The front row of "Mount Davis" is approximately 113 feet above field level, so of course I tried to catch a baseball there. Did I succeed? Was this a bad idea?!
Thanks to Oakland A's bullpen catcher Dustin Hughes, I got to enter the stadium SEVEN HOURS before game time and explore the biggest and weirdest oddity in any Major League Baseball stadium: Mount Davis, which is is the nickname of the humongous center field structure. It was built in 1995 to increase the seating capacity by 20,000 and help attract the NFL's Raiders to Oakland, but over the past 17 years, this area has only been open for baseball games three times! It's pretty much abandoned at this point and completely off-limits to fans, so this was truly a unique experience.
I also got to hang out on the field and play catch (including testing out a "mutant baseball"), and after all of this took place, I attended the game against the Detroit Tigers (and saw Miguel Cabrera), so that's why this video is 26 minutes long. So much cool stuff kept happening!
Shoutout to the A's other bullpen catcher, Wilkin Castillo, for playing catch with me after the stadium opened. I forgot to mention him in the video, so I'm doing it here. Shoutout to my videographer and editor on this one: Rachel Messbauer. And of course Dustin Hughes (@dhog91 on Instagram) deserves the biggest thanks of all. He's amazing. That's all I can say.
This video was filmed on September 21, 2023. Thanks for watching!
1 окт 2023
