadium. It was called the 47 building and it had a unique round end to it.

The "Contemplative Garden" you see in the distance in the photos above is where the 47 Building used to stand.

We used to have a friend who would get season tickets to the Loons games. When they couldn't make it to a game, they would give the tickets to us. The seats were right behind home plate and it wasn't uncommon to look around and see the late great Tommy Lasorda sitting a few rows down from you checking out the talent that might be coming up to the Dodgers.

As awesome as those seats were, I have to admit, the suite was better. I actually told my wife I don't think I ever want to watch a Loons game not from a suite again! Of course, that probably won't be true, but it was still cool!

@mrsbozz wanted to get there a little early to coordinate things with our hostess, but sure enough, there were already people from our group there having their first drinks! Being so early allowed me the luxury of getting some shots with few people in the stands.

I had to get this shot for my #silvergoldstackers folks. This is the Kzoo Bullion Silver Mine. During certain games if a Loons player hits a home run into that area, a certain section and row of fans gets free gold or silver. It is a pretty cool promotion if you ask me.

If you look in the distance in this photo, you can see the plant from Dow Chemical and Dow Corning. I used to have an office back in that mess of tubes and buildings a long time ago. It's actually pretty crazy back in the plant, it reminds you of something out of a space movie or something. There are tubes and pipes going all over the place carrying who knows what chemicals from one place to another. The scale of the thing is immense.

If you don't believe me, just look up Midland, MI on Google Maps sometime and put it in satellite mode. You can't miss it!

The Great Lakes Loons are #1 in their division, but unfortunately, they got beat up on this night by the West Michigan White Caps out of the Grand Rapids area. The White Caps are a minor league affiliate for the Detroit Tigers and they are number 2 in the division.

Eventually, it got dark enough that they turned on the stadium lights. It's kind of a cool feeling being in a stadium with the lights on like that. If you have ever experienced it, you know what I mean. Unfortunately, as you can see, the crowd didn't really fill in on this Saturday night. It's still kind of early in the season, and I think things will pick up once summer hits, but it was still a little sad to see so many empty seats.

I'd hate to see the team have to move locations because they couldn't support the stadium anymore.

With a 6:00 PM start time, it actually ended up being a pretty quick game. We don't live too far away and we were home before 9:00. I think part of that can be attributed to the fact that they have implemented the pitch clock all the way down to the minor leagues now.

The whole experience was really awesome and at the end of the night, all the staff members were talking about how they hoped we could do it again next year. @mrsbozz already has another grant in the works and she has some even bigger ideas for the staff in the future!

Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports

All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced